April 2, 2014
A new website dedicated to the work of playwright Lorraine Hansberry offers “all things Hansberry” including never-before released photographs, video clips of her television interviews, audio of her radio interviews and speeches. Although best known for her play A Raisin in the Sun, her estate created the site to focus on her work not only […]
April 2, 2014
Poem to Be Read at 3 a.m. by Donald Justice Excepting the diner On the outskirts The town of Ladora At 3 a.m. Was dark but For my headlights And up in One second-story room A single light Where someone Was sick or Perhaps reading As I drove past At seventy Not thinking This poem […]
April 1, 2014
Casting Aspersions by David Wagoner He told me I was casting aspersions on him, and because he was sensitive and literary, I knew he must be telling me I was sprinkling unholy water on him, was sailing a phony barb-hooked lure among his lily pads, was gathering a lousy bunch of actors to make a […]
April 1, 2014
Margaret Mitchell’s estate has authorized the publication of Ruth’s Journey – the story of the house slave Mammy in Gone With the Wind. Author Donald McCaig, who also wrote the 2007 Rhett Butler’s People, felt that “Mammy was such a fascinating and crucial character to the book he wanted to flesh out a story of […]
April 1, 2014
If you’re anything like us, you’ve been counting down to this very day. Besides kick starting the showers that bring the flowers, April 1st officially makes it next year for the Cubs and gives you cause to unleash that new whoopee cushion. What’s most exciting, however, is that today means National Poetry Month is finally […]
March 29, 2014
This month for Poetry 365 we’re highlighting the impressive eleventh book from innovative poet August Kleinzahler. In The Hotel Oneira, the National Book Critics Circle Award winner adopts a mysterious Rod Serling-like persona as he visits his native North Jersey, the snowy battlefields of 19th-century Russia, an American ghost town, and a foggy San Francisco. […]
March 26, 2014
Sky-high rents are forcing many of Manhattan’s bookstores to close or move out of Manhattan according to today’s disheartening article in the New York Times. Independent stores Coliseum Books, Shakespeare and Company, Endicott Booksellers and Murder Ink have all closed and now the big chain stores like Barnes & Noble are closing as well. Biographer […]
March 19, 2014
NoViolet Bulawayo is the 2014 winner of the Hemingway Foundation’s PEN Award for her novel We Need New Names. The prize honoring best debut fiction was established in 1976 by Mary Hemingway in memory of her husband Ernest Hemingway. Along with the $10,000 award, the prize includes a one-week residence at the University of Idaho, […]
March 14, 2014
Shalisha Erenberg is a Chicagoland painter and the latest artist to be featured in our ongoing exhibition series Local Art @ EPL. Her show – titled Articulated Impressions – is currently on display on the 2nd floor of EPL’s Main library where you can catch it through March 31st. Influenced by her studies with figurative […]
March 10, 2014
The first winner of the Folio prize, created in response to “shortcomings of the Man Booker prize”, was awarded today to the short story collection Tenth of December by George Saunders. Judges, including Lavinia Greenlaw, Michael Chabon, Sarah Hall, Nam Le and Pankaj Mishra, praised the stories as “darkly playful” saying: ” they take us […]
