Sandburg Days: Festival for the Mind 2014

Galesburg, Illinois is a quiet little town, the kind of town that closes down early, or at least sees no good reason to stay open late. On a Thursday night nearing ten o’clock, the occasional car sputters down Main Street—speed limit 35, though it is the major thoroughfare and connects to I-74. Probably those passengers are going to a bar or restaurant that caters to a later crowd or one of the chain fast-food or pharmacy places right there on Main Street, surely not to Stone Alley Books or The Rust Bucket or The Frameworks or One Stop Smokers Shop or Collectors Firearms or any of the places along Cherry or Seminary—those are all LONG CLOSED. 

Many years ago, I attended a Knox College football game. We sat, lay and stood on muddy slopes in a stadium called The Bowl, hollering and hooting and laughing and jeering. But there were maybe only 40 or 50 of us, not enough to disturb even the closest residents.

Yes, Galesburg is a quiet town.

Unless you count the trains.

Cherry St. Bingo Hall
(Photo by Don Evans)

Big booming bass horns blast through the silence at all times of the day and night—Santa Fe and Burlington Northern and AmTrak all moving their loads back and forth through town, never pausing their pace but merely tooting out a courtesy warning, “Here we come again!” It’s not just the horns, either. It’s the wailing engines and the clacking wheels and the dinging gates—steel on steel rising up from the soles of your shoes. Cell phone conversations are halted with the shout, “One sec: TRAIN,” and earplugs are handed out at local hotels. The horns startle at first—it feels like you’re about to get flattened. After a while, it feels more like you’re immune to the diesly bustle, that the trains will ALWAYS miss.

Galesburg is quaint enough, but not that unique. You drive around the Midwest enough, you find smaller towns like this—in Lanesboro, Minnesota; South Amana, Iowa; Cadillac, Michigan; Cedarburg, Wisconsin; French Lick, Indiana. The town centers highlight all the golly gee-ness (chocolate shops, antique and used bookstores, local theatres, wrought-iron signage in cursive) and history (the town square, the courthouse, markers detailing important people and events, little museums). The Rite Aids and Subways and Kentucky Fried Chickens manage to wedge their ways in between ye old pub and the artsy café, though for the most part they are relegated to a commercial strip, along with the hotels, gas stations, pawn shops, electronics stores and so forth. Whatever used to be the main industry has likely gone belly up, the remnants of these heroic, patriarchal businesses found in businesses more modern and more efficient.

But none of those other towns have Carl Sandburg.   

When Grace Paley visited Galesburg, she, like so many other authors on a similar trip, insisted Knox College Director of Creative Writing Robin Metz take her to Sandburg’s birthplace. She twirled the house and museum. Inhaled the air. Walked the streets. She said, “You can feel him here still.”

When you get off the main drag and roam the residential neighborhoods, Galesburg’s character is more

Pat's Barber Shop (Photo by Don Evans)

striking. Pat’s Barber Shop and Tom’s Gun Shop and Danielle’s Sewing and Alterations and Custer’s Auto Repair look just like their neighbor’s homes, only with signs. Some of these small businesses, like some of the homes on the same blocks, look as though they haven’t been relevant in a very long time. An elegant, century-old wrought iron fire escape winds its way around a gigantic milk crate of a back porch.  Mounds of dirt and gravel salute white picket fences. Stray mutts sniff collared and manicured poodles.

You bob and weave between disheveled and lovely in Galesburg, and no matter where you go there seem to be those trains.

Sandburg’s birthplace practically bumps up against a train yard, as it did when his old man, August,

Sandburg Birthplace
(Photo by Don Evans)

worked at the Burlington & Quincy Railroad—ten hours a day, six days a week, with no pay raise in his decades-long career.

Those trains are in Sandburg’s poems, poems like 35 Limited, which reads,

I AM riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains of the nation.

Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air go fifteen all-steel coaches holding a thousand people.

(All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men and women laughing in the diners and sleepers shall pass to ashes.)

I ask a man in the smoker where he is going and he answers: “Omaha.”

