Date: Tue, 7/20
Time: 6pm
Location: The Hideout/1354 W. Wabansia/773-227-4433
What: A brawl. Just kidding: A “Write Club,” reading, which we featured back in January when the series began, and which features writers with opposing ideas debating for 7 minutes per topic.

With Pitchfork over, we think you’ll be looking for another venue to expend that ornery energy, no? Then get thee to the Hideout on Tuesday for The Write Club, where the audience decides the “winner” of a spirited debate. This time, they’ll be fightin’ over “MIND” (Steve Heisler) vs. “BODY” (Ali Weiss); “FIGHT” (David Kodeski) vs. “FLIGHT” (Edward Thomas-Herrera); and “HEAVEN” (Emily Rose) vs. “HELL” (Ian Belknap).

When you read the reader’s bios below, we think you’ll be impressed enough to drag your tuckered britches out, Pitchfork-induced haze or not.

Ian Belknap hosts/curates this reading series that features a rotating lineup of some of Chicago most gutsy writer/performers to engage in literature as bloodsport. To the winning idea goes the glory and cash purse for their charity. The losing idea gets to pick its teeth off the canvas.

Emily Rose is a Chicago-born and raised poet and performer. She performs at poetry readings, open mics, and Poetry Slams around Chicago and nationally. An organizer in her community, she is currently a Real Talk Avenue Resident, member of the 2010 Mental Graffiti Team, a board member for Chicago Slam Works, a regular contributor and producer for The Encyclopedia Show, Tournament Director for Louder Than a Bomb, occasional host at The Green Mill, and much much more.

Edward Thomas-Herrera is a playwright and performer living and working in Chicago. He is currently working on a musical entitled “Hell is for the Very Hot.” He listens to a lot of opera and that makes him gay. Please visitwww.boygirlboygirl.org.

Ali Weiss is a freelance writer and videographer with a long-standing performance habit. A New York City native, Ali is a proud resident of Chicago’s Lincoln Square, where she produces a spoken word show called The Paper Machete at Ricochet’s every Saturday at 3pm. More info at alisonweiss.com.

Steve Heisler is a freelance pop culture journalist who writes for The AV Club, GQ, Details, Variety, TV.com, and the Chicago Reader. He’s also a comedy producer with Just For Laughs, a writer and performer with the Neo-Futurists, a regular at The Paper Machete, and a former member of the Time Out Chicago action squad. He’s a baller, shot caller, brawler—steveheisler.com 4 life, yo.

David Kodeski is the creator of “David Kodeski’s True Life Tales,” an ongoing series of critically-acclaimed solo performances. He is a founding ensemble member of BoyGirlBoyGirl and is currently working on a libretto in collaboration with Chicago Opera Vanguard based upon a suitcase full of mysterious letters bought via the internet. The opera is slated to premiere in 2011 at Queen’s College in Belfast.

You know that art project/novel/score/one-man-show you’ve been working on for years, but can’t seem to finish?  Well, there’s an answer to your problem, and it’s called an artist residency.

What’s an artist residency? It’s a place (think the famed Yaddo and MacDowell out east) where artists and writers go to shut out the rest of the world and zone in completely on their creative projects.  I recently had the extreme pleasure of doing an artist residency at the Ragdale Foundation, an artist residency program in Lake Forest, Illinois, and, I’m thrilled to say, finished three previously languishing stories for my short story collection.

Ragdale’s been around since 1976. It was founded by poet Alice Judson Hayes, the granddaughter of Arts and Crafts architect Howard Van Doren Shaw who built the beautiful, spacious place in 1897 as a summer home for his family. Thirty miles north of Chicago, it “overlooks 50 acres of prairie, now hosts over 200 emerging and established artists of all disciplines each year.” It has 8 writers studios (decked out with porches, libraries, copious writing desks) , two art studios (good light, spacious), and one composer studio complete with piano and minimal equipment.

