Plus: A Hot Publishing Job & Writers To Watch
Sugar Gamers at Graham Crackers Comics.
Posted on February 25, 2015
Local Book Notes: Chicago – Heaven And Hell
Plus: Chicago’s Last Company Town
“Life in the big city can be exhilarating and terrifying, fulfilling and exasperating,” according to the Guild Literary Complex.
“In Urban Realities/Realidades urbanas, February’s installment of “Palabra Pura,” Puerto Rican poet Luis Tubens and students from Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School will share stories about their daily lives in the Windy City.
“The program will take place at La Bruquena Restaurant (2726 West Division Street), from 7:30 p.m. – 9 p.m., on Wednesday, February 18. As always, it will begin with an open mic. Palabra Pura is open to the public (all mother tongues welcome), and is pay-what-you-can ($5 suggested donation).
“Curated by Mary Hawley, a poet and translator whose work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, February’s “Palabra Pura” will examine the perils and triumphs of those who live in the inner city – the dualities that make Chicago a heaven for some and a hell for others.
Posted on February 17, 2015
Local Book Notes: Barbara Byrd-Bennett Caught In Another Big Fat Lie
By Steve Rhodes
“When all hell broke loose two years ago over the yanking of Persepolis from the Chicago Public Schools, Mayor Emanuel’s press handlers wrote it off as a misunderstanding. They said some bureaucrat in the bowels of the central office misunderstood what he or she had been directed to do and things got out of control,” Ben Joravsky reports for the Reader.
“The message got lost in translation, but the bottom line is, we never sent out a directive to ban the book,” Becky Carroll, the CPS spokeswoman at the time, told reporters.
“Well, guess what? It didn’t really happen like that at all.”
Click through to Ben’s story to see the definitive proof that Carroll – and CPS superintendent Barbara Byrd-Bennett – lied.
Posted on February 11, 2015
A Ruinous Rule
By Michael Golden
Clay Hunt was a 28-year-old U.S. Marine veteran who served his country in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In Anbar province, under ambush, Hunt watched more than one of his friends die on the battlefield – images that would replay over and over in his mind’s eye through countless sleepless nights. In 2007, a sniper’s gunshot narrowly missed Hunt’s head, wounding him in the wrist instead. He was treated for the injury in California and also diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Yet after recovering, in 2008 this brave soldier returned to the fight – this time in southern Afghanistan. There he watched two more of his friends lose their lives.
When Clay Hunt came home, he began another courageous fight. He started working with other service members to help them try to defeat the mental demons that he, himself, knew all too well. Hunt lobbied Congress on behalf of veterans and appeared in public service messages geared toward educating Americans about mental health and the unseen wounds of war. But in the end, the depression and guilt he felt for having survived when so many others did not, proved to be just too much. Clay Hunt shot himself to death on March 31, 2011. On the wall inside his apartment in Sugarland, Texas, he left behind a shadow box with photos of the four friends he’d lost in the wars, and the medals he’d earned fighting for his country. Clay Hunt is far from alone. Every year, thousands of proud yet tortured U.S. veterans suffer the same, suicidal fate.
Posted on February 8, 2015
Local Book Notes: MLK The Funkmaster & Tales From A Snowed-In Librarians Convention
Plus: Lucky Prof Writing Vaccine Book; Brian Urlacher Writes A Children’s Book
“This past Sunday, students and community members alike braved the snow to hear Cornel West discuss his new book The Radical King at Rockefeller Chapel. Notwithstanding the talk’s title, West spoke on issues ranging from to Hollywood to Wu-Tang Clan to President Barack Obama,” the Chicago Maroon reports.
Here’s a snippet.
Posted on February 4, 2015