“To mark the 25th anniversary of Chicago Quarterly Review, the fall 2019 issue is appropriately huge, as befits Carl Sandburg’s “stormy, husky, brawling,/ City of the Big Shoulders.” Here, in more than 400 pages, are 32 short stories, 20 poems, a suite of photographs and a dozen works of nonfiction. The result isn’t just a literary quarterly; it’s a tour of the bright and darkling plain we call contemporary American literature.” –Michael Dirda