July 14, 2014
South African writer Nadine Gordimer died today in Johannesburg at the age of 90. Known for her writings dealing with themes of injustice and cruelty in apartheid South Africa, Ms. Gordimer wrote more than two dozen works of fiction as well as essays and literary criticism. Three of her books were banned in her country […]
July 12, 2014
For Nina Sankovitch e-mail, Facebook, texting, and Twitter all have their place, but none can compare to a good, old-fashioned letter. In her follow-up to 2011’s acclaimed Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, the former Evanstonian pays homage to the vanishing art of letter writing with a fascinating journey through the long history of the letter. […]
July 10, 2014
We are happy to introduce Chicagoland artist Hanna Eiler as the next to be featured in our ongoing exhibition series Local Art @ EPL. From now through July 31st, nearly two dozen of her imaginative 3-D collage paintings will be display on the 2nd floor of EPL’s Main Library. Depicting British royal history from Edward […]
July 3, 2014
Walter Dean Myers died on Tuesday at the age of 76 after a brief illness. Author of more than 100 books including Monster and Lockdown, Myers was a three-time National Book Award nominee, the recipient of two Newbery Honors, a five-time winner of the Coretta Scott King Award, and “the rare author to have a […]
July 1, 2014
The Academy Film Archive celebrated director Spike Lee’s 1989 film Do the Right Thing with a Silver Anniversary screening last Friday. Set in New York’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood “the film about racial tension reaches a boiling point on a scorching summer day in Brooklyn.” President and Mrs. Obama joined the celebration via videotape where they talked […]
July 1, 2014
The Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction was awarded to Donna Tartt for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Goldfinch. The award for nonfiction went to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin for The Bully Pulpit. The medals were presented at the American Library Association’s annual meeting in Las Vegas on Saturday. Each winner receives a $5,000 cash […]
June 26, 2014
This month for Poetry 365 we’re featuring Vijay Seshadri’s remarkable new book 3 Sections. Winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, this third collection from the regular New Yorker essayist and book critic employs a wide array of poetic forms to examine modern consumer culture, age-old angst, and Seshardri’s South Asian Heritage. Favorably compared […]
June 25, 2014
It’s Pledge Week this week for Chicago-land WBEZ listeners, and I know some folks may cut back on listening a bit. If you are one of those who go on a public radio diet, you may have missed the segment last Monday with Nancy Pearl alerting listeners to great, under-the-radar choices for summer reading. As […]
June 20, 2014
The 2014 PEN Pinter prize is being awarded to Salman Rushdie. Named in memory of playwright Harold Pinter, the award is given annually to a British writer who has an “unflinching, unswerving” and “fierce intellectual determination…to define the real truth of our lives and our societies.” Head judge Maureen Freely said: This prize is English […]
June 16, 2014
The Library of Congress announced that 78-year-old Charles Wright will be named the next poet laureate this week. A retired professor at the University of Virginia, he has already won almost all prizes in the poetry world, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Bollingen Prize and […]