The tiny birthplace gives a very precise sense of what life was like for Charlie, the boy who would

Charlie and Mary's Bedroom (Don Evans)

become the internationally celebrated poet. The little corner that served as Charlie and his sister Mary's sleeping quarters provides more room for the imagination than anything else. The outhouse is still in back, as is Remembrance Rock. The stone path back there is littered with precious Sandburg quotes—walk a minute and you collect more wisdom than in an ordinary year’s stroll.  The museum, next door, efficiently tells Sandburg’s complete story, using artifacts like his old typewriter, handwritten notes, first edition books, school photos, and so many more original items from his time in Galesburg.

The Stone Path (Don Evans)

Galesburg is rightfully proud and protective of Sandburg’s legacy. Every year for the past 19 years, the Sandburg Historic Site Association, along with Knox College and  Carl Sandburg College, has put on a festival. They call it Sandburg Days: Festival for the Mind, and it’s a tribute to this community that they pull together to make this happen, though like so many other tiny arts organizations there are constant troubles with money and participation.

There is barely a corkboard in town that doesn’t feature a poster for the festival, and you find that locals will freely share unsolicited gossip. A waitress at the Best Western off the highway says that grade school and high school here meant digesting a lot of Sandburg, and that many of the kids were thrilled with the fact. A patron at the Beanhive on Simmons Street offers that she met Sandburg biographer Penelope Niven, a regular at the festival, and “she couldn’t be lovelier.” In a 15-store antique mall on Main Street that will shortly be razed in the name of progress, the old guy behind the counter offers that Lonnie Stewart worked here as a hairdresser before going "wherever it is he went," which turned out to be "all over" in pursuit of further training and opportunities en route to a prominent artistic career.  

Lonnie’s Sandburg sculpture rode into town on a flatbed truck as part of a parade to kick off the festival Wednesday. The 9-foot bronze Sandburg, guitar strapped across his back, books under his arm, peered at those along the route. The wizened, energetic Galesburg son almost but not quite offered up a wave, and as he and the rest of the parade vibrated down Main Street anybody around here who hadn’t read or digested the posters now knew what was what.

That was just the beginning. Over the course of four days, there were theater presentations, poetry readings, concerts, lectures and discussions. Penny gave a talk on Sandburg and Lincoln, specifically about how Galesburg influenced Sandburg’s attitude toward Lincoln in those years before he set out to write what turned into a six-volume biography of the president’s life. Penny, more than any other person, got to know Sandburg, spending years digging and sorting and hunting through old letters and manuscripts, talking to every Sandburg connection still inhaling our air, zigging and zagging from Connemara to Galesburg to Chicago. In the course of the four-day festival, she did book signings, lectures to high school kids, workshops for young writers, and everything else short of sweeping the streets.

Penny’s roll-up-her-sleeves attitude is typical of the festival’s spirit. She cares deeply about Sandburg and supports the town’s efforts naturally and honestly. Marc Smith, the legendary creator of the international Poetry Slam movement, is another expert, and he comes annually to put on the Rootabaga Poetry Slam, which he did for the seventh straight year this past weekend. Marc is a veritable jukebox of Sandburg poems and to see and hear him perform is to watch those lyrical lines comes alive. A lot of the Galesburg people like Robin Demott, Chuck Bednar and Tom Foley—a whole collection of erudite and interesting scholars and artists--make it their business to orchestrate, promote and attend all of the activities, as they have for years.

Lonnie spoke at the public presentation of the statue Friday night at what used to a car dealership on Broad Street. He told the story of wrecking his shoulder in a fall at a brickyard, halting progress of his creation and putting all deadlines in peril. After an operation, weeks and weeks of grueling rehab, and a little healing time, Lonnie decided to give it a go. He climbed high, his bad arm propped up and his left hand learning the molding and shaping work formerly the domain of his right. He finished that sculpture with his off hand.

Lonnie’s story reminded me of Sandburg’s Work Gangs, which includes the lines,

Then the hammer heads talk to the handles,

then the scoops of the shovels talk,

how the day’s work nicked and trimmed them,

how they swung and lifted all day,

how the hands of the work gangs smelled of hope.

