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 Click for words events The Story of Story Week
The scene outside the rock club Metro on Chicago's North Side suggests
business as usual.
Several black-clad security staffers with serious demeanors flank the
club's entrance, awaiting the go-ahead to admit the ragged throng of
patrons. The line extends as show-time draws nearer, snaking north on
Clark, cluttering up the cracked pavement. Before long, the stream of
people flows beyond the end of the block--curving out of sight around
the nearest corner.
By the time the doors open for admission, the number of people
waiting exceeds Metro's capacity. Everyone inches forward, the line
slowly trickling inside, until the place fills up and indignant
stragglers are denied access.
Not necessarily a surprising scene for a rock club, until you
consider that these folks had not turned out en masse to see an act like
Coldplay. Instead, they clamored for Scottish author Irvine Welsh,
scheduled to read from his work that March evening in 2002, along with
Chicago authors John McNally and Joe Meno. This night of "Literary Rock
`n' Roll" met with enormous success, and is a significant milestone in
the evolution of Columbia College Fiction Writing Department's Story
Week Festival of Writers. Story Week celebrates its tenth anniversary March 12-17. This year's
lineup includes local favorites Studs Terkel and Stuart Dybek, as well
as distinguished guests such as 2004 Pulitzer Prize-winner Edward P.
Jones, Dorothy Allison ("Bastard Out of Carolina") and Tom Perrotta
("Little Children").
"Each year we've [been] a little bit more ambitious, gotten a
little more exciting," says Fiction Writing Department Chair Randy
Albers. "Ten years later a whole lot of fantastic writers have come
through here." (In the interest of full disclosure, I'm a former
employee of the Columbia College Chicago Fiction Writing Department, and
an alumnus of the school as well.)
Albers' remarks allow a brief glimpse of Story Week's rise to
prominence within the Chicago literary community, but closer examination
is necessary to really understand how the festival has come to mean so
much to so many people.
Initially, Albers conceived of Story Week as a natural outgrowth of
Columbia College Fiction Writing Department's Visiting Writer's
program. He hoped to expand upon Professor Emerita Betty Shiflett's
efforts to bring established writers to their students, and drew
inspiration from his memories of Poetry Week, an event he experienced
while completing his undergraduate degree at Tulane University.
"I remember sitting in class, with Allen Ginsburg sitting six feet
away cross-legged on a table, playing a harmonium, and singing the songs
of William Blake. Ginsburg wasn't a great singer, but it was still
riveting. Ferlinghetti, who was even a less great singer, was
nonetheless just as riveting--he came in the next class. I was just so
taken with being able to rub elbows with these people and learn
something about their process, and feel close for a few days to the
wider writing community."
Albers felt that he could assemble something similar at Columbia and
solicited input and assistance from the Fiction Writing Department
faculty. They set to work inviting guests such as Charles Johnson, Jane
Hamilton and Ana Castillo, and hosted the first Story Week in April of
1997.
"People responded," recalls Albers. "We did a student reading, a
faculty reading. It wasn't huge, but it was a few days. I sort of
thought at that time it would be a one-shot thing, but people responded
so well we put on a hurried one after that and then we brought in Scott
Heim and Nawal El Saadawi, a couple of editors, and at that point we
really started thinking about maybe doing this every year. So things
just kind of took off from there."
In 2000, departmental faculty member Patricia Ann McNair assumed
duties as Story Week's artistic director. She recruited graduate
student Lila Nagarajan (now Jokanovic) to serve as her intern, and
publicist Sheryl Johnston was given an expanded role in Story Week's
planning and execution. By this time, the festival was operating on a
slightly larger budget, thanks to grants from the Illinois Humanities
Council, and was starting to spill into the greater Chicago community.
"The first year I did it, I really didn't know what I was doing,
but I also wasn't entirely aware of how I was messing up," says
McNair. "So it was kind of fun, you know, to just do all of that. Once
you start, it's just getting to the top of the hill and sliding down."
