Event: AWM Celebrates Chicago Authors with Brooks Readings

The American Writers Museum's new exhibit From Our Neighborhoods: Four Chicago Writers Who Changed America features two-thirds of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame's inaugural inductee class. The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame has contributed to the curation of the exhibit and is a co-sponsor of the youth writing contest being administered as part of the programming. More information about the Rutledge Writing Award and a full schedule of exhibit sites and events is forthcoming on this blog.

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One of the first lessons I learned as a writer was that the best way to reveal the mistakes in your writing – a clunky word, awkward pacing, dialogue that no human would utter – is to read aloud. But I forgot, until this week, the power inherent in giving voice to the words of our nation’s greatest authors – to listen to what Eudora Welty called “the sound of what falls on the page.”

The importance of reading great authors aloud came rushing back to me last week when I attended a community reading in Bronzeville of Gwendolyn Brooks poems. The reading was organized by the American Writers Museum (full disclosure: I am a member of the museum’s planning team) and facilitated by the Guild Literary Complex at the historic George Cleveland Hall Branch library in Bronzeville.

It was my first visit to the Hall Branch, and it is a gem of a library tucked into a non-descript corner at South Michigan Avenue and 48th Street. A literary landmark, the Hall Branch gained fame as a gathering place for Brooks, Lorraine Hansberry, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, as well as other notable writers, during Chicago’s Black Renaissance from the 1930s to 1950s. http://www.chipublib.org/branch/details/library/hall/p/History/

Jeanette Morton

The library’s legacy came alive last Tuesday when about 20 community members gathered to read aloud their favorite Brooks poems and stories. Each voice was rich. Each poem carried personal meaning for the reader. Each reading sparked an impromptu discussion.

There was talk about how Brooks captured ordinary lives, discussion about how to bring more of her work to young people, and even singing.

James Rushing broke into Ol’ Man River during his reading of Paul Robeson, Brooks’ ode to the actor and cultural hero who made the Show Boat song an American classic. And Mildred King Jordan began her reading of The Preacher: Ruminates Behind the Sermon with the iconic American hymn Amazing Grace—and everyone in the room sang along.

It was a fun, lighthearted and inspirational evening.

As for the American Writers Museum, we are on a mission to raise awareness of the great writers who shaped America and explore the influence of writers past, present and future on American history, identity, culture and daily life. We will be the first national museum dedicated to American writers, and we have chosen Chicago as our home.

The Brooks reading is one of a series of programs affiliated with the American Writers Museum’s first pop-up exhibit From Our Neighborhoods: Four Chicago Writers Who Changed America.

The exhibit, which debuted at the Hall Branch and will tour around the city through September, showcases four great Chicago authors who wrote about their Chicago neighborhoods: poet Gwendolyn Brooks, playwright Lorraine Hansberry, radio broadcaster and oral historian Studs Terkel and novelist Richard Wright. http://americanwritersmuseum.org/from-our-neighborhoods/

“All these writers have inspired me, directly or indirectly, by the very fact that they were all so prolific and wrote stories people wanted to read,” said Sharon Warner, who read When you Have Forgotten Sunday: The Love Story, a poem about Brooks’ marriage to the poet Henry Blakely. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179294

From Our Neighborhoods moves to the Carter G. Woodson Regional Library from April 4 to 30 before heading to the South Shore Cultural Center in May, various downtown venues over the summer and ending its tour at the DuSable Museum of African American History in September.

The next Brooks Community Reading is scheduled on Saturday April 12 from 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Woodson Regional Library at 9525 South Halsted St. in Chicago.

The Chicago Literary Council, which is a group of Chicago scholars and literary professionals, curated From Our Neighborhoods with input from community members passionate about Chicago’s literary legacy and the city’s vibrant writing scene. The Chicago History Museum cosponsored the exhibit. Funding for the exhibit and programming was provided by The Chicago Community Trust and the S&C Electric Company.

Shanara "The MouthPeace" Sanders

 “It’s an honor that this museum will be here in our city,” said singer and Guild Literary Complex host Shanara “The MouthPeace” Sanders, host of the Brooks Community Readings, “so let’s put our foot down and claim it.”