 And it also reminded me of my friend Jaymes, whom I’ve known eight or nine years through our mutual cigar addiction. I mentioned my Galesburg trip to Jaymes, thinking I would need to pinpoint the town for him. But he surprised me and said, “Yeah, I spent some time there. A pretty long time. Five years.”  When Jaymes was a gangbanging, drug using teenager, he killed a man in a fight and spent nearly the next twenty years in Illinois prisons. Galesburg was one of them. Jaymes is now a hard working, decent person, decades clean and as law abiding as your average citizen. But when he was locked up in Hill Correctional Center, he became part of a public works crew that went out into Galesburg in their red-striped blue pants to paint churches, clean streets, and, once, to pretty up an old CB&Q locomotive that would serve as the centerpiece of the railroad museum. “Yeah, they put my name on a sign—all our names,” Jaymes told me. “Go there and look: it’s there.”

This sense of community, this sense of working hard and working together, this sense of the small and large contributors all playing vital roles in whatever success can be claimed—it comes together during Sandburg Days.

 Over dinner, Robin Metz confided the precarious status of the festival and, indeed, the perpetuation of the Sandburg historic sites. Public money is tight. Institutions are cautious. Enthusiasm shifts to the new rather than historic.

The birthplace was almost closed recently, and exists now on reduced hours. The people working to preserve Sandburg’s legacy are fighting against apathy. The Sandburg birthplace is one of those pilgrimages that too often get relegated to someday status, but for those taking all this for granted….there is no guarantee for tomorrow. People need to come, spend a little money, inject some life into the programming. When the hard decisions come down, those vested with veto power need to remember why they think this is important and have evidence that others share their sentiments.

Chicago Years (Don Evans)

It’s too late this year to do more than recap the latest installment of the festival. But next year…Chicago

needs to put this on its calendar. Sandburg meant as much to Chicago, and Chicago to him, as any other place, and for all of us who cherish his life’s work there is much to learn and savor in Galesburg. It’s an easy three and a half hour trip—once you get clear of Aurora, it’s just you and a smattering of trucks…until you drive into those trains.

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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

Cliff Dwellers Book Club: Christine Sneed on April 26

There were just three of us: me, Christine Sneed and Melissa Fraterrigo. We’d meet up at a coffee or sandwich shop, usually on State Street off the Congress. We’d share our stories or hunks of novels. We’d offer advice. I don’t think any of us much cared for the idea of a critique group—we’d all been through that, in fact were teaching it to others. But we liked and trusted each other and felt, I think, we could benefit from advice and structure, and so we went on like this for a while.

Christine showed us these wonderfully smart and riveting stories, many of which she’d submitted, without success, to literary journals far and wide. She was still making them better, though largely they were already polished. There was no doubt in my mind, or Melissa’s, that these were top-notch stories, certainly worthy of publication. I felt that the best of the stories compared favorably with the best contemporary stories, period.

Christine did manage to place many of her stories, though typically she collected dozens of rejection slips prior to hearing good news.

A few years later, Christine won a prize. Her first book, Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry, won AWP's Grace Paley Prize for short fiction. She hired Sheryl Johnston—one of the best, hardest working publicists in Chicago—to give her collection a push.  She received really positive reviews. Started getting asked to appear at the most prestigious literary events and reading venues. More acclaim came tumbling her way: Ploughshares' first book award, the Zacharis Prize. Christine landed a top-flight agent, who in turn secured her a Bloomsbury publishing contract. She was awarded the Chicago Tribune’s 21^st Century Award at last fall’s Sandburg Literary Awards dinner.

Nothing changed about Christine or her work. She’d always been a hard worker, a grinder, a humble yet confident artist consistently producing distinguished literature. But the luster in those manuscripts piling up in her desk drawer suddenly became apparent to more and more people.

Christine followed up her story collection with a novel, Little Known Facts.

