Join the Writer’s Studio community for instructor Cecilia Pinto's FREE craft mini-lesson on The End in Sight, looking at the connection between story beginnings and endings. After that, at 5:30pm, it's time for our always-inspiring, often-instructive creative writing open mic! 

REGISTER HERE

This signature event is an opportunity to foster your writing, hear the ideas and work of others, and, if you’re so inclined, add your voice and stories to the mix.

To read at the open mic, please prepare up to two double-spaced pages in twelve-point, Times New Roman font. You can hold an open mic spot in two ways: online through the event registration link or in person. When you register for the event, this question will allow you to sign up to read as well: Will you be reading/performing at the open mic? If you answer yes to that question, you will receive a personalized email confirming your open mic spot. If you do not see that question, the online reader signup has closed, so you will need to sign up in person. Three or more spots will be held for in-person signup at the event. Please arrive early to be added to that list.

About the Instructor: Cecilia Pinto has had her poetry and prose published in a variety of journals including Quarter After Eight, Fence, The Seneca Review, Triquarterly, and RHINO. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for poetry and an Illinois Arts Council award and won the Esquire short fiction contest. She is also a CAAP grant recipient. In 2015, she was voted a writer to watch by The Guild Literary Society.

So What? Press, Comix Revolution, and the Evanston Literary Festival present a discussion on the vitality of Chicagoland's small press comics scene. Chicago is home to a healthy swatch of creators working in many different styles and genres. With the growth of shows like CAKE and Chicago Zine Fest, these creators have found new ways to expand their voices and come together as a community. We'll address the benefits of such growth as well as the challenges creators still face. Panelists include Evanston locals Keiler Roberts (Powdered Milk) and Scott Roberts (Get Uncomfortable With Being Uncomfortable); Jeff Zwirek (Burning Building Comix); and Marnie Galloway (In the Sounds and Seas).  

Rebecca Sive's Vote Her In: Your Guide to Electing Our First Woman President addresses the unrealized dream of millions of American women: electing our first woman President. It makes the case for the urgency of women attaining equal executive political power at all levels, including the presidency, and offers a comprehensive strategy for every woman to be a part of this campaign—the most important of our lifetimes. Sive speaks with Michele Weldon, the editorial director of Take the Lead and author of Escape Points. This event is cosponsored by Take the Lead.

About Vote Her In: “inspiring, savvy and persuasive on why America needs more female leadership now. Rebecca offers not just the analysis, but the practical steps every woman and man can take to help get women into the C-suite and the Oval Office. And argues that the time to do it is now.”--Jessica Yellin, former CNN White House correspondent

About the Author: Rebecca Sive’s career has spanned executive positions − in business, government, philanthropy, academia, and the not-for-profit sector − where she has earned a reputation as a smart and inspirational women’s leadership and politics strategist, writer, speaker, and teacher. At the University of Chicago, Harris School of Public Policy, Sive was the founding Program and Academic Director of its Women in Public Leadership executive education initiative, and was a lecturer. Sive has received distinguished achievement awards from her undergraduate alma mater, Carleton College, and from the University of Illinois (from which she received an M.A. in American History), and leadership awards from the United Negro College Fund, the Jaycees, and the YWCA, among others. Sive was among the national leaders who developed women's issues agendas for Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. She was a gubernatorial appointee to the Illinois Human Rights Commission; a mayoral appointee as a commissioner of the Chicago Park District; a founding board member of the Chicago Foundation for Women; is in Feminists Who Changed America, University of Illinois Press (2006), and has served as a director of many other organizations and foundations.

About the Interlocutor: Michele Weldon is editorial director of Take the Lead, and is emerita faculty in journalism at Northwestern University, where she taught on the graduate and undergraduate levels for 18 years. She is director of the Northwestern Public Voices Fellowship through The OpEd Project, where she is a senior leader. Weldon is the author of four nonfiction books, I Closed My Eyes (1999); Writing To Save Your Life (2001); Everyman News (2008); and her latest, Escape Points: A Memoir (2015) was named one of the best books of 2015 by Booklist of the American Library Association and was a finalist in the Society of Midland Authors Literary Awards for 2015. She has contributed chapters in seven other books and anthologies. Her commentary appears regularly in outlets such as New York Times, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, CNN, Cosmopolitan, Washington Post, Huffington Post, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, Medium, Pacific Standard, Quartz, Slate and hundreds more. Weldon co-directed TEDX NorthwesternU 2014 and competed in the 2012 Moth Story Chicago GrandSlam in 2012. She is a frequent guest on radio, TV and digital sites.