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Sandra M. Jones is director of communications and digital strategy at the American Writers Museum.  She covered consumer culture and technology as a business journalist at the Chicago Tribune, Crain’s Chicago Business and Bloomberg News and served as the economic spokeswoman for Illinois Governor Pat Quinn. 

 www.americanwritersmusem.org

Nelson Algren Committee Hosts 25th Annual Birthday Party

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NELSON ALGREN!

Tonight, for the 25th straight year, the Nelson Algren Committee will celebrate the author’s birthday at 2418 W. Bloomingdale. It’s open to the public, with a suggested donation to the committee of ten bucks (five for students).

The party, which runs from 7 until around 10:30 p.m., will have a little of everything—music, literary readings, even a film preview (The End is Nothing, the Road is All). Donna Blue Lachman, Nate Herman, Mark Dvorak, Roberto Lopez, Mary Wisniewski, Tom Palazzolo, Christopher Corbett, Marc Blottner, Denis Mueller and Bob Swan are among the many featured guests. The evening is dedicated to folk legend Pete Seeger.

 A group of longtime Wicker Park/Bucktown residents formed the Nelson Algren Committee in late 1989 and the next year hosted the first birthday party. That one was at the Bop Shop, on Division and Wood, and remained there until the nightclub closed almost ten years later.

“They understood how [Algren] was part of the cultural and political history of the area, which was starting to gentrify and attract a new generation of artistic and political-minded residents,” says Nina Gaspich, a veteran committee member.

Over the years, the event has featured such illustrious guests as Studs Terkel, Art Shay, biographer Bettina Drew, Leon DesPres, Dennis Brutus, Leon Vandermark and Von Freeman. The party has maintained the same format for a quarter of a century, including the presentation of an annual award given to a person doing work the committee deems consistent with Algren’s “activist” roots.

For more information, go to www.nelsonalgren.org

Meeting Algren

Nelson Algren was born on this day in 1909. He would have been 105 years old today. Though it's been nearly 23 years since his death, the Nelson Algren Committee keeps alive his memory with an annual birthday party; this year's takes place tomorrow, March 29, at 2418 W. Bloomingdale, starting at 7 p.m. More information at: http://www.nelsonalgren.org.

The following blog, written by Richard Reeder, originally appeared in his book Chicago Sketches. 

After a filling meal of pierogis and sauerkraut at the Busy Bee restaurant in Wicker Park, I crossed Damen and hurried through the park, past the smackheads and other lost souls, arriving at the party at about nine. When I walked into the cramped apartment on Evergreen, I recognized him immediately from the photo on my copy of The Man with the Golden Arm.   Nelson Algren was sitting restlessly on a chair in the kitchen and talking to a tall blond named Dottie. He took long drags on his Marlboro and sipped from a glass half full of what looked like rye. The frames of his glasses were held together by Scotch Tape. He wore an unironed, plaid   shirt with mustard stains. Algren seemed like a caricature of one of his own characters.

A guy that I knew, an old beatnik named Bill Smith, who owned a hole-in-the-wall bookstore on North State Street, sat nearby and asked me if I would like to meet the writer he called “Lord Nelson.” Of course I jumped at the opportunity, and so Bill introduced me to him as a nice kid with literary pretensions.

Nelson Algren

Algren smiled at me knowingly and asked me if I wrote poetry or stories. I felt embarrassed because my entire literary output at that time was a few handwritten poems that I had never shared with anyone. I hardly considered myself a writer at all. I felt that Smith’s hyperbole had put me in an awkward situation with Algren. I reluctantly shared the subject matter of my poems with him, and he said to me to always remember the common man in my future writing.
       
I wanted to say something of more importance to Algren. Perhaps ask how he now felt about Simone de Beauvior, the French author with whom he had a bittersweet romance for many years.  Maybe I could express my empathy to him about how he got shorted by the Hollywood bigwigs on royalties for the film adaptations of the Man with the Golden Arm and Walk on the Wild Side. But after a half minute of painful silence, Algren turned his attention back to Dottie, while I walked away into the smoke-filled living room looking for a drink.  