We’ll discuss that book at the Cliff Dwellers Book Club (200 S. Michigan Ave., 22^nd floor) this Saturday morning, April 26, starting at 11 a.m. I’ll be on hand to ask Christine a few questions and generally lead a discussion of this wonderful novel.

Little Known Facts is the story of celebrity and the opposite. It is the story of all the orbits surrounding fame, the American (or perhaps world-wide) penchant for idolization, and the reality, for the rest of us, that we are not them.

Renn Ivins is a mega-Hollywood celebrity—rich, talented and handsome beyond the reach of nearly all mortals. He is the planet around which everybody else evolves, including his adult son and daughter, his ex-wives, his girlfriends, and basically anybody who has even a minor association with anybody in his life.   

Christine has family members and friends who live in Los Angeles and work in the film industry. She has visited L.A. many times, been a lifelong film lover, and done some work as a movie reviewer. She no doubt drew upon all this in creating the fictional world of Little Known Facts.

But her experience as an author must also have given her insight into this dichotomy between the famous and the rest. Sometimes during those State Street workshop sessions, we’d gossip about the insanity of an undeserving writer’s success or the stupidity of a deserving writer’s failure. None of us are petty people—Christine and Melissa are just the opposite—but it’s just natural to look at your own life through the prism of other lives. What do they have that we don’t? Why?

Though the fame of a writer pales in comparison to the fame of an actor, there is some of that in the literary world.  All worlds, I suppose. Christine, to some extent, has lived through obscurity and fame, or at least a semblance of it.

I’m interested to hear Christine’s thoughts on her own literary career, as well as her inspiration for telling this story. I’ll get her to talk about what it means that Renn is not satisfied—despite all he has, he still wants his son’s girlfriend, for example. I’ll ask her whether Danielle’s secret preference for Renn over Will is  commentary on settling. I’ll see what the whole group has to say about idea of fame.

This is a really fun book for discussion. We live in a society that delivers constant updates on celebrity minutia, to the point that without trying we can recite a fair biography of, oh, Oprah or George Clooney or Lady Gaga. So this novel, with its multiple points of view, is an exploration of something fundamental to our lives. Even—especially--if we don’t want it to be.

Little Known Facts won the Society of Midland Authors 2013 prize for adult fiction.  Chicago Magazine also named it in 2013 the Best New Book by a Local Author.  

The CD Book Club is open to the public.

If you plan on staying for lunch afterward, please call 312.922.8080 to make a reservation.

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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

Community of Artists at Recent Book Fair

As part of the programming for the Pop-Up Book Fair at the Ernest Hemingway Museum in Oak Park last Saturday, comic book artist Chris Ware and author Hilary Chute discussed the art of comics and the valuable role of Chicago to his works

Chris Ware and Hillary Chute at the Hemingway Museum on April 12.

When I asked Ware, most recently the author of Building Stories, about what inspired him most about the city, he answered, “humility.” He talked about the amount of writers and artists in Chicago, and how they express themselves through their art works.  “There is a certain honesty in Chicago,” he said.  He and a lot of artists can feel comfortable with sharing their works in the community.  They connect with one another on their passion for the arts.

I was able to see this community because I came to the fair with the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.

As part of my internship, I assisted CLHOF founder Don Evans at its information table, answering questions and offering insight into the organization to people browsing through our literature. The fair introduced me to this community of writers, readers, artists, publishers, editors, and others with an interest in the arts.

Here were people taking the time and effort to reconnect with those who share their passion for literature and art.  There were well-established magazines like the Chicago Quarterly Review and Another Chicago Magazine; publishers like Half Letter Press, Fifth Star, Dream of Things, Allium Press and Curbside Splendor (one of the event’s primary sponsors); authors like Scott Jacobs, William Hazlegrove, Frances McNamara and Delphine Pontvieux; booksellers like Magic Tree Bookstore and 57th Street Books; and an assortment of others spanning the literary community’s spectrum.

The information tables, like ours, were set up in the lobby of the building on Oak Park Ave.; programs were conducted at regular intervals throughout the day in the museum space behind the lobby.