Founded as a grassroots poetry workshop in Evanston in 1976, RHINO Poetry publishes an award-winning annual journal of poetry, flash prose, and translations.  We also host The Poetry Forum--free monthly poetry workshops at the Evanston Public Library--and RHINO Reads!--free monthly readings at Bookends & Beginnings. 

As part of Evanston Lit Fest 2019, we are thrilled to host a reading of global poetry and translations, with work in English translated from Japanese, Serbian, Punjabi, Portuguese, and Spanish.  As editors, we believe that poetry crosses borders in powerful and important ways.  Readers and audiences deserve to hear the voices that emerge around the globe in a variety of languages.  We would like to welcome these voices to the Evanston community and hope you will join us! The reading will be followed by a 15 min. open mic for poets. Featuring host Virginia Bell and readers Naoko Fujimoto, Faisal Mohyuddin, Zafar Malik, Carlo Matos, Lucina Schell, Maja Teref, and Steven Teref.

The City of Light. For many, these four words instantly conjure late nineteenth-century Paris and the garish colors of Toulouse-Lautrec’s iconic posters. More recently, the Eiffel Tower’s nightly show of sparkling electric lights has come to exemplify our fantasies of Parisian nightlife. Though we reflect longingly on such scenes, in Illuminated Paris, Hollis Clayson shows that there’s more to these clichés than meets the eye. In this richly illustrated book, she traces the dramatic evolution of lighting in Paris and how artists responded to the shifting visual and cultural scenes that resulted from these technologies. While older gas lighting produced a haze of orange, new electric lighting was hardly an improvement: the glare of experimental arc lights—themselves dangerous—left figures looking pale and ghoulish. As Clayson shows, artists’ representations of these new colors and shapes reveal turn-of-the-century concerns about modernization as electric lighting came to represent the harsh glare of rapidly accelerating social change. At the same time, in part thanks to American artists visiting the city, these works of art also produced our enduring romantic view of Parisian glamour and its Belle Époque.

About the Author: Hollis Clayson, Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities at Northwestern, is a historian of modern art who specializes in 19th-century Europe, especially France, and transatlantic exchanges between France and the U.S. Her first book, Painted Love: Prostitution in French Art of the Impressionist Era, appeared in 1991 (Yale U. Press). Paris in Despair: Art and Everyday Life Under Siege (1870-71) was published in 2002 (U. of Chicago Press). In 2013, she curated the exhibition ELECTRIC PARIS at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA. An expanded version of the exhibition was at the Bruce Museum of Art in Greenwich, CT during the spring and summer of 2016. Her co-edited book (with André Dombrowski), Is Paris Still the Capital of the Nineteenth Century? Essays on Art and Modernity, 1850-1900, appeared in 2016 (Routledge). Her new book, Illuminated Paris: Essays on Art and Lighting in the Belle Époque (U. of Chicago Press), will appear in spring 2019. Her current project is The Inescapability of the Eiffel Tower.

In 2016, when millions of Americans voted for Donald Trump, many believed his claims that personal wealth would free him from wealthy donors and allow him to “drain the swamp.” But then Trump appointed several billionaires and multimillionaires to high-level positions and pursued billionaire-friendly policies, such as cutting corporate income taxes. Why the change from his fiery campaign rhetoric and promises to the working class? This should not be surprising, argue Benjamin I. Page and Matthew J. Lacombe: As the gap between the wealthiest and the rest of us has widened, the few who hold one billion dollars or more in net worth have begun to play a more and more active part in politics—with serious consequences for democracy in the United States. Join them as they discuss their book Billionaires and Stealth Politics. with Tony Chen of the Political Science Department at Northwestern. Cosponsored by the Northwestern University College Democrats and the Democratic Party of Evanston.

Anyone can write a book. The question is, “How do you draw attention to it?” The Evanston Public Library is offering a service that aims to answer that question. Introducing Biblioboard. Learn how this and other related products can help you format, publish, and showcase your self-published materials. Want to get your ebook into the library? Now you can. Join Collection Development Manager Elizabeth Bird in a lecture format as she walks you through the process. Chicago Writers Association and Off-Campus Writers Workshop cosponsor this program.

About the Speaker: Elizabeth Bird is the Collection Development Manger of Evanston Public Library. Her blog A Fuse #8 Production is hosted by School Library Journal. Elizabeth reviews for Kirkus Reviews and the New York Times. She is the co-author of Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Children's Literature and the upcoming picture book The Great Santa Stakeout, out this September.

