Lit-Link Round-up

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This is cool: The Handsome Family in the New Yorker.

Allison Amend’s A Nearly Perfect Copy is called “delectable” by Alan Cheuse on NPR.

Caroline Leavitt does the TNB Self-Interview.

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So look: Chicago isn’t always The Place To Be in terms of literary events (although wow, it’s really getting there, in part due to the dynamic super-duo of Victor David Giron and Jacob Knabb of Curbside Splendor, who singlehandedly seem to be responsible for, like, half the book-music events in the city), but this week the City of Big Shoulders is exploding with literary talent.

Emily Rapp and Rob Roberge are reading with Rus Bradburd and Sarah Gerkensmeyer at Sunday Salon Chicago tonight. The great Patrick Somerville emcees.

Tomorrow, Rapp and Roberge are tag-teaming for a “Write on the Edge” seminar at StoryStudio Chicago.

Tuesday, the inimitable boy-genius-who-is-I-guess-not-a-boy-anymore-and-shit-that-makes-me-feel-old, Joe Meno, joins forces with Rob and rising talent Lindsay Hunter, at the Empty Bottle for Words + Music. It’s free if you RSVP.

On May 22, one of my favorite indie booksellers in the country, The Book Cellar (where I have been not paying for my prosecco since I had my first book release party there in 2006, 9 months pregnant and wearing my mother’s shoes because my feet were too swollen to fit into my own), is hosting Rob with lit luminary and recent Guggenheim fellow Terese Svoboda, and the fabulously talented and glam Sheri Joseph and Ru Freeman. Well, actually, Terese is pretty damn glam too. That hair of hers is always perfect. She is kinda rocking the Goth-Helen-Miren thing. Hmm. Rob shoulda maybe bought new shoes for this one…

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Chicago boy Patrick Somerville also made this bad-ass-looking-thing, The Bridge, over at FX.

Live in LA? Don’t feel left out. The playwright son of Bill Ayers, Zayd Dohrn’s, latest play is opening there first, even though he lives here in Chi…we have to wait until summer.

Live in Brooklyn? Geez, you don’t need me to announce your literary events then. But here’s something cool: Community Bookstore is expanding.

Live in London? Okay, your week may have us all beat. The Booker Prize finalists are in town. And here are some fascinating interviews with the contenders, including Sunday Rumpus alum, Josip Novakovich.

Gina Frangello is the author of four books of fiction and a forthcoming memoir, Blow Your House Down. Her novel A Life in Men (Algonquin 2014) is currently under development by Netflix as a series produced by Charlize Theron’s production company, Denver & Delilah. Her most recent novel, Every Kind of Wanting (Counterpoint 2016) was included on several “best of” lists for 2016, including Chicago Magazine’s and The Chicago Review of Books’. She has nearly 20 years of experience as an editor, having founded both the independent press Other Voices Books, and the fiction section of the popular online literary community The Nervous Breakdown. She has also served as the Sunday editor for The Rumpus, and as the faculty editor for both TriQuarterly Online and The Coachella Review. Her short fiction, essays, book reviews, and journalism have been published in such venues as Salon, the LA Times, Ploughshares, the Boston Globe, BuzzFeed, the Chicago Tribune, the Huffington Post, Psychology Today, and in many other magazines and anthologies. After two decades of teaching at many universities, including UIC, Northwestern’s School of Continuing Studies, UCLA Extension, the University of California Riverside Palm Desert, Roosevelt University, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago, Gina is excited to be a student again at the University of Illinois-Chicago’s Program for Writers, where she has returned to complete the PhD she left unfinished twenty years ago. More from this author →