For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] The debut novel Wings of Red is autofiction penned by educator and mentor James W. Jennings that centers learning as a way forward, but not necessarily straight forward. Middle and high school students, friends, family, subway riders, “scribes,” the rich, and the poor exchange casual but poignant lessons with our nomadic protagonist on every … Read more
[ad_1] In anticipation of the 2023 Chicago Review of Books (CHIRBy) Awards ceremony, we asked our finalists a few questions about their books, their inspirations, and their favorite way to spend 2 hours and $50 in Chicago. In Part I, we talk to: Stay tuned for Part II coming next week and for the announcement … Read more
[ad_1] Walk into any pharmacy in America and you can find eyeliner. That’s true of any halfway decent grocery store as well. I haven’t looked, but I imagine even the 24/7 bodega on the corner near my apartment would have more than one option. There is a ubiquity to eyeliner that is easy to overlook, … Read more
[ad_1] Sigrid Nunez’s ninth novel, The Vulnerables, uses the 2020 pandemic as an inciting incident for an examination of the uncertainties and vulnerabilities that we experience during catastrophes as well as in our quotidian lives. The narrative is deceptively simple: a professor offers her apartment to a healthcare worker during the early days of the … Read more
[ad_1] Writer and professor Rachel DeWoskin’s second poetry collection, absolute animal, subtly exposes the thin line separating humans from other living things, those inarguable similarities to the earth and how they lead us to long for its connection. She has a way of questioning and erasing the distance we insist is there. We are, simply, … Read more
[ad_1] In 1948, Alba de Céspedes wrote to her friend, the acclaimed writer Natalia Ginzburg, of a specific kind of affliction that could befall the women of their time. They called it a “well,” a “terrible melancholy” that women—still mostly confined to the domestic sphere in the immediate aftermath of WWII, not yet considered equal … Read more
[ad_1] Zuska Kepplová is a Slovak author, editor, and political commentator for the Slovakian daily newspaper SME. In 2011, her book Buchty švabachom was published in her home country, winning the Ján Johanides Prize and becoming shortlisted for the Anasoft Litera Prize, Slovakia’s most prestigious literary prize. Now, twelve years later, Buchty švabachom is available … Read more
[ad_1] Gabriel Bump has always exuded hopefulness in his writing. The young narrator of his debut novel Everywhere You Don’t Belong quickly became a classic voice in Chicago literature, echoing a sense of dazzling and at times unrealized optimism about his community, reminiscent of writers like Sandra Cisneros and Stuart Dybek. But even if home … Read more
[ad_1] Writers searching for a subject ripe with juicy satirical possibilities will find a ready friend in plastic surgery. It’s a fleshy-flashy-multibillion-dollar industry which profits off, depending upon whom you ask, either mankind’s lofty desire for perfection or its vainest impulses. And just like every field, it seems, which stirs in sensitive people a sense … Read more
[ad_1] Paul Auster’s best novels balance intricate and absorbing stories, with deconstructions of the art of narrative in a manner that rarely detracts from the flow or fun of the narrative itself. Unlike the machinations of many metafiction authors, the games Auster plays with storytelling never seem to get in the way of the stories … Read more