J. Rohr joins us for the May offering of Fresh Meat, a live workshop session for Chicago-area storytellers. He will be performing a run through of his one man show “I’m Not Batman”, a comedic exploration of growing up and failed heroism as a romantic burns out into a cynic — feedback is appreciated. Doors open at 8:00. Event begins at 8:15. Food and drink are available all evening. 

J. Rohr is a Chicago storyteller, who grew up in Skokie then lived in the city for too short a time before moving back to the suburbs.  His personal adventures have included near death experiences, run ins with the law, romance, stabbings, and things he’s legally advised not to mention.  He performs stories and poetry throughout the city, and his fiction has appeared in periodicals such as Ireland’s Dodging the Rain, Perihelion, and The Mad Scientist Journal.  He currently writes the blog Honesty is Not Contagious.

Tell your story! We give you seven minutes and thunderous applause. You tell your story any way you want--off book, from paper, from your phone, from the signal from your fearless leader. Just want to listen? Sure, come and hear stories. You might get tempted to sign up...and we're ok with that. Sign up starts at 5:30. Stories start at 6:00. Hosts are David Barish and Melissa Perrin.

Unless you lived through the 1970s, it seems impossible to understand it at all. Drug delirium, groovy fashion, religious cults, mega corporations, glitzy glam, hard rock, global unrest—from our 2018 perspective, the seventies are often remembered as a bizarre blur of bohemianism and disco. With Pick Up the Pieces, John Corbett transports us back in time to this thrillingly tumultuous era through a playful exploration of its music. Song by song, album by album, he draws our imaginations back into one of the wildest decades in history. Co-sponsored by CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM.

About the Author: John Corbett is the author of several books, including A Listener’s Guide to Free Improvisation, Vinyl Freak: Love Letters to a Dying Medium, and Microgroove: Forays into Other Music. He is co-owner of Corbett vs. Dempsey, an art gallery in Chicago. 

Please join us at Bookends & Beginnings as we kick off the week-long 2019 Evanston Literary Festival with local poets and writers. Reading new work on themes of renewal, celebration, and gratitude, hosts Dina Elenbogen and Ignatius Valentine Aloysius will join authors Reginald Gibbons, Chris Green, Mary Hawley, Parneshia Jones, Mike Puican, Cornelia Maude Spelman, Sachin Waikar, and Nancy Burke. ​

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/632085643882352/

Join us for a discussion about heritage baking with Evanston’s own Ellen King of Hewn Bakery.  Ellen will do a short demo, followed by a discussion and Q & A.  Delicious samples will be served as well! Ellen’s new cookbook Heritage Baking: Recipes for Rustic Breads and Pastries Baked with Artisanal Flour will be available for purchase and signing.

A great chance to celebrate Evanston’s talented and diverse literary community, the Evanston Literary Festival Book Fair will showcase 39 local authors, presses, and literary organizations. Authors' books will be available for purchase and signing; refreshments will be served. Don’t miss it!

Vendors include:

Presses, Publications, and Organizations:
Amika Press, Catree Books, Chicago Quarterly Review, Evanston Literary Festival, Gibson House Press, Helicon Literary & Arts Magazine, Off Campus Writers' Workshop — OCWW, Path Press Inc., Rhino Poetry, Sisters in Crime Chicagoland, Tortoise Books, Turning the Page

Authors:
Barbara Pawlikowski, Barbara Stock, Carey Anne Farrell, Cheryl Y. Judice, Dina Elenbogen, Faisal Mohyuddin, Jan Marie Aramini, John McCarthy, John R. Lyman, Jon Ziomek, Joyce Burns Zeiss, Judith Fradin, Libby Hill, Lori Orlinsky, Manuel Alemán, Mary Barr, Michael Stone, Nancy Burke, Pauline G Dembicki, Richard Cahan, Richard Lanyon, Scott Kenemore, Shabana Mir, Susan Spaeth Cherry, Tara Foster, Thomas Burke, Tim Schell

Ken Krimstein, a cartoonist regularly featured in The New Yorker, appears to discuss his new graphic novel, "The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt". Interviewed by So What? Press publisher Dave Kelly with a book signing to follow. Krimstein’s book is the subject of a current exhibit at the Spertus Institute in Chicago.

Both renowned creators in their own fields, Chicago novelist Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler’s Wife) and Scottish cartoonist Eddie Campbell (From Hell) began creating comics together in 2014 and, after a long distance relationship, married this past year. Bizarre Romance, their new project, provides thirteen stories set in a variety of situations and styles written by Audrey and illustrated by Eddie. They’ll discuss the book and the intricacies of working with your partner on collaborative art. Bill Savage moderates.  Professor Savage teaches English Lit at Northwestern University, where he regularly incorporates graphic novels into his course work.

