My Postwar Life: New Writings from Japan and Okinawa

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 12^th 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 14^th at 5:30pm will conclude the festival.  You can read more about the conference and its authors here.

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.