Chicago Quarterly Review Books to release My Postwar Life: New Writings from Japan and Okinawa
“Your Losses Travel With You”
Review from Pakistaniaat Syed Afzal Haider’s cosmopolitan Bildungsroman To Be With Her/Reviewed by Hillary Stringer, Patikstaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies Vol. 3, No. 3
“Someone I’d like You to Meet” by CQR editor Elizabeth McKenzie in the Atlantic magazine’s Fiction 2011 special issue
CQR editor Elizabeth McKenzie’s short story “Someone I’d like You to Meet” was featured in The Atlantic Magazine’s Fiction 2011 special issue: it was one of only nine short stories in a special issue that traditionally showcases the best of contemporary fiction. McKenzie is also the author of Stop That Girl, a collection of short stories that was published in 2006 by Random House, and also MacGregor tells the World: A Novel, Random House 2007. McKenzie has received a Pushcart Prize for her short fiction, and had a story chosen by Dave Eggers for his anthology Best American Nonrequired Reading. She is currently senior editor of the Chicago Quarterly Review. We’re looking forward to her next novel!
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.
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.
Check out CQR editor Jeanie Chung’s latest publications
Jeanie has an essay in the forthcoming issue of Drunken Boat and also in the latest upstreet magazine. Her short stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and have appeared in Timber Creek Review, Madison Review, Hunger Mountain, and upstreet, as well as the anthology The Way We Knew It. A graduate of the MFA in Writing program at Vermont College, she was formerly a sportswriter for the Chicago Sun-Times. Her journalism and interviews have also appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune, among other publications. A fictionalized version of “Cuts and Folds” was selected for The Parlor’s Emerging Writers Festival in 2009.
United States/Japan Creative Artist Fellowship
Chicago Quarterly Review Editor and fiction writer Elizabeth Mckenzie has been awarded a United States/Japan Creative Artist Fellowship through the Japan/US Friendship Commision. She will receive a five month paid residency to live in Japan and pursue a creative project.
Editor Syed Afzal Haider in Taylor Trust Poetry & Prose
Check out CQR editor Syed Afzal Haider’s short story, ‘Colors Of A Day,’ in Taylor Trust Magazine.
What’s New & What’s Next in Chicago Publishing
CQR editors had a great time at the City of Chicago sponsored publishing event ‘What’s New & What’s Next in Chicago Publishing’ last night. Four writers from the 2nd Story ensemble read – the theme was love in all its various guises – and music was provided by the always fantastic Seeking Wonderland. We also enjoyed a conversation with Jill Pollack, director of StoryStudiochicago, before the reading.
Editor Dan Portincaso published in Pank Magazine
CQR editor Dan Portincaso has had a story titled ‘7 pm: Room 71 – Melissa’ published in Pank Magazine.
Open Books, check out December events
A worth cause and a place to volunteer or donate books: Open Books is a nonprofit social venture that operates an extraordinary bookstore, provides community programs, and mobilizes passionate volunteers to promote literacy in Chicago and beyond. We enhance lives through reading, writing, and theNEWSWORTHY power of used books.
To learn more about us and find out how you can get involved, visit us at http://www.open-books.org!
Book Review: The Resurrection of the Body, by Armando Maggi
The Resurrection of the Body: Pier Paolo Pasolini from Saint Paul to Sade, by Armando Maggi, (University of Chicago Press, 2009) is an extremely rigorous study of Pasolini’s final works: the screenplay Saint Paul, the scenario for Porn-Theo-Colossal, the immense and unfinished novel Petrolio, and his notorious final film, Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom, an adaptation of the writings of the Marquis de Sade.
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…”