Chicago -
Plus: Lindblom’s Plagiaree & Berwyn’s Mini Comic Con
“[Veronica Roth] penned her first bestselling novel Divergent while a senior at Northwestern University. It’s now premiering as an anticipated blockbuster of a film series, and she’s only 25.”
Posted on March 14, 2014
By Steve Rhodes
“A 30-year-old webcomics artist who raised more than $50,000 on Kickstarter has burned the books his donors paid for because, he says, he ran out of money to ship them,” DNAinfo Chicago reports.
“In late February, John Campbell, who lives in Wicker Park, told his fans on the online crowdsourcing platform that ‘It’s Over’ and published a video of himself burning 127 copies of his book, Sad Pictures for Children.”
What a dick.
Posted on March 12, 2014
The Kids Have Spoken
Hide your schools, hide your homes, hide your children, ’cause he’s wrecking it all.
Posted on March 10, 2014
Plus: Economics For Humans & Literary Rock ‘N’ Roll
1. Split This Rock.
“The March 2014 issue of Poetry, now available online, presents 24 poems from 16 poets addressing history, society and current events, in a portfolio co-edited with Split This Rock, an organization that fosters a national network of socially engaged poets.
“Poetry can tell the true American story,” says Split This Rock executive director Sarah Browning. “We chose these writers from an ever-growing list of poets of provocation and witness whom we wildly admire. Surely we are living in a golden age of American poetry. And at its glittering center, leading the way, are poets of conscience such as those gathered here.”
“Joy Harjo, Yusef Komunyakaa, Dunya Mikhail and Anne Waldman are among the poets included in this special portfolio.”
Posted on March 4, 2014
Plus: Name That Graffiti
1. Chicago Tag Book.
“A Blackbook with several tags and signatures mostly from Chicago, with a few international heads. 2006 – 2013.”
Posted on February 27, 2014
By The Highland Park Public Library
Because that’s where the books are.
Posted on February 25, 2014
Taylor Branch vs. Northwestern
“College athletes are not slaves,” writes Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Taylor Branch in The Cartel: Inside the Rise and Imminent Fall of the NCAA. “Yet to survey the scene – corporations and universities enriching themselves on the backs of uncompensated young men, whose status as ‘student-athletes’ deprives them of the right to due process guaranteed by the Constitution – is to catch the unmistakable whiff of the plantation.”
*
From Chapter 5, “The Myth Of The ‘Student-Athlete.'”
Today, much of the NCAA’s moral authority – indeed, much of the justification for its existence – is vested in its claim to protect what it calls the student-athlete. The term is meant to conjure the nobility of amateurism and the precedence of scholarship over athletic endeavor. But the origins of “student-athlete” lie not in a disinterested ideal but in a sophistic formulation designed, as the sports economist Andrew Zimbalist has written, to help the NCAA in its “fight against workers’ compensation insurance claims for injured football players.”
Posted on February 21, 2014
By The Darrow Committee
On the 76th anniversary of famed attorney Clarence Darrow’s death, this year’s annual Darrow commemoration on Thursday, March 13, looks at the “The Death of the American Trial” with professor Robert P. Burns, author of a 2009 book by the same title.
A special unique aspect of this year’s event will be several dozen Darrow-related items from the collection of the late actor Leslie Nielsen, courtesy of his widow Barbaree Earl. Nielsen was a fan who also played the attorney in theatrical productions. The collection includes videos, playbooks and other items treasured by the actor, known for his wide range of projects including Airplane!, The Naked Gun series and numerous TV roles.
Posted on February 17, 2014
Plus: Orland Park Porn And Proyecto Latina
“Proyecto Latina and Gozamos are partnering to launch a groundbreaking writing initiative to cultivate a new generation of Latino writers and help promote Chicago as a mecca of powerful Latino voices,” Ray Salazar writes on his White Rhino blog.
“The unique partnership brings together two organizations in the community that value the power of stories told through a variety of traditional and innovative platforms. The initiative will be housed at the 1900 South in the Pilsen neighborhood, where the idea was conceived by writers and media makers Diana Pando, Luz Chavez and Stephanie Manriquez.”
Posted on February 14, 2014
By Laura Janota/Roosevelt University
Linh Dinh, author of the award-winning novel Love Like Hate, will read from his work as part of this spring’s Roosevelt University Reading Series at 5 p.m. Monday, Feb. 17, in Roosevelt’s Gage Gallery.
Dinh was born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1963, came to the U.S. in 1975, and has also lived in Italy (as a guest of the International Parliament of Writers) and England (as a David T.K. Wong Fellow at the University of East Anglia).
He also is the author of two collections of stories, Fake House and Blood and Soap; and five books of poems, including All Around What Empties Out and Borderless Bodies.
Posted on February 10, 2014