Conni Irwin, the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park’s Volunteer Coordinator, was impressed by the turnout at the museum and said, “This is the first time we are doing [the fair] here…and three-hundred people signed up.”

Ware and Chute also talked about the future of comics in the digital age.

Based on his own experience, Ware values print for its ability to make contact with people.  Ware said that when writers and artists combine with digital print, they “cancel each other out.” Chute talked about Ware’s idea of a “print culture manifesto,” or the creation of “something people can hold onto.” Ware agreed about the importance of having the story on something physical to make a connection.  He commented on his own printed book that “it is a book where you can enter at anytime and still get the story.”  Ware and Chute advocate print because it leads to more interaction.

As a writer myself, I hope to reach people by putting my works into print as well.  Whenever I read a story, I like to have something physical to solidify this relationship between the text and the reader.  I feel more engaged when I’m turning the pages—absorbing the words, the crinkle of paper, and even the smell of the ink on the page.  I would like to give my readers the same experience.  

Ware also discussed how Chicago is a good place for many writers and comic artists.  He named Chicago as one of those rare places that can fulfill his love of architecture for his comics.  He discussed how the Chicago landscape greatly changed after the Chicago Fire.  The city rose and with the help of architects like Daniel Burnham, “grew” into a center of rich architecture, he said.  He includes Chicago’s setting, particularly Oak Park, in his works.  For one section of his book, he spent all day on a street in Oak Park, “making sure to capture all the details” in his art, he said.  By coming out to Oak Park, I was able to see this art, in the residences and public buildings I drove past.  He said that Oak Park “should not only be known for Hemingway” but also for its art and architecture.

As I saw the smiles of people at the fair, we acknowledged one another as fellow artists and literature enthusiasts in the city.  Chicago can be the place where artists support each other and people celebrate literature. As Ware said, “New York is the brain [of the U.S.]…Chicago is the heart.”

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Julia Jakubow is a senior at DePaul University, majoring in English/Creative Writing and minoring in Screenwriting and Digital Cinema.  She has interests in fiction writing, editing, and journalism.  She writes short stories in the fiction and science fiction genres.  She is also working on her own novel.  She is an intern at the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, working on the Fuller Award Project and taking photos of CLHOF events.  She hopes to write and edit for magazines.

Pop-Up Book Fair at Hemingway Museum

The Pop-Up Book Fair at the Hemingway Museum in Oak Park on Saturday, April 12 was a huge success. I arrived there in the morning to help setup a table for the literary journal Chicago Quarterly Review. In addition to helping out CQR, whose editorial mission has been beautifully described in this blog, I was eager to take a look at other magazines, small presses, and bookstores that had set up booths; I was also excited for the opportunity to talk with Don Evans, founder and executive director of my favorite Chicago literary organization, the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. Three Hall of Fame interns (Julia Jakubow, Benjamin Willians and Kelly Conger) were also working that morning and into the afternoon.

Ernest Hemingway Museum (Photo by Julia Jakubow)

The energy at the Book Fair was vibrant and open. People were friendly! This made it easy to talk. Don and I discussed everything from the importance of doughnut holes at conferences – very important, yes – to the challenges of blog writing – many challenges for newcomers like me, yes – to the brilliance of Hemingway’s writing and his genius for self-determination. Hemingway’s powerful, minimalist style required a degree of dedication and stamina that I had read about but not quite understood until after talking to Don, looking at excerpts of Hemingway manuscripts on display, and listening to the various panels.

The panels began with a conversation on "all things comics" between Chris Ware and Hilary Chute, flowed into a reading by William Hazelgrove from his most recent novel, The Pitcher, and then another panel about fiction based on Hemingway’s life led by Don Evans, who asked questions of Dr. Nancy Sindelar and Dr. Michelle Moore. Later in the afternoon, author of Influencing Hemingway Nancy Sindelar continued with a discussion of her Hemingway work, followed by award winning writer Rey Andújar who read from his novel, Saturnalia.