Some famous alumni are Audrey Niffenegger, Wendy McClure, Jaqueline Michard, Sara Paretsky, Alice Sebold, Curtis White and Sandi Wisenberg.  Carl Sandburg and Vachel Lindsay were friends of the Shaws and are said to have attended plays there.

The nitty gritty: Not everyone gets in.  You have to fill out an application, write an artist statement and get a few people to recommend you for the program. Once you’re in, it costs $25/day (a meager fee considering that you’re provided with all meals plus housekeeping). Financial aid and fellowships are also available. Artist residencies include your own studio, access to a full kitchen stocked with breakfast and lunch stuffs, and full (delicious) chef-cooked dinner  every night with the other 11 residents. What’s funny is that although you go there ostensibly to be alone and completely in your thoughts, one of the best parts of the residency for many ends up being those lively dinners with 11 other people who’ve been creatively engaged all day, just like you.

After dinner, you can sneak away back to your studio with no guilt, or linger to discuss art and ideas with other residents.  (Among the spectacular residents in my session were a children’s book author writing a kiddie book on the life of the Buddha, a blind poet/performer who was there with his amazing seeing-eye dog, and Alice Hayes’ granddaughter Ramona, who wrote this wonderful story based on her grandmother and who I’m pretty sure I know from another life.)

Initially, having all that free time can send people into freak-out mode, so resident adviser Regin Ingloria wisely warned us that we might just sleep or spaz for a day or two (I did both) but would soon acclimate and start working. He was right: we all made more progress than we even thought possible-a groovy reminder that the human brain is innately creative, but that sometimes we need time and space away from practical concerns to get in that flow. (Incidentally, that’s Ragdale’s motto and the phrase on their t-shirts: “Time and Space”).

Ragdale is more than just a residency program; increasingly, their staffers Leslie Brown, Susan Page Tillett, and Regin Ingloria are holding public events and readings to step up Ragdale’s community involvement. (On May 10, Scott Turow will be doing an event for them; email l.brown@ragdale.org to register). So, I urge you: Get involved! Go to a Ragdale event! Get on their mailing list! But most of all: Apply! That novel’s not going to write itself. Photos from my stay are below, but if that doesn’t compel you to get moving on that novel/art project, this link might.

Stewie on novel writing

All the uproar in the book world this past week has been about Publishers Weekly’s 2009 list of “top 10 best books”, NONE of which were written by women. (Many links are below, but this post is the best-looking one). PW gave this as an explanation:

“We wanted the list to reflect what we thought were the top 10 books of the year with no other consideration. We expect you’ll be surprised: there’s a graphic novel, an adventure story, possibly the next Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a delicious biography that could bring Cheever back into the literary firmament. We ignored gender and genre and who had the buzz. We gave fair chance to the “big” books of the year, but made them stand on their own two feet. It disturbed us when we were done that our list was all male. There was kicking and screaming for a science fiction title. A literary ghost story came so close, it squeaked. There was almost a cookbook. Our fabulous long list smoothed ruffled feathers, but still we can’t resist one honorable mention: Kevin Wilson’s debut collection, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth (Harper Perennial). With no regrets, we’re ready for “Auld Lang Syne.” —Louisa Ermelino

I am not alone in calling bullshit on the above, which implies that no woman in 2009 wrote deserving enough fiction (the year that the great Alice Munro won the third Man Booker International Prize, let me remind you). Bookninja take up this argument: ” Was there really no amazing novels penned by a female author this year?  Of course not!  It was actually a great year for women authors– Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall took home the Booker, and A. S. Byatt’s latest came out to rave reviews (and was nominated for the Booker) as did Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs.  2 of the 5 fiction writers nominated for the National Book Award are women.”

Most of the articles responding to this outrage– yeah, I’m not afraid to call it that–say that PW has the obligation to take ownership of their decision in one of two ways: Either fess up to their belief that men write better books than women or admit their reviewing is gender-biased. But let’s not allow them to hide behind the ‘ol, “This year was an anomaly,” or “We just didn’t read female authors who moved us in the way these male-authored books did.” [My interpretive quotes].