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Richard Reeder is the author of Chicago Sketches. He teaches literature courses in the Oakton College Emeritus Program.  He created the Chicago Jewish Authors Literary Series. Richard is a reviewer for the Noir Journal blog. He has his own literary blog www.aliteraryreeder.wordpress.com, and serves on the board of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.

Featured Essay: Natalia Nebel on Writing in Chicago

The question of why I write can’t be separated from why I write in Chicago, because both writing and living in Chicago require a level of uncomfortableness not easy to justify. In fact, I think most writers, if asked, would tell you that they wish they’d been gifted with a different talent. Even in the best of times and the best of careers, writing is unstable and often, very often, does not provide financial stability, especially if you’re living in a city like New York, Los Angeles, or yes, for all its vaunted inexpensiveness, Chicago.

Orange County, CA

Living in New York or Los Angeles isn’t hard to justify, however. I’ve lived in New York, and I can say that while I was always anxious about money and potential financial catastrophe, the reasons for living in New York were obvious and the benefits were natural, almost ridiculously so, for a writer. They included easy contacts, intellectual stimulation, an almost over-availability of material. And while I haven’t lived in L.A., I imagine that the situation is similar there for anyone in the so-called creative industry. Not only is it the only place to make a certain kind of film, screenplay or TV show, but the weather is good, it’s almost always sunny, and the ocean is at your doorstep. None of these things can be said about Chicago. Terrible weather, a lake that freezes over in winter, and a creative world that’s marginal to the rest of the city are among the negative things about the writing life here.

It’s hard to build momentum in your career when writers are scattered, literally, all over Chicagoland, from lakefront to west and south sides, to the suburbs. In Brooklyn everyone is a writer, in Chicago you can go for days without talking to someone who has recently read a book. And this isn’t to say they haven’t done other things -- watched a movie or play or good television, tried a new martini, ice skated, sent out a well meaning petition to friends. They simply haven’t read a novel, or newspaper, or magazine. Some very smart people I know haven’t done this for a very, very long time. This lack of intellectual stimulation drains me at times, makes an impact that isn’t positive, since I’m not lucky enough to be part of the academic world. The sense I have that thinking about things thoroughly, criticizing things, isn’t done, can take away some of the writing impetus for me. Writers are difficult people in one respect -- they don’t take the status quo for granted, they don’t accept it outright. They can’t. It would be impossible to write if you simply gave the world back to the world without a filter, your filter, that isn’t cranky, really, but analytical. And this analytical side is not something that Chicago is known for.

En route to Staten Island

In New York City, analysis is a plus, you’re almost defenseless without it. In Chicago, analysis is considered a sort of contrarian, almost anti-social occupation. People don’t love spending hours arguing over politics and trashing our version of democracy here. They love being together in a more congenial, cooperative way. So. As a writer here and a naturally analytical person, I’ve always felt on the outskirts, uncomfortable with showing my whole self. In order to fit in outside of the writing community, I consciously tamp down a part of who I am. It isn’t always pleasant to do that, which again brings me to the question, why then do I live and write here?

Theoretically, I could live and write anywhere in the country.  And yet... I can’t come up with a good reason for not moving to New York, or Boston, or Portland or Seattle, except that, simply, Chicago is a good city to be in because it keeps you honest. You can’t develop an overly big ego here, one that would get in the way of your creative process. Chicago has given the world great writers and literature, which the Literary Hall of Fame does a beautiful job in highlighting. But for all that this city has given, it will always be known for its sports teams and Lake Michigan and its skyscrapers, its restaurants. The arts, including literature, come decidedly second. And yet. Perhaps it’s just this quality that makes writing in Chicago the worthwhile challenge that it is.

Not being understood, not being in any way lauded or even paid attention to, not being considered more interesting than anyone else simply because I’m a writer, keeps me  conscientious. The way that Chicago reins in the worst sort of ego driven work makes living here worth it to me, since it always drives me back to writing for the sake of writing.

