AROUND TOWN: Chicago Literary Hall of Fame

Richard Wright on Chicago:

“Perhaps more is known about it, how it runs, how it kills, how it loves, steals, helps, gives, cheats, and crushes 

than any other city in the world.”

How do you build community? One way is through relationships and learning – and the bonds are more likely to last when the experience is fun. The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, long championed by writer Donald G. Evans, does just this by sponsoring various literary awards, walking tours, a book club, and a variety of parties across town. Robert Charles and I, along with other friends, have met dozens of new people through two of the Hall of Fame’s book club gatherings this year. The first was an evening’s conversation with Alex Kotlowtiz, discussing his now-classic “There Are No Children Here” in an Oak Park home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (the Harry S. Adams House, Wright’s last residential commission in Oak Park.) The conversation swayed from the power of storytelling to the challenges of poverty and violence to the value of resilience and resistance to the fundamental need for hope. The second event was a conversation with Liesl Olson, discussing her excellent “Chicago Renaissance: Literature and Art in the Midwest Metropolis.” The evening included rollicking stories about the writers, editors and book reviewers who shaped Chicago Modernism. Olson is a superior scholar, working now at the Newberry Library, and an enormously talented storyteller, on page and in-person. The party was hosted on a lovely summer evening in the backyard of Dave Cihla and Karen Olenski's handsome Four Square in Ravenswood Manor.