Readings

CQR editor Syed Haider reads in San Francisco

Chicago Quarterly Review editor Syed Haider was one of four writers to read from their work at the Book Club of California in San Francisco on November 9, 2015. Haider and authors Christian Kiefer, Robert Kerwin, and Jack Shoemaker read from work published in Catamaran Literary Reader (CLR), a Santa Cruz-based literary and fine arts quarterly that explores West Coast themes by writers and artists from everywhere. Joining Haider at the event was CQR editor Elizabeth McKenzie, who is also a CLR editor. Haider read “Life of Ganesh,” an excerpt from his forthcoming novel of the same title.

 

CQR editor Syed Haider reads at the Book Club of California. He was joined by CQR editor Elizabeth McKenzie.
CQR editor Syed Haider reads at the Book Club of California. He was joined by CQR editor Elizabeth McKenzie.

 

CQR Volume 14 Release Party and Reading at AWP

Please join us for the release of Volume 14!  The evening will include readings by Volume 14 contributors Christopher Linforth, Karen T. Miller and Laura Sims, a meet and greet with CQR  editors and staff, and light refreshments.  This event is free and open to the public.

Friday, March 2, 2012
6:00-8:00 P.M.
 
Open Books Bookstore
213 West Institute Place
Chicago, IL 60610
 
 

See the flyer below for more details! We hope to see you there!

CQR 14 Launch Party Flyer

 

Upcoming Chicago Writing Events: Northwestern University’s Annual Spring Writer’s Festival

Next week Northwestern University’s Annual Writer’s Festival commences.  While writing workshops are open only to Northwestern students, author readings as well as a guided discussion by writers Brian Bouldrey, Rachel Webster, and Eula Biss are open to the public.

New to the Festival this year is author David Shields, whose controversial book Reality Hunger: A Manifesto has been heralded by James Wood of The New Yorker as “highly- problematic” and “imprecise” and by Chuck Klosterman as what “might be the most intense, thought- accelerating book of the last 10 years”.  Shields is also the author of New York Times Bestseller The Thing About Life is That One Day You’ll Be Dead.  In his most recent anthology The Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death twenty writers were asked to address the concept of death. Publishers Weekly names the result “a collection of extraordinary essays […].”

The festival begins on Tuesday April 12th at 5:30pm with a reading by Nami Mun, author of Miles from Nowhere.  Mun was named Best New Novelist by Chicago Magazine in 2009.  All public events take place at the Hilton Orrington of Evanston, Illinois.  Shields’ reading on April 14th at 5:30pm will conclude the festival.  You can read more about the conference and its authors here.

 

Novel release: To Be With Her, by Senior Editor Syed Afzal Haider

We’re very excited to announce the release of Senior Editor Syed Afzal Haider’s new novel, To Be With Her (Weavers Press). To mark the release of the novel, and the release of CQR 2010, readings will be held at the Booksmith in San Francisco on Thursday, November 11, 2010; and the Capitola Book Cafe on Monday, November 15, 2010 in Santa Cruz, California. Join us for this joint celebration which will feature Haider along with CQR contributors Timothy Crandle, Lynn Martin, Roberta Montgomery, Peter Sheehy, Don Skiles and Laura Wine Paster in San Francisco; John Chandler, Caitlyn He, Vanessa Hemingway, and Randy Splitter in Capitola.SyedAfzal

Chicago Quarterly Review 2010

We’ll be celebrating the upcoming release of our 2010 issue of Chicago Quarterly Review with two West Coast readings, one in San Francisco on Thursday, November 11 at the Booksmith and the other in Santa Cruz at the Capitola Book Cafe on Monday, November 15.  This issue of CQR is our most ambitious ever. We’re thrilled that we’ve been able to give space to twenty-nine excellent writers. If you live in the Bay Area we hope very much you’ll be able to join us.

We’d like to dedicate this 2010 issue of CQR to Mark Cullison, our dear friend and dedicated editor who died suddenly at his home this fall. Mark was a talented playwright, a sensitive and thoughtful editor, a great friend to many people, and above all a devoted husband and loving father to his two children.

Book presentation: Italian writer Clara Sereni’s novel ‘Keeping House’

Clara Sereni, Italian writer, journalist, translator and former Deputy Mayor of the City of Perugia, read from her book Casalinghitudine at the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago in early November 2009.  Casalinghitudine, (Keeping House: A Novel in Recipes), was recently translated into English by Giovanna Miceli-Jeffries and Susan Briziarelli, and published by the SUNY University Press Women Writers in Translation Series.

As Miceli-Jeffries writes in her introduction, “There is at least one recipe for every significant character that takes hold of the memory and the imagination of both the narrator and reader…”

Read more…