By: Maggie Hellwig more ›

What do you get when you take Harlem Renaissance literature and adapt it to a one-man stage performance? Well, here's your chance to find out. more ›

Non-fiction Pulitzer Prize finalist Luis Urrea is a renowned writer of all genres and one of the creative writing professors at UIC. Next week he appears at one of Trib Nation's Events. more ›

A gas station at the corner of Rosemont and Western in 1962 Chicago. That's the setting for this brand new story from author Barry Gifford. more ›

Brad Parsons's timely new tome provides an in-depth account of the origins, uses and benefits (both real and purported), eventual disappearance and recent resurgence of bitters. more ›

By: Maggie Hellwig more ›

It’s just about the middle of November, which means thousands of writers worldwide are nearly halfway through a ridiculous and admirable pursuit. National Novel Writing Month — or NaNoWriMo to get it all into one breath — is an annual month-long challenge during which writers attempt to write 50,000 words in 30 days. The emphasis is quantity over quality, to simply get the words out and onto the screen instead of nitpicking sentence structure or mulling over plot points. more ›

The Empty Bottle kicks off the first meeting of Books, Booze & Brunch this Sunday with a discussion of Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary. more ›

Back in 2006, Leon Logothetis trekked across the States on only $5 a day and the generosity of strangers, and then he turned it into the TV show Amazing Adventures of a Nobody. Well, he’s up to his nomadic antics again, this time traveling from NYC to LA in the Kindness Cab and giving away free taxi rides along the way. more ›

The Chicago Public Library is asking Chicagoans to answer a few questions about their reading habits so the library can better develop their programming to better match what patrons want. more ›

Local independent publisher featherproof has a reputation for publishing edgy and envelope-pushing books. Their publications tend to contain supernatural experiences, secret agents, or complicated and conflicted characters (and at times, their books contain all of the above). And now they’re back with a novel by Tim Kinsella titled which looks to be yet another dense and rewarding read. more ›

For many Chicagoans, most of what they've seen of Dmitry Samarov is from the back seat of his Scion cab, or what they've gleaned from his observations of the city via his paintings and pencil drawings. Now that University of Chicago Press has released Samarov's first book, Hack: Stories From a Chicago Cab, the artist, writer and cab driver is showing up everywhere, from the pages of The Trib to Bob Edward's Talk of the Nation to an art show at Saki Records with musician Chris Brokaw (see the info for tonight's opening reception of "Music and Baseball" at the end of the interview). more ›

Tomorrow, University of Chicago Press is publishing Dmitry Samarov's "Hack: Stories From A Chicago Cab." more ›

A newish monthly literary reading series and potluck, Here’s the Story, is happening tomorrow night. Each month, they’ll bring five readers to Stage773 at 1225 W. Belmont. Five audience members get to tell stories, too. They can tell any sorts of stories, be they fact or fiction. Audience members get 50 points to doll out between the walk-up stories, and the person with the most points gets invited back the following month as a featured reader. We’ve been to amateur reading events, and events with only published authors, and from our own experience, it doesn’t really matter if you’ve been published in a literary journal or not; writers of all calibers have great stories to tell, so we look forward to a friendly mix of both. more ›

Dan Sinker has compiled all six months of the twitterstream into The F***ing Epic Quest of @MayorEmanuel, a book which adds bits of context. Is it still funny? more ›

Don't call it a 9/11 novel. Whatever author Alex Shakar's ambitious, intricate and searching second novel Luminarium may be, it is much more than its backdrop of the fifth anniversary of that attack. The book follows Fred Brounian as he makes sense of himself and his world, where his software company is hijacked by the "Military-Entertainment Complex," the only positive vibes in his shambles of a personal life seem to be side effects of a neuroscientific research study, and texts and emails from his comatose twin brother start popping up. As a writer, Shakar is somehow a satirist of technology, an experimental scientist, a spiritual guide and a game designer rolled into one, but to make a setting such as 9/11 commemoration recede into a supporting role, he also moonlights as a magician. more ›

The tenth anniversary of the One Book, One Chicago program rings in with a Saul Bellow classic. more ›

This year's annual poster challenge from the Chicago Public Library celebrates the tenth anniversary of the "One Book, One Chicago" program. more ›

15 years after Sapphire made a literary splash with Push (which inspired the film Precious, author Sapphire returns with a new book. more ›

In this roundup, a local writer wins a prestigious award. Poetry Foundation's new apps. StoryStudio Chicago readies some writing classes and more. more ›

Claire Zulkey's lineup for tomorrow's Funny Ha-Ha at Hideout is particularly strong. more ›

tonight, The Ludington Building, 1104 S. Wabash Ave., 6 p.m. to 11 p.m., free more ›

The One Book One Chicago program is turning 10 this year, and to generate some buzz and intrigue about the next selection, Chicago Public Library is running a “Who Am I?” campaign. They’ve placed clues all around town. These posters and buttons have this dude on him. They’re asking people to report back where they’ve seen him by posting on Flickr. And they’re asking for your guesses as to who he might be. You can tweet your guess with the hashtag #1b1c and follow @1book1chicago to see what other people might be guessing. more ›

Author Jim Butcher is back with his 13th book in The Dresden Files series, featuring Chicago's very own wizard detective. more ›

To encourage more young people to utilize the Chicago Public Library, CPL a series of meetups at bars across the city to engage in what they can offer. Bars, booze and books? Yes, please. more ›

The latest addition to the shelves of our home bar may not be drinkable, but we're no less excited for it to join the team. Design*Sponge recently clued us in to An Illustrated Guide to Cocktails, a handsome little book written by Orr Shtuhl with accompanying artwork by Elizabeth Graeber. more ›

Ever wonder what your cat does all day while you're at work? This cartoon book has some theories. more ›

For anyone who likes dark, macabre and a little bit weird, Rotters is a book to consider getting your grimy little hands on. Though the cover looks disturbing, author Daniel Kraus sets up his story innocently enough. Joey seems like an average high-school student. But when his mother suddenly dies, he’s left with no living relatives except his father. Joey’s never met him, but he has no choice but to ship off to a small town in Iowa to start a new school and a new life living with a stranger. As if that isn’t challenging enough, Joey’s dad, Harnett, who lives in a cabin on the outskirts of town that smells like garbage, is totally uninterested in working on any sort of relationship with his long lost son. At this point, about 80 pages in, Rotters feels like a wholesome YA book that’s on the path to teaching readers an important message about father-son relationships. more ›

Rebecca Makkai's first novel reads like a fairy tale, but she weaves in several heavy thought starters as her main characters partake on a whimsical and adventurous road trip. The Borrower follows a librarian named Lucy in her efforts to help a 10-year old patron, Ian, along his bumpier-than-usual adolescence for possibly being gay. Ian loves reading, so Lucy starts by recommending books with protagonists who are a little out there and unusual, hoping to inspire him to be comfortable embracing whatever makes him different from his peers. But when Ian shows up at the library early one morning and begs Lucy to help him run away, she realizes how unhappy and desperate he's become. She feels empowered to take more dramatic action to help his situation. So they get in her car and drive away. Lucy tries to figure out what to do, but as she drives across the Missouri state line with Ian humming in the backseat, she realizes she has become a kidnapper. more ›

The Borrower is a fictional story of escape, and it also deals with the very heavy realities that LGBT teens and youth face when being persecuted for their sexuality. more ›