Date: Thurs, May 10 - Sun May 13, 2007
Time: Varies
Location: Webster Wine Bar
Participants: Ric Walker, Alison Aske, Molly Each, Mike Zapata, Billy Lombardo, Brian Costello, Heather Loebner, Chloe Johnston, Megan Stielstra, Amanda Delheimer, Adam Belcuore, Mike Tutaj, Mandy Snyder, Kim Morris, Sam Weller, Stephanie Shaw, Matt Miller, Bobby Biedrzycki, and Aimee Perkins.

The 2nd Story is both a reading series and annual festival that combines storytelling, wine, and music (produced by the Serendipity Theater).

This, the final week of the 2007 2nd Story Festival, features stories by Ric Walker, Alison Aske, Molly Each, and Mike Zapata, who writes rich prose and runs Make Magazine. They’ve recently been covered by Time Out Chicago and Eight Forty-Eight, so events are selling out and it’s a good idea to get tickets beforehand at Ticket Web.

From their site: “A typical 2nd Story evening goes something like this: you hang out with your friends at Webster’s Wine Bar and eat and drink and make merry, and four or five times during the night, the lights go down, a spot comes up on somebody—maybe the person sitting next to you!—and they tell you a story.”

Lucille Clifton is the winner of the 2006 Lilly Poetry Prize and $100,000 stipend. Known for her multi-layered poetry that is both complicated and straightforward, musical and staccato, Clifton is the first African-American woman to win the prize, which will be presented at a ceremony in Chicago on May 23.

“Homage to My Hips” is among her most famous poems.

But my favorite is the political and musical “Mulberry Fields.”

Click here for a list of previous Lilly Award winners.

About the Prize: Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize
Awarded annually, the $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize honors a living U.S. poet whose lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition. Established in 1986 by Ruth Lilly, the Prize is one of the most prestigious awards given to American poets and is one of the largest literary honors for work in the English language.

Date: Wednesday, May 9
Time: 7:30pm
Location: Quimby’s

Tao Lin is my MySpace friend because, unique among self-promoting writers, he has a blog called “Reader of Depressing Books” that, aside from having the most clever name of any website, is fairly entertaining. Plus, Tao Lin posts MySpace bulletins as Richard Yates, which you have to admit is ambitious. Equally ambitious is the simultaneous release of Lin’s first novel, Eeee Eeee Eeee, with his first collection of short stories, Bed, both on the superfantastic Melville House Press. Lin will also read for Bookslut at the Hopleaf on Thursday, but probably won’t dress up like a bear.

Wednesday, May 9, 2007; Quimby’s Bookstore
Written by: Nick Ostdick

This past Wednesday THE2NDHAND welcomed NYC’s Tao Lin—author of a poetry collection You Are A Little Bit Happier Than I Am (Action Books), a novel Eeee Eeeeee Eee, and a collection of fiction titled Bed, (Melville House Books)—to Quimby’s for a night of readings. Lin has been getting a lot of good press lately and has a solid fan base, so the crowd was elated with indie star-struckedness before things even got started.

Chicago-based THE2NDHAND editor Jeb Gleason-Allured opened the night with a poem written by Lin’s mother, which Lin published in 3 AM Magazine, where he edits poetry. The artfully-rambling poem titled “Thank You For Calling Me A Good Writer” lent a sweet, “aw shucks” factor with Mother’s Day coming up this weekend.

Gleason-Allured continued with his own story entitled “Sick Buildings” that followed a depressive couple through a vacation of bikes rides, picnics, and castles displaying signs that read ”Cancer Stop.” Then, the narrative shifted from the couple to the male character’s interactions with a girl named Noah, who is having an affair with a popular writer. It ends with the couple deciding to split for fear of further polluting their already contaminated relationship— “I don’t want cancer/I don’t want cancer either.” All told, the tale was real and heartfelt and weird, everything a good short story should be.

Lin’s set was stellar, containing a good mix of poetry and prose, ranging in subjects from a hatred of carbohydrates to how many nights it would take to devour a whale, to the striving for an MFA in hamsters. While his work is blanketed in absurdity, his stories and poems also contain some poignantly honest moments that strike unexpected chords. A story entitled “Sex After Not Seeing Each Other For A Few Days” is a good example. The narrative arc is nothing more than the title indicates, but the layering of themes such as loneliness and longing and self-doubt make us all wonder if Lin hasn’t been picking our minds in the middle of the night. Lin also read a poem about cancer, which along with Gleason-Allured’s story, made for some kind of running theme.

In between sets, Gleason-Allured admitted that he felt bad about neglecting Lin at a recent reading in NYC, so the two sat down for a short interview consisting of questions culled from “Inside The Actors Studio” and Askmen.com’s “First Date Questions,” as well as some standard ones on the subject of writing and personal philosophies thereof. The succinct Lin fielded the questions with his characteristic brand of quiet deadpan:

Q: Why do people hate you?
A: Because they don’t like me.
Q: Favorite word?
A: Shit. It’s funny.
Q: Who would win in a fight? Fiction or poetry?
A: Fiction. It’s bigger.
And perhaps my favorite Q & A of the night:
Q: What advice would you give to young writers?
A: Write what you want to read.