I’m never around people who feel they’ve made it, despite the books they’ve published and awards they’ve won. And this is because writing in Chicago is a job like any other. The reasons I write, because I’m verbal, and love texts, and define myself through the books and essays I’ve read, means that I’ve accepted the precariousness of my finances compared to my friends who have quantitative skills. It also doesn’t change the fact that, deep down, I feel very lucky to be a writer. The unexamined life is not worth living, as the quote goes. Writing allows for constant examination, I feel blessed by that, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Lake Michigan

And as for Chicago, despite terrible winters and an under-layer of a kind of bottled up craziness those winters bring on, I’m proud of myself when I, when we, make it through another hard four months, and I like our particular, unpretentious craziness. Chicago, with its neighborhoods and assorted strivers and web of words from every corner of the world, creates a unique, at times harsh beauty, which I wouldn’t trade for another sort of beauty anywhere.

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Natalia Nebel is a co-director, along with Alexandra Sheckler and Christine Sneed, of the literary reading series Sunday Salon Chicago. In addition, she reads short story submissions for Drunken Boat, and serves on the ShawChicago Theater Company board of directors. An author and a translator of Italian language into English, her short stories, book reviews and translations have been published in a variety of journals, inclucing Triquarterly, Fifth Wednesday Journal,Chicago Quarterly Review and Free Verse. 

Chicago Classics

 Randy Albers stepped to the stage first. The founder of the Story Week festival called the Chicago Classics a “jam.” We were assembled Friday night at the Chicago Cultural Center’s Preston Bradley Hall, with that majestic lid over our collective heads. Randy would soon hand over the affair to Rick Kogan, but by way of introduction first read from Everybody Pays. The passage he excerpted about a real life Chicago mob hit from more than 40 years ago clicked with language and landscape, hummed with tension, and the reading reminded us of a great book, a classic book, and also transported us to a time and place that had at least something to do with our shared lives.

Randy Albers at Chicago Classics.

It was one of those buckle-up affairs—15 or so readers, two solid hours, no intermission. After Rick, there came Dick Babcock and Joe Shanahan and Susan Hahn. I forget the order now, but they kept coming. Randy’s characterization of it as a “jam” was a bit idealized, but not too far off. Though the performance quality spiked and plummeted (there were those with stage and pulpit experience, others of us who mostly read to our kids), the sincerity remained high wire-to-wire. These people were there to appreciate some of Chicago’s most memorable and touching literature —Roger Ebert reviews, Archibald MacLeish poems, a Mike Royko column, a Frank Norris novel excerpt, a Ring Lardner story slice and so forth. 

This was the second time I'd been asked to participate, and each time the room was filled with familiar faces, the vast majority solid, smart and passionate people. Each time, as I mulled over hundreds of worthy selections to call my own, I reminded myself it was not about me. But of course that's not entirely true. Part of the fun is discovering who's on the top of Donna Seaman's  nightstand (Ward Just), or what Susan Nussbaum knows that I don't (a politcal blogger named Mike Ervin), or what's on Catholic priest John Cusick's list after the Bible (Bob Greene's Hang Time). 

For the record, I chose Willard Motley's Knock on Any Door. It's a novel I consider in the same conversation with A Native Son or The Man With the Golden Arm, but which did not, as so often happens, survive its own era. In honor of spring, I read this part:

And then it was spring. Mud that had been packed  solid loosened up. Patches of old snow turned wet brown on vacant lots and revealed ovals of last year's grass underneath. The gutters on Halsted Street gurgled. The alley smells came alive again. There were more children on the street now, more and more each day.

And to showcase the novel's most famous line, I read:

When the beer came Nick lifted and tilted the brown liquid in past the yellow foam. 'Live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse!' he said with a toss of his head. That was something he had picked up somewhere and he'd say it all the time now. Always with a a cocky toss of his head.

I chose those passages because I like hearing them out loud--it's not just that I marvel at the writing, but they give me joy, make me think, inspire me to do better as a writer. It's one of those books that, when I'm reading it, urges me to assault whoever's around and say, "Listen to this!"

