Date: Thurs, Feb 21, 2008
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Location: Women & Children First Bookstore, 5233 N. Clark
Participants: Rosellen Brown, Garnett Kilberg Cohen, Kathy Kelly, Eliza Nichols, Peggy Shinner, Sharon Solwitz, Christina Villasenor and S.L. Wisenberg

Chicago writers, activists and scholars will celebrate the life and work of author Grace Paley, who died at 84 last August. The bookstore claims that these readers will “briefly” read Paley’s work and to this I say Yay!, since I’ve lately been grousing about too-long readings. (Curators take note: Over 1 hour is “too long”. No, I don’t care if the crowd appears to be into it. They want you to break it up. Stop at 60 minutes: PLEASE!). From their site: “We will remember the short story writer who had perfect pitch, a social conscience and tremendous empathy and humor.”
Here’s a quote from Paley during an interview with Salon.
To me it seems a most particularly interesting time in American literature, and a particularly interesting time for the country. With all the other troubles we have and disasters that are coming our way — which are real, I don’t make light of them at all — we also have, for the first time in the last 10 or1 5 years, the voices of all the people who are living in this place and who plan to stay here. You have great Native American writers, you have Spanish voices, all kinds of Asian literature, a number of African-American women writing, and African-American men as well. These books are great, and really very important. What’s happening in publishing is happening to everybody, and that is that publishers are eating each other up, just like all the companies are eating each other up. We live in this amazing system, I believe it’s called capitalism, where as soon as some company fires 30 people Wall Street goes all the way up. I don’t even see how people can read that and not feel horror.

**If I can digress again, my love for feminist bookstores does not prevent my love of this recently-circulated video, a collaboration of Sleater Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein & SNL’s Fred Armison. Because I am a feminist with a sense of humor, that’s why.