CQR Celebrates Chicago Issue

The temperature dropped suddenly, the wind kicked up, and menacing clouds spit rain on my used-to-be favorite summer straw hat. An impatient BMW nearly took me out at a pedestrian crosswalk. But once the elevator delivered me to the 22nd floor at Adams and Michigan, the demise of our first truly springlike day seemed trivial. There was food, red wine for a price, and a view that included a serene sailboat set against the dropping sun. And writers. Writers almost exclusively. Even the fine artists and graphic designers and lawyers and IT wizards at least dabbled in prose or poetry, maybe were working on a play. Everybody was there to celebrate and support the Chicago Quarterly Review, which late last year, its 20th, put out an all-Chicago issue.

The majority of us there, myself included, had a hand in the making of the journal. I contributed a short

Pulitzer Prize winner Jack Fuller reads to a full house. 

short story, recruited a few very good Chicago writer friends (Don DeGrazia, Christine Sneed, Joe Meno) to contribute, and orchestrated a youth writing contest that resulted in the publication of three pieces. The work I did was not insignificant, unless you compared my effort to others in attendance. Like Syed Afzal Haider, who founded the journal and has dedicated vast amounts of time to it, the slush piling up at a faster rate every year. Or Lisa Mackenzie, Syed's talented sidekick, who helped organize the event remotely and then flew in to serve as master of ceremonies. Or John Blades, the fiction editor. Art Fox, a contributing editor. I don't know all the particulars about whose been doing what for how long, except to say that a lot of them were at the Cliff Dwellers last night.

About 15 people read, all relatively short bits. Sometimes these readings can be deadly: a long cast of authors wrestling for control of the spotlight, the most resilient refusing to succumb despite mounting opposition in the form of sighs, yawns and stampedes to the bathroom. But this wasn't like that. Individually, the work was good, sometimes very good, and collectively the samples represented the essence of the journal. There was fiction and non-fiction, poetry and longer prose, humor and dead serious. It didn't seem too long at all.

But what I liked best was there was enough time set aside for a party, or at least a party of sorts. Time to meet the other writers, catch up with friends, investigate ways to mutually assist one another with this or that. Time to drink one or two or three glasses of wine.

Time to enjoy the view, which seemed immune to whatever storm was brewing below.

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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