McNair and crew took Story Week into uncharted territory, adding an
evening at Metro to the festival's extensive programming. "Bad Boys'
Night Out" featured Columbia's Don De Grazia, along with Richard Price
and Hubert Selby Jr., and its success indicated that it was possible to
pull off a literary event within the confines of a rock club. The venue
has been an integral aspect of Story Week ever since, and each year a
new twist is brought to the "Literary Rock `n' Roll" concept.
"Readings don't have to be as dry as dust," Albers insists. He
credits the accompanying mixture of skits, DJ performances, rappers and
live music for making Story Week's Metro events so engaging.
That being said, Story Week isn't exclusively about booze-soaked
revelry. Above all else, the festival strives to promote civic
engagement, addressing relevant social and cultural concerns. Each year
a theme is selected to shape the series of self-contained events,
personify the range of writers participating and spark lively discourse
between presenters and audience members. Past topics include "The
Politics of Story," "Story and the Sister Arts," "In Search of the
American Story" and "Remembrance of Futures Past," among others.
This year's theme, "Fighting Words: Stories of Risk and
Rebellion," resonates with featured guest and Columbia College
Writer-in-Residence Dorothy Allison, who made her Story Week debut back
in 2001. She's scheduled to headline the Metro show, in addition to
participating in a panel discussion about writing unlikable characters.
"I go to lots of literary events. This one is unique--it reflects the
city and the community here--and frankly the focus of this year's
events, stories of risk and rebellion, seems to me to express what I
find most wonderful about this city. The people here have an energy and
focus that is rare--what I think of as a Midwestern working-class ethos
that reverberates with courage and a challenging sense of the importance
of everyday people and the struggle to be full citizens in difficult
times."
Joe Meno, the current artistic director, wholeheartedly agrees.
"There's really not any other event like this, not in Chicago, and I
would even argue anywhere else in the world. That's what's really been
rewarding and amazing, to see how much Story Week has become connected
not only to the department and not only to the college, but also to the
city. It's this idea of connection. That's what storytelling is all
about. It brings together a lot of different folks who love
literature."
Anyone lucky enough to gain admission to Metro on that fateful day in
2002 knows exactly what Meno is talking about. Blacks, whites, Latinos,
Asians, twentysomethings, senior citizens, hipsters, hood rats,
intellectuals and punks all packed the house from stairwell to rafters,
all eyes on the stage as Welsh approached a microphone. His striped
T-shirt and bright yellow pants looked Day-Glo under the hot blue and
white lights, and his egg-shaped head glistened with sweat. He looked
out at the sea of expectant faces, seemingly surprised at the mass of
shadowy figures waiting to see him.
Once he began reading nobody budged, and the silence between his
words was punctuated only by the occasional clink of the bar's cash
register. He held the audience rapt for nearly an hour, narrating a
passage from "Glue," his follow-up to his seminal "Trainspotting,"
and then swigged from his bottle of water while soaking up a long moment
of thunderous applause. Soon after, a knot of people rushed the stage,
the excited mass scrambling to snare Welsh's autograph. He crouched
before the growing horde, selecting from the books thrust at him,
scratching his name across their insides with a black felt-tip marker.
When everyone's celebrity needs were adequately fulfilled, Welsh
exited. He returned after a brief intermission, took command of the
turntable setup, and started spinning his distinct blend of hypnotic
beats. The crowd responded accordingly--bodies spinning, arms flailing
until everyone moved collectively, completely immune to everything
except Welsh's sound manipulations.
This search for connection and camaraderie has sustained Story
Week's popularity, and will likely continue to do so in the future.
With twenty events over the course of six days, this year's events
promise to satisfy even the most serious cases of book lust.
Columbia College graduate and "A Woman's Ring" author Rea Frey
puts the significance of all this into perspective. "Story Week is a
chance to step inside the open doorway of a writer's life; to get an
intimate look at what happens after you finish a piece of work, and what
could become of it if placed in the right hands. It is a time of
inspiration, to break down the walls between ordinary and success and
put yourself out there, as all writers must do."
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