copyright 1998 New City Communications, Inc.
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[--- HOME --- HUBS --- SPECIALS --- ARCHIVES --- TODAY ---] | |
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Clout between the covers | BACK |
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Nos. 41 - 50 | LIT 50 HOME |
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41 STEVE AND SHARON FIFFER | Home Teammates |
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It's fitting that a husband-wife team would co-edit two anthologies, "Home" and "Family," featuring top-drawer writers from Chicago (Alex Kotlowitz, James Finn Garner) and elsewhere (Jane Smiley, Alice Hoffman). A third book in the series, "Body," is due out next spring, with contributions lined up from Smiley and Mona Simpson, among others. Steve also has a memoir coming out next spring from the Free Press.
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42 LUIS RODRIGUEZ | Pilsen prophet |
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As a memoirist, poet and now children's author, the ex-gang member has turned the transgressive energy of his youth into some of Chicago's most innovative, exhilirating literature. While Rodriguez's name is almost always connected with his Carl Sandburg Award-winning account of L.A. gang life, "Always Running" - if you haven't read it, go out and buy it now - he also won awards for "The Concrete River," a collection of poetry. His new children's release, "Amˇrica Is Her Name" ("La llaman Amˇrica") - featuring surreal illustrations of barrio life by Carlos Vásquez - tells the unflinching, yet oddly sweet story of a young girl facing the racism, substance abuse and violence of the street.
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43 ROBERT RODI | Super Villa |
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It was a Tuscan summer for Rob Rodi, who spent last July and August in Siena researching his latest novel, "It Takes a Villa," a romantic comedy with a May-September plot. Rodi's also bound to ruffle feathers with his as-yet-untitled collaboration with Christian McLaughlin, about a child-molesting priest at a Catholic boys' school in the seventies. Did we meniton it's a comedy? And the Hollywood deities have been casting glances Rodi's way - his novel "Drag Queen" has been optioned by Columbia/Sony.
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44 LINDA BUBON & ANN CHRISTOPHERSON | First ladies |
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Women & Children First and fellow indie bookstores joined in a chain gang-up this spring, slapping an anti-trust lawsuit on the chains. But WCF is no victim; owners picked up hammers to demolish a wall and expand their North Clark storefront space. Whether the lawsuit will fall in favor of the indies is beside the point; it's a war against the mallification of bookselling, and while the chains will say they don't want to crush the independents, the suits never saw a new customer they didn't like.
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45 MICHAEL WARR | Guilded warrior |
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If Mike Warr's around, the evening is guaranteed to be electric. As director of the Guild Complex, Warr brings in national names like the Last Poets, Chuck D and Kevin Powell, and he manages to rustle the burgs and bars for homegrown up-and-coming talent to showcase every Wednesday night. Lately, Warr has expanded the Guild's reach out of its Chopin Theatre space in Wicker Park with programming at the Cultural Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art, but the creative spark of the Complex follows Warr wherever he goes.
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46 BILL YOUNG | Writer's guider |
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Kurt Vonnegut comes to town, he hangs out with Bill Young. Norman Mailer comes to town, he hangs out with Bill Young. Marilyn Manson comes to town, yep, indeed, he hangs out with Bill Young. The friendly, funny author escort for PR firm Midwest Communications keeps book-tour orphans from getting eaten alive on the mean streets of Chicago.
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47 JOSEPH EPSTEIN | Critical master |
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Essayist Epstein chronicles literary history from the other side of the pen. His fourth and latest collection of work, "Life Sentences" (W.W. Norton), as well as the pieces that regularly pop up in the likes of The New Yorker and the American Scholar, offer up a combination of lucid biographical sketches and critical thought on the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joseph Conrad and Ambrose Bierce. He won the 1998 Harold Washington Literary Award, and he's also teaching a new generation of pen-wielders at Northwestern.
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48 GREG POPEK | Borders crosser |
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Former Borders employee and current Local 881 Union tough guy Popek slam-dunked his former bosses by winning the first-ever union vote against a national chain bookstore. The drawn-out struggle between management and employees at the Clark and Diversey location settled this winter. And Popek's quest for a union had a ripple effectŠ stores in New York and Des Moines, Iowa, have followed suit.
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49 FREDERICK POHL | Sci-fi beta kappa |
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Sci-fi don Pohl has some serious gravitational pull. Back in the thirties, Pohl hung out with such lights of the genre as Isaac Asimov in the Futurians club, and he's been looking ahead ever since in such novels as "The Space Merchants" and in the "Heechee trilogy." Born in 1919, the former Bantam Books editor is staring the big eight-oh in the face undaunted: he's even got a new novel out, "O Pioneer." Where sci-fi is concerned, Pohl is one pioneer.
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50 IRA GLASS | Radio head |
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If you're looking for a lively, quirky take on literature in the Chicago media, you often can't do better than Glass' "This American Life," a radio variety show broadcast to 200 stations nationwide from WBEZ's cushy Navy Pier digs. "Naked" author David Sedaris, novelist Sandra Tsing Loh and Details sex columnist Sarah Miller have ridden "This American Life"'s airwaves, alongside smart journalistic pieces that give public radio a good name.
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copyright 1998 New City Communications, Inc. |