That’s the same excuse widely used in affirmative action cases and what it boils down to is something organizationally systemic; something built into the staff/editors/leadership responsible for these lists; that unconscious, unspoken tendency to have an affinity for that which is familiar and that which affirms our own beliefs. Duh: There’s a big bias towards male writing in literary editorship, and PW has decided to have zero shame about that fact. Here’s a NYT excerpt:

“Cate Marvin, a founder of the group Women in Letters and Literary Arts, told The Guardian, “The absence made me nearly speechless.” She added: “It continues to surprise me that literary editors are so comfortable with their bias toward male writing, despite the great and obvious contributions that women authors make to our contemporary literary culture.””

Salon reminds us this is not a new subject: “What’s at issue isn’t sales or even access to readers; this is an argument about prestige and critical recognition, an argument best articulated by the novelist and critic Francine Prose in a 1998 article for Harper’s magazine…I don’t doubt that P.W.’s editors are entirely sincere when they say their list reflects their unvarnished preferences. Still, the fact that those preferences can’t encompass one woman author among 10 books (fiction or nonfiction) picked from the 50,000-plus titles they claim to have sifted through suggests that their horizons might need a bit of deliberate widening.”

Jezebel gets to the heart of the matter: “When a list like this one draws criticism — and they have in the past — the compilers usually defend it with the argument that “this is just what we like.” But what we like is subject to deeply held and unconscious biases, and when we think we’re being objective, we are often praising what we’re most comfortable with, or what we think is most deserving of praise based on whatever stereotypes we grew up with.”

The Washington Post puts out a call to action: “According to the 2008 U S. Book Consumer Demographics and Buying Behavior Annual Report, women gender buy 65 percent of all books purchased. We buy the vast majority, in particular, of paperbacks, hardbacks, and audio books. So, dominant consumers [and reasonable dudes-who-don't-want-to-just-read-more-dudes-G.K.], let PW know that you would appreciate a more gender-balanced list next time and that you’ve got the dollars to back it up.”

I don’t think anyone reasonable would call for PW to actually change their final list after realizing it was all-male. At that point, they’d already failed. But one one does hope, nay, expect, that the widespread negative response their list provoked will impel them to do an about-face when it come choosing their own tastemakers/editors. Only from the ground up can this kind of change occur. We’re talking systemic change in staff and leadership, and in modes of thinking. Let’s keep our eyes out for next year’s list.

No. 1 Omission From Top 10 Book List: Women [NYT ArtsBeat Blog]
A 10-Best Books List Without Women? [Salon]
Best Books Of 2009 [Publishers Weekly]
The WILLA List Wiki [Official Site]
Is It Time To Stop Listing Best Books? [Jezebel]
Fury After Women Writers Excluded from Books of the Year [Guardian UK]

Sooner or later, readers were going to start realizing that our short attention spans and easy-boredom points us squarely in the direction of the short story, an oft-neglected format, mostly viewed as the less-marketable, less-read format compared to novels.  Lo and behold, the Wall Street Journal recently pointed to the growing audience and appreciation of the short story form. The WSJ piece notes the recent prize-winning story collections by Alice Munro and Elizabeth Strout, and delves into the technology that seems to deem short stories as ideal for their format; (the WSJ mentions smartphones delivering stories and mini-e-books via projects like Five Chapters and Delacorte Press–I’d add Chicago’s own CellStories and Featherproof’s Triple Quick fiction to that list).

Sez them: “With the growing popularity of e-readers and digital devices, traditional publishing models are being challenged in ways that may benefit short fiction.”

Personally, despite the short attention span flash fiction may be deepening in me, I’ve signed up for every decent short-story-via-smartphone project I can find. Anything’s better than succumbing to the Red Eye during a commute. Am I right?