Evanston author Daniel Kraus will discuss and sign his novel, The Shape of Water. Based on an original idea by Guillermo del Toro and Daniel Kraus, The Shape of Water has been developed from the ground up as a bold two-tiered release—one story interpreted by two artists, as an Oscar-winning film directed by del Toro and a new novel written by Kraus. He will be joined in conversation by Christa Desir, author of five YA books, including Fault Line and Bleed Like Me.

Please join us for a special RHINO Poetry reading, featuring Annah Browning, Aricka Foreman, Faisal Mohyuddin, and David Welch, and RHINO editors, including Darren Angle, Naoko Fujimoto, Gail Goepfert, Beth McDermott, and Nick Tryling.

Annah Browning recently completed her Ph.D. from the Program for Writers at The University of Illinois-Chicago. She is the author of a chapbook, The Marriage (Horse Less Press, 2013), and her poems have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Indiana Review, Willow Springs, and other journals. She is poetry editor of Grimoire, an online literary magazine of dark arts. 

Aricka Foreman’s chapbook Dream with a Glass Chamber was released by YesYes Books in 2016. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Drunken Boat, Torch Poetry: A Journal for African American Women, Minnesota Review, Union Station Magazine, Vinyl Poetry, RHINO, shufPoetry, Day One, and Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poems for the Next Generation (Viking Penguin), among others. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem and the Callaloo Writers Workshop, and is the Enumerate Editor for The Offing.

Faisal Mohyuddin is the author of The Displaced Children of Displaced Children (Eyewear, 2018), winner of the 2017 Sexton Prize for Poetry, and The Riddle of Longing (Backbone, 2017). He teaches English at Highland Park High School and lives in Chicago.

David Welch is the author of the forthcoming collection, Everyone Who Is Dead, and of a chapbook, It Is Such a Good Thing to Be In Love with You. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Cincinnati Review, Greensboro Review, Pleiades, Meridian, and RHINO. He teaches creative writing and popular literature at DePaul University, where he is Assistant Director of Literary Programs and Outreach.

Evanston breeds great cartoonists: Lynda Barry, Jessica Abel, Gahan Wilson, Emil Ferris, and many more acclaimed artists were born, lived, or currently reside in the city. Meet up with the next generation of Evanston creators now working in comics. The next great graphic novelist might be under your very nose!

Featuring Markisan Naso (Voracious), Gene Kannenberg Jr. (Qodèxx), Jeff Zwirek (Burning Building Comix), Verzell James (Jeremiah Black), and Leo Mancini (Sharkman).

The election of Donald Trump showed how the American electoral system is clearly falling apart. In It’s Time To Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics, Roosevelt University political science professor David Faris offers accessible, actionable strategies for American institutional reform. Faris will discuss his ideas with John K. Wilson, author of President Trump Unveiled: Exposing the Bigoted Billionaire (trumpunveiled.com).

Presented in conjunction with the NU College Democrats.

Daniel Borzutzky, the National Book Award-winning poet (The Performance of Becoming Human) will read from his new book, Lake Michigan, a series of 19 lyric poems imagining a prison camp located on the beaches of a Chicago that is privatized, racially segregated, and overrun by a brutal police force. Patricia Smith noted, "Borzutzky’s surreal and terrifying lakeside dreamscape—sparked by the real-world specter of the city’s infamous ‘blacksite’ interrogation warehouse—is deftly crafted and chilling in its proximity to the real.”

He will be joined by Peruvian poet and professor Margarita Saona, who will also be reading her poetry. She is head of the department of Hispanic and Italian Studies at the University of Illinois. She has published numerous articles, two books on literary and cultural criticism, Novelas familiares: Figuraciones de la nación en la novela latinoamericana contemporánea  (Rosario, 2004) and Memory Matters in Transitional Perú (Londres, 2014), two books of short fiction, Comehoras (Lima, 2008) and Objeto perdido (Lima, 2012). Corazón de hojalata/Tin Heart  (Chicago, 2017) is her first book of poems.

Liam Heneghan (an Evanstonian and DePaul environmental science professor) talks with Betsy Bird, the Collection Development Manager at the Evanston Public Library, about his book Beasts at Bedtime: Revealing the Environmental Wisdom in Children’s Literature (University of Chicago Press).

Liam Heneghan is professor of environmental science and studies at DePaul University. He is a Dubliner, an occasional poet, a tin whistle player, and a father of two grown children to whom he read every night of their early years.