CLHOF founder Don Evans and EHFOP
board member Nancy Sindelar.
(Photo by Julia Jakubow). 

For anyone involved in the literary scene as a writer, editor or passionate reader, going to this Book Fair is like stumbling and then falling into a gold mine. More than 40 independent Chicago publishers were represented, and it was impossible not to make happy discoveries and network in the best sense of that word.

As for the museum, it is housed in a beautiful building that makes organizing a vast amount of Hemingway information look easy. The staff is helpful, and answers questions about one of our country’s most important, profoundly influential writers quite effortlessly. Hemingway lovers, and even Hemingway haters, do make the pilgrimage!

This Pop-Up Book Fair was sponsored by The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park, the Oak Park Public Library, Curbside Splendor and 826CHI. Heartfelt thanks for their help in pulling together Chicago’s literary community.

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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, including TriQuarterly, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Chicago Quarterly Review and Free Verse. 

Chicago Quarterly Review at Hemingway Museum Tomorrow

An array of worthwhile literary organizations will participate in tomorrow's Pop-Up Book Fair at the Hemingway Museum, but I want to draw special attention to the Chicago Quarterly Review.

  

For 20 years, the Chicago Quarterly Review has been discovering really good literature, and its recent publication of an all-Chicago issue is perhaps its finest accomplishment yet. The issue features the work of  54 Chicago artists, poets and writers, a potent mixture of new and familiar authors. From cover to cover, the work in this issue is superb.  Each of the contributors lives in Chicago, works in Chicago, or reflects Chicago in their work; for some, it is all of the above. Included in the issue are the three winning entries from the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame's Budding Literary Masters competition, representing a cross-section of our city's best young talent.  

It was through the Budding Literary Masters competition that I became intimately familiar with the journal. I'd bumped into  Lisa MacKenzie at the Hyatt on the first morning of the AWP's annual conference. We knew each other through a mutual friend in Santa Cruz, though not very well, and I had no idea she was involved in a Chicago project. Lisa is a world-class writer: her fiction is powerful and moving and funny. And she's an enormously charming, generous and smart woman. 

She introduced me to Syed Afzal Haider, and I liked him and his fiction immediately. He's the kind of guy who seems pestered, almost despondent, about the human condition and intent on making things better just a small bit at a time.  

Kind people and great writers do not necessarily make the best editors and publishers. But in this case, happily, they do. Syed and Lisa and all the others at CQR judge submissions with tough, critical, effective standards, and then create a book worthy of the top-notch work.  

Rick Kogan wrote of the Chicago Issue in the Chicago Tribune, "The work of some of the city's brightest young talents--Don De Grazia, Gina Frangello, Joe Meno and Christine Sneed among them--is here, full of energy and coltish inventiveness."

CQR would obviously like for all of you writers and readers to become acquainted with the journal, but particularly the Chicago Issue. Stop by and visit the editors tomorrow, and while you're at it buy a copy. The book fair goes from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m. at the Hemingway Museum (200 N. Oak Park Ave. in Oak Park). Curbside Splendor, the fair's main sponsor, will then host a reading/after party at the main library (just down the street at Lake Street); it will run from 6 until 9 p.m. 

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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

Rutledge Writing Awards

In the course of the last 15 years, I’ve taught an array of creative writing students. I’ve encountered a South Side woman aspiring to be a playwright…who had never heard of Lorraine Hansberry. A working class Polish kid dabbling with an oral history project…who’d never heard of Studs Terkel. A young man trying his hand at a memoir…who had never heard of Richard Wright. An entire class of kids who’d never heard Gwendolyn Brooks, unless you count “maybe,” “I think so,” or “isn’t she the one with the school?” as yeses.

The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame’s core mission is to celebrate, honor and support our city's impressive writing heritage, and today’s youth are a link in that great chain. Young writers need encouragement to write and read. If you believe, as I do, that a sophisticated understanding of history can positively impact American culture, then you must, as I do, fret about younger generations' haphazard access to it.