What: A.D.: New Orelans After the Deluge, graphic novel book release
Where: The Book Cellar, 4736-38 North Lincoln Ave, Chicago, IL 60625
When: Friday, August 28, 7pm
How Much: Free

Our lateness in posting about this event in no way indicates our excitement level about it (which is high). In A.D., graphic novelist Josh Neufeld pretty much proves the value of graphic novels as a form of journalism, with his stunning illustrations and poignant prose. Neufeld was a Red Cross volunteer right after Katrina hit and the blog entries he kept about that experience led to this book. At tomorrow’s event, Neufeld (who’s a longtime artist for Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor), will present a visual presentation on his graphic novel “A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge.” A few reviews follow and you will note they are not lukewarm, and neither are the frenzied emails from my coolest Chicago friends demanding my attendance at this event.

“Josh Neufeld follows a half dozen denizens of the Big Easy as they choose between fleeing the impending hurricane and hunkering down to wait out the storm. Acts of folly and bravery are depicted, and Neufeld makes a striking political point without tipping over into didacticism.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Best in Comics”, July 10, 2009

“A.D. is one of the best-ever examples of comics reportage, and one of the clearest portraits of post-Katrina New Orleans yet published. An essential addition to the ongoing conversation about what Katrina means, and what New Orleans means.” —Dave Eggers, author of Zeitoun and What Is the What

Who: Old Town School of Folk Music
What: Live reading with Joe Meno, accompanied by the Astronomer
Where: Gary and Laura Maurer Concert Hall :: 4544 N Lincoln Ave.
When: Saturday, August 1, 8pm. Buy tix here for $15 (but per  an Old Town insider: “We are doing a friends & fam discount – mention the code word “Squid” before 7/29 for $10 tickets (regular price is $15).”

Here’s something new: This Saturday, the OTSFM is holding an event in which a writer (the tenderly funny Literago-fave  Joe Meno)  is backed by The Astronomer, who created new songs/scores for the event. Adding to this multimedia extravaganza is poster artist Jay Ryan and shutterbug Todd Baxter; their art will be projected in the room. Oh, and upbeat, Iggy Pop-esque Canasta opens. Now, as someone who studied with a Beat writer, I’m shamelessly drawn to the whole live-reading-with- music-ouevre but even for those less inclined, this sounds spectacular. It’s my birthday weekend, so the only question left is, who’s buying my ticket and which friends are going with me?

If your experience with accompanied live readings is limited to this scene from So I Married an Axe Murderer; fear not. Meno doesn’t smoke and I’m fairly certain he has zero affinity for Josie and the Pussycats.

Hello, dear readers. Ron Offen, editor of Free Lunch, is trying to contact published poets who once attended or graduated from Wright College, located on Chicago’s northwest side. Please contact Ron at poetsfl@gmail.com if you’re one of those people. Over and out.

This April 30 event was billed as a “What’s New & What’s Next” discussion at Maxim’s in the Gold Coast. Presented by the new Department of Literary Arts & Events (within the Department of Cultural Affairs), it featured speakers Garrett Kiely (University of Chicago Press), Rick Kogan (Chicago Tribune), and Donna Seaman (Booklist & Chicago Public Radio).  Pics aren’t superb–I was trying not to interrupt the lecture with a blinding flash!–but this gives you a good idea about the crowd. For more,  check out our earlier post in re: the WBEZ interview with Danielle Chapman, the new Director of Publishing Industry Programs at the Department of Literary Arts and Events.

Literagoans love alliteration. Anyway. So, Literago got a mention in the most recent edition of Lonely Planet Chicago (available in most bookstores and Amazon.com). Link to a Google Books excerpt is here. “Literago: (www.literago.org). This ace blog by Gretchen Kalwinski and Eugenia Williamson was founded ‘to show the world that Chicago isn’t an illiterate sinkhole.’” (Now, when Genie and I were being interviewed for this last year, we hadn’t yet added our awesome new crew, otherwise they would’ve deserved a mention, too.) In any case, I think this is a good time to mention that I always keep a current copy of LPC around for when visitors come to town and I draw a blank about the best architectural tours, kid-friendly spots, and botanical gardens.

Title: Even Launch Party
Date: May 12, 2009
Time: 7:30 PM
Location and Address: Barnes & Noble Clybourn (1441 West Webster Avenue)
Participants: Andrew Grant