That's what I like best about the whole Chicago Classics concept--writers coming together to just enjoy terrific writing that doesn't really have much to do with their own egos. Randy and Rick and the rest of the producers of this show chose a really nice array of participants, ensuring that it all added up to an enlightening evening. I discovered some new writers, like Matthew Goulish, who was featured by John Rich. I gained insight into other writers, like Paul Carroll, of whom John Schultz shared his personal recollections. And I heard from and about writers I'd dismissed, like Bob Greene, making me at least consider going back to see if I missed something. 

I talked to Randy after the event, and we agreed to get together later so that I could document the history of Chicago Classics on the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame website. He said at the start that around 200 people had read at the event over the years. That number includes some of our best contemporary authors, like Christine Sneed and Achy Obejas who, in addition to names I've already mentioned, were there Friday night. That number also includes representatives of some of our finest literary organizations, i.e. Carolyn Saper from the American Writers Museum and John Rich from the Guild Complex were readers. I think it will be a nice source of information and intrigue to compile the list of all the readers for our CLHOF followers to access. 

That's how the evening ended, a bunch of people catching up, making plans, doing post mortem on all that had just transpired. That's another reason I like Chicago Classics--it's a good excuse to get out among friends like Sheryl Johnson and Michael Burke, make plans with acquaintances like Ellen Gradman and meet people whose work you admire like Dick Babcock. There should have been an open bar, but you take what you can get.

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Donald G. Evans is the founder and executive director of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. He is the author of the novel Good Money After Bad and short story collectionAn Off-White Christmas, as well as the editor of the anthology Cubbie Blues: 100 Years of Waiting Till Next Year. He is the Chicago editor of the Great Lakes Cultural Review. He serves on the American Writers Museum's Chicago Literary Council and the committee that selects the Harold Washington Literary Award.

donaldgevans@hotmail.com

Welcome

Welcome to the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame’s new blog.

Think of this as a party, the kind of literary party nobody in this town hardly ever throws, a party with no partially tax exempt cover charge, a party with nobody reading from their book, a party with opinions that would not be said out loud if we weren’t all a little drunk.

The purpose of the blog is of course to create awareness for the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame and all that we’re doing. But more so, it’s another way to fulfill our mission of keeping conversation alive about our great literary heritage--past, present and future.

I will write many of the blog entries, and in so doing try in earnest to perpetuate conversation about Chicago as a proud literary city and the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame as a proud organization promoting our proud literary city.

CLHOF induction statues.

I will also invite others to contribute, from across the Chicago literary spectrum.

Like any party, we’ll have our share of carnival barkers—I’ll wear that hat from time to time myself. But mostly we’ll encourage thoughtful artists to provoke, inform and celebrate various aspects of Chicago’s writing life and history.

I've been discussing the blog launch with Natalia Nebel, local author, editor and translator who also co-directs Sunday Salon Chicago. She will be part of a stable of authors contributing to the blog. In our discussions, we've imagined a variety of voices tackling issues relevant to Chicago's readers and writers, everything from the reality of the publishing landscape to the true wages of adjunct teachers to lesser known writers doing substantial work. We've envisioned a forum in which we explore Chicago's impact on our literary lives. We've proposed informing our community about notable events involving our great authors, especially CLHOF inductees.  And we've hoped to enlist our dedicated readers as occasional contributors.

So that's what this is, though I'm guessing the blog's shape will develop somewhat more organically over time.

Want to join the party? Send me an email (donaldgevans@hotmail.com) pitching your proposed contribution. I want commentary about Chicago’s literary life. I want reporting about our literary events. I want reflections about our great writers. I want reviews (or maybe just thoughts) about books we should definitely read or read again.

It's not exactly a more-the-merrier situation, but we will post reasonable bouncers at the door.

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Donald G. Evans is the founder and executive director of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. He is the author of the novel Good Money After Bad and short story collection An Off-White Christmas, as well as the editor of the anthology Cubbie Blues: 100 Years of Waiting Till Next Year. He is the Chicago editor of the Great Lakes Cultural Review. He serves on the American Writers Museum's Chicago Literary Council and the committee that selects the Harold Washington Literary Award.

donaldgevans@hotmail.com