Launched in March 2007, Literago.org is intended as a portal to news and information about literary goings-on in and around Chicago. The site features a curated calendar with a corresponding weekly newsletter, news and photos, post-event write-ups, and the occasional essay about the state of literature in Chicago.

Literago is meant to show the world that Chicago isn’t an illiterate sinkhole, but a city with a vibrant literary community. It’s intended as a service to Chicagoans interested in literature: to give them a one-stop shop for noteworthy literary events, happenings, and information. While this “Porkopolis” has a vast number of literary projects — everything from small presses and magazines to giant lit organizations — the Literago editors would like to see more cohesion, promotion, and community evident outside of events like Printer’s Row Book Fair and the Printer’s Ball.

In short, Literago is a website that should have existed long ago. The editors wish it had been around when they were seeking out a community and trying to find worthwhile readings to attend. They hope Literago will be a useful tool for people like them.

Press

Chicago Reader| Spring Books 2007: “Fighting Second City Syndrome One Blog Entry at a Time”

Bad at Sports Episode 120: Intuit and Literago.org

Named one of Chicago Magazine’s Best Chicago Websites 2008.

About the Editors

GRETCHEN KALWINSKI (above, right) co-founded Literago.org. She has freelanced for Stop Smiling, The Chicago Reader, Venus, UR Chicago, and Punk Planet. Kalwinski holds an English degree from Indiana University and has worked as an independent bookseller in San Francisco and Chicago, an editorial assistant at the University of Chicago Press, and permissions coordinator for the Poetry Foundation. She has read her short fiction for the Guild Complex and Dollar Store reading series, and studied privately with poet Diane Di Prima. Her short stories and poems have been published in THE2NDHAND literary broadsheet and Paterson Literary Review.

EUGENIA WILLIAMSON (above, left) also co-founded Literago.org. Aside from a two-year stint in Annapolis, MD, she has lived in Chicago for all of her 28 years, eight of which were spent working in a bookstore. She holds an MA from the University of Chicago, where she focused on post-WWII American fiction. She has written for a number of magazines and hopes to write for more.

About the Contributors

SUSANNAH FELTS is a writer and magazine editor whose first novel, This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record, will be released in March 2008 by Featherproof Books. She has taught English courses and creative writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her fiction, essays, and journalism have appeared in the Chicago Reader, Time Out Chicago, Another Chicago Magazine, Quarterly West, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Swivel, The Sun, THE2NDHAND, and other magazines.

MARIA VILLANUEVA is a born and bred Chicagoan and hard-core lit-lover who works as a librarian at the Harold Washington Library. A frequent attender of literary events, readings, and lectures, Maria will keep us up to date on Chicago Public Library programming and other book-and-writer-related Chicago doings.

To Submit your Literary Event Listing to the Literago Editors

OPTION #1:

If you regularly program literary events, we strongly recommend that you use the fast-growing Google calendar that we’ve created as a comprehensive listing of Chicago events. Once events are in the All Lit Chicago Calendar (which is on our site and available to the public), the event is on both the public’s and the editors’ radar and thus has a stronger chance of being featured on the Calendar on our main page or reviewed for our Readings, Rated section. Please send an email to editors{at}literago.org for directives on the All Lit Chicago calendar.

OPTION #2:

If you don’t program events regularly or have a high volume of events to promote, email editors{at}literago.org with the following information FORMATTED AS BELOW. If you’ve got a flier, feel free to send it (in jpeg format, sized at 448 X 336 pixels or less) accompanied by the below information in the below format. Requests not submitted in this format will be frowned upon and possibly ignored.

EXAMPLE

Title: Literago Launch Party

Date: June 22, 2007

Time: 8pm - 12am

Location and Address: The Halfway House (1539 N. Damen)

Participants: George Saunders, Doris Lessing, Ben Greenman, James Spader

Name of Reading Series: (IF APPLICABLE) (Example: “The Danny’s Reading Series”)

*** Please post/send info at least 2 weeks prior to the event.