August 26, 2014
Opera fans are eagerly awaiting the gala opening night of this year’s 2014/2015 opera season at Chicago’s world renowned Lyric Opera. It’s Don Giovanni on September 27th. And, of course, here at EPL, we are setting up our Lyric materials display and organizing our popular lecture series that begins on Saturday, September 20th at 2pm […]
August 25, 2014
British actor and director Richard Attenborough died on Sunday at the age of 90. Although a familiar actor in Britain, it wasn’t until he was cast in the 1963 war film The Great Escape that he became established in Hollywood. He won Golden Globe Awards for best supporting actor in The Sand Pebbles in 1966 […]
August 19, 2014
If you’re in Shetland or Orkney (UK) on September 13th, you might want to help solve a heinous crime committed in the library at the Ravenswick Hotel. Ann Cleeves, popular mystery writer there and abroad is promoting a novel way to spend an evening in a local library–a whodunnit presentation of an original drama. As […]
August 18, 2014
American author Ann Leckie is the recipient of this year’s Hugo Award, science fiction’s highest honor, for her debut novel Ancillary Justice. Ms. Leckie’s book, “narrated by the artificial consciousness of a starship”, has won other major sci-fi awards, including the Nebula and Arthur C Clarke awards and the British Science Fiction Association award. NPR’s […]
August 1, 2014
Diaries and notebooks of poet Siegfried Sassoon will be published online by the Cambridge University Library. The 23 diaries and two journals are being made public to coincide with the 100-year anniversary of the beginning of World War I. Writing in a “leather-bound notebook from a fly-speck village in northern France” Sassoon wrote “My inner […]
July 30, 2014
Winners of the 2014 PEN Literary Awards were announced today by the PEN/American Center. Among the winners are poet Frank Bidart for his collection Metaphysical Dog (also a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award); critic James Wolcott for Critical Mass (reviewed as “epic and epically rewarding”) and playwright David Rabe. Other winners include Linda […]
July 23, 2014
The 2013 National Medal of Arts, the government’s highest award for artists and art patrons, will be presented by President Obama to 12 honorees on July 28. Among the recipients are Chicago philanthropist and arts patron Joan Harris “for supporting creative expression in Chicago and across our country, and historian Darlene Clark Hine “for enriching […]
July 23, 2014
This year is the first time the Man Booker Prize, United Kingdom’s most prestigious literary award is celebrating authors of literary fiction “whether from Chicago, Sheffield or Shanghai.” Four American authors and one Irish-American writer are among the 13 finalists: Joshua Ferris for To Rise Again at a Decent Hour; Karen Joy Fowler for We […]
July 22, 2014
This week WBEZ radio launched a series called “After Water” that explores the future of our water supply in the face of increasing climate change. On July 20th, host Shannon Heffernan kicked it off by interviewing nonfiction writer Michele Morano who was hoping to find a way to get the public to be more engaged […]
July 15, 2014
Scribner will be releasing a new edition of Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises in late July. The classic book begins with the line “Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton.” But the original opening began: “This is a novel about a lady.” The new edition with the discarded first chapter […]