For that reason, I was excited and enthusiastic when the American Writers Museum asked the CLHOF to cosponsor its Rutledge Writing Awards competition. AWM planning team member Jim Rutledge established the award with a gift of $2,500, which enables us to award ten cash prizes to Chicago High School students. This is roughly the same amount of money CLHOF gave away last year in a similar venture, Budding Literary Masters.

But this one will be even stronger, for a few reasons.

 Bayo Ojikutu, one of the judges of  the Budding Literary Masters
 competition, is shown here with prize winner Muna Abdullahi at
 Hemingway's birth home, where the 2012 recognition ceremony
 took place. Bayo will judge this year's Rutledge Writing Awards,

 along with Alice Letvin.

First, the competition is tied to the From Our Neighborhood: Four Chicago Writers Who Changed America, a "pop-up" exhibit highlighting the lives and careers of Hansberry, Terkel, Wright and Brooks, that is now touring a number of Chicago communities. Young writers entering the Rutledge competition must first experience the exhibit (in person or online). In so doing, they can establish that connection between the past and the future that I think is so important.

Second, the reach of the Rutledge Awards will be much greater—combining the efforts of AWM and CLHOF will allow us to find more teachers and administrators interested in working with students to develop solid submissions. Ultimately, the success of this competition relies on widespread participation.

This process is potentially powerful.

Every young writer has plenty of material—that is never truly the challenge. Their challenge is to transform thoughts and experiences into literature that has greater clarity than the hodgepodge our lives serve up organically. Adolescents confront a dizzying array of emotions, problems and decisions as they take tentative steps toward independence. Reading, of course, can provide access to solutions, paths, action.

So can writing.

The Rutledge Writing Awards serve up a challenge that requires young people to explore a particular aspect of their lives—their neighborhood. The four authors featured in the FON exhibit all had strong ties to their communities—many of which continue, in some shape or another, to thrive beyond the confines of the host venues. Young writers should easily identify with the theme of neighborhood—they’re at an age when they can see that their actions impact those around them and vice versa. Their quality of life depends on the delicate balance between family, neighbors, politicians, civil servants, even criminals, and to articulate that delicate balance through their own literature necessarily requires reflection. And work. It's also true that their landscape is a part of who they are, and how they see and navigate the landscape of their youth will remain a part of them forever. Writing about that landscape will force them to tilt their heads for sight lines always there but seldom processed. 

Not nearly all of the entrants will be lifelong creative writers, but they will all be lifelong citizens. Learning about these Chicago writers and submitting an essay, poem or story for review and critique is a worthy pursuit because the effort itself ensures that students will gain something valuable.

Teachers, administrators, parents: go to the American Writers Museum website for full details about the Rutledge writing competition. Chicago public and parochial high school students, as well as rising freshmen (eight graders), are eligible. Give your student or students the parameters of the contest, and then arrange for them to view the exhibit. We’re already accepting submissions.

We want to make sure students are motivated, supported and appreciated.

While motivation starts with the prize money and publication potential, success really depends on enthusiastic adults and supporting organizations. Pitch the competition as a pursuit that will amuse, enlighten and enrich. Let them know that the process of completing this assignment has rewards beyond the cash prizes.

For support, we provide writing tips that will assist students--and the teachers that guide them--in the process of developing ideas, steadily improving upon initial efforts, and ultimately transforming them into literature. We’ve also developed a Pinterest page featuring a collection of astute observations about the writing process from notable authors. 

Alice Letvin, distinguished judge

Appreciation will come in the form of personalized critiques, as well as certificates, to all entrants. In addition, we will host a ceremony in the fall to celebrate the winners in both poetry and prose. The participants in last year’s Budding Literary Masters contest found particular satisfaction in reading thoughtful commentary about their own work and presenting their stories publicly for the first time.

Young writers (even us old ones) need motivation, support and appreciation in order to create something whole and possibly substantial.  Jim Rutledge, along with the American Writers Museum, have put together such an occasion, and the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame is helping a new generation maximize this opportunity.

Interested partner organizations can email me or the AWM’s Carolyn Saper for further assistance. 

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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