In the end, the twenty plus people in attendance were left giggly, entertained and even more elated by the off-beat, intelligent stories. Gleason-Allured’s interview and Lin’s punchy comments had me exiting Quimby’s feeling like this “mysterious” writer was demystified in a good way. And the strange thing is that he isn’t actually so strange—what makes his stories so compelling is that he’s just a normal guy with much to say and a uniquely-odd way of saying it. He’s your neighbor down the hall; the clerk in the local bookstore; the guy who you strike up a pleasant conversation with on the train ride home—he’s all these people, and he just happens to write about hamsters and whales and does it oh-so well.

And isn’t that exactly what we’re looking for out of a lit reading, anyway?

Nick Ostdick writes things. Visit him at www.inthenickoftime.wordpress.com

Date: Tuesday, May 8th, 2007
Time: 5:00 pm
Location: University of Chicago, Rosenwald 405

Lydia Davis is ungodly talented at everything: writing (that rare thing: a truly original, challenging voice), French translation (Proust!) and choice in husbands (Paul Auster, who counts even though they divorced). Her first new book of stories in six years will be releasedthis month by FSG (who else?). If you attend U of C, are unemployed or underemployed or work from home or work odd hours, you can see her read from her new collection on campus this Tuesday afternoon.

Date: Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Time: 5:30 pm
Location: McCormick Tribune Center Forum, 870 Campus Dr., Evanston
Participants: Stuart Dybek

For reasons beyond my control, I can’t attend this reading of a new short story “Pink Ocean” by Stuart Dybek, who I like so much that I’ve actually blushed just being in his presence. Will someone else please attend and lemme know how it went?

For more info:1-847-467-3005

Date: Monday, May 7, 2007
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Location: Fullerton Hall, Art Institute of Chicago.
Participants: Donald Hall and Andrew Motion
Event: First-Ever Joint Reading by U.S. and British Poets Laureate

From the PoFo website:
“The Poetry Foundation will host U.S. Poet Laureate Donald Hall and British Poet Laureate Andrew Motion in a series of poetry readings in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and London. The transatlantic presentations mark the first time two sitting laureates have shared a stage and will take place on May 7, May 10, and June 6, respectively.” For more info, click here:

My favorite piece of Donald Hall writing is this gorgeous essay about everyday life, love and art, about life on a family farm with his wife, poet Jane Kenyon.

This is what happens when a book remains on the bestseller list for 4 years–the Chicago Architectural Foundation goes ahead and makes a tour based on it.

The Devil in the White City
Tour gives history lesson on vision and insanity surrounding 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition

April 20, 2007
By Donna Vickroy Staff writer

It was a confluence of sophistication and buffoonery, innovation and spectacle, vision and insanity.

The 1893 Chicago Colombian Exposition brought us the Ferris wheel, carbonated soda, picture postcards, The Pledge of Allegiance and Juicy Fruit gum.

And, oh yeah, it also brought belly dancing, camel rides, ostriches and the nation’s first serial killer.

You can learn more about the impact the World’s Fair had on Chicago and the nation, as well as a multitude of interesting anecdotes, through a new bus tour offered by the Chicago Architecture Foundation…
For the full article, click here.

I really wish we had a discussion board up and running (we will soon, I promise). If we did, I would be the first to comment about that ridiculous opening paragraph in the Tribune article Gretchen just posted. Kathleen Parker, you won’t make literature any friends by claiming that readers are more sensual than other people. You might, however, make me throw up in my mouth a little.

Yeah, it stinks that major newspapers are cutting out books sections. Yeah, it’s a terrible shame that people aren’t reading as much as they used to. That said, it’s time to stop differentiating “book people” from other people. If US Weekly has taught us anything by showing that celebrities are just like us, we should know that we’re all the same, and you’re not going increase readership with sentences like the following:

Maybe we’ll be burning books in the town square chanting: We don’t need no dadgum books. We got Innernet porn ‘n’ satellite TeeVee!

Good show, Kathleen! I’m sure that every illiterate person sounds just like Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel. Let’s make fun of illiterate people! Haha, their parents didn’t value literature! Haha, they didn’t go to school! Haha, they grew up in poverty! Jerks! Why can’t everyone be urbane and middle-class like us?

Pundits have been heralding the Death of Literature for at least ten years, ever since the publishing industry was gobbled up by international megaconglomerates and giant chain bookstores ate the indies. One less books section does not signal a seismic shift in the literary landscape, nor does it warrant an article that irritates even the staunchest reader.

More brouhaha about the travesty of newspapers quitting their book review sections.

Our death march toward illiteracy
Published April 25, 2007

People who read books are different from other people. They’re smarter for one thing. They’re more sensual for another. They like to hold, touch and smell what they read. They like to carry the words around with them — tote them on vacation, take them on train rides and then, most heavenly of all, to bed.

They’re also a dying breed. And newspapers, apparent signatories to a suicide pact, are playing taps. The news that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has eliminated its book editor position — causing much Sturm und Drang throughout the Southern literary community — highlights the continuing demotion of books and literature in American culture. While an Internet petition circulates to reinstate Teresa Weaver as book editor, writers are expressing concern that they’re losing their best vehicle for recognition….For full article, click here.