Betsy Bird is the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library, and the former Youth Materials Specialist of New York Public Library. She reviews for Kirkus, served on the 2007 Newbery Award committee, and her children's literature blog, A Fuse #8 Production, is hosted by School Library Journal. She is the author of the picture book Giant Dance Party (Greenwillow, 2013) illustrated by Brandon Dorman, and a co-author on the nonfiction book Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature (Candlewick, 2014) which she wrote with fellow bloggers Julie Danielson and Peter Sieruta.

Originally published in 1942, the book They Knew Lincoln is part memoir and part history, an account of author John E. Washington’s childhood among African Americans in Washington, DC, and of the black people who knew or personally encountered Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln. On publication, a reviewer noted that the “collection of Negro stories, memories, legends about Lincoln” seemed “to fill such an obvious gap in the material about Lincoln that one wonders why no one ever did it before.” Yet after its first printing sold out almost immediately, the book was never reprinted and has remained difficult to obtain—until its republication this year by Oxford University Press in an edition edited by Northwestern history professor Kate Masur. Join us as Niala Boodhoo, host of the statewide public radio talk show The 21st, conducts a fascinating interview with Kate Masur about the story of this book—a newly revived classic of African American history.

Tell your story! We give you 7 minutes and thunderous applause. You tell your story any way you want--off book, from paper, from your phone, from the signal from your fearless leader. Just want to listen? Sure, come and hear stories. You might get tempted to sign up...and we're ok with that. Sign up starts at 5:30. Stories start at 6:00.

In this special talk for Mother's Day, Northwestern professor Pamela Bannos’ discusses her new biography of Vivian Maier, Vivian Maier: A Photographer’s Life and Afterlife. Her book reveals how the story of the nanny savant has blinded us to Maier’s true achievements, as well as her intentions. Bannos contrasts Maier’s life with the mythology that strangers—mostly the men who have profited from her work—have created around her absence.

Ditch the brunch and celebrate Mother’s Day with award-winning Evanston cartoonist Keiler Roberts. Roberts’ acclaimed book Sunburning and her long-running series Powdered Milk unflinchingly depict her complicated life as an artist and mother to young children. Join us for an intimate conversation with Roberts as she discusses her personal journey as mother and comics creator.

Co-sponsored by CAKE -- The Chicago Alternative Comics Expo -– and moderated by fellow parent and cartoonist Jeff Zwirek.

Be a part of non-violent action. Join us as we gather again this year at Bookends and Beginnings in Evanston to offer our voices in resistance to the current state of local, national, and global affairs that threaten to pull us apart and even set us against each other. The world is on fire! Bring your voices and hearts to this singular event, as you hear authors and activists read from original works expressing their thoughts and opinions based on this year's theme. 
Our reading lineup is (not in order):
Nina Kavin (activist and founder/writer of Dear Evanston) 
Rachel Jamison Webster (poet/writer/Director of Creative Writing in the Department of English at Northwestern University)
Dan Stolar (writer)
Liana Wallace (ETHS student) 
Jerry Brennan (author/editor of Tortoise Books)
Liz Radford (writer/co-founder Women's March Chicago)
Dina Elenbogen (poet/event host)
Ema Wallace (student)
Natania Rosenfeld (poet/writer) 
Faisal Mohyuddin (writer, artist, educator)
Ignatius Valentine Aloysius (writer/event host)

Attention all Evanston book lovers! The 2018 Evanston Literary Festival Book Fair is a showcase for local authors, presses, and literary organizations. The book fair is a great chance to celebrate Evanston’s talented and diverse literary community and buy some books directly from authors and publishers. Participating vendors include:

Presses

• Brown and Proud Press
• Gibson House Press
• Highlights of Chicago Press
• Lark Sparrow Press
• Northwestern University Press
• Path Press
• Tortoise Books

Publications and Literary Organizations

• Chicago Publishers Resource Center
• Chicago Quarterly Review
• Evanston Magazine
• Hypertext Magazine & Studio
• Off Campus Writers Workshop
• RHINO Poetry
• Shorefront Legacy Center
• Variant

Authors

• Steve Bellinger
• Thomas Benz
• Dina Elenbogen
• Linda Gartz
• Tiffany Gholar
• Carrie Goldman
• Susan Gundlach & Lea Basile-Lazarus
• Libby Fischer Hellmann
• Tim Jackson
• Allan Johnston
• G.W. Kennedy
• Laurie Lawlor
• Jane Mersky Leder
• Lisa Maggiore
• Faisal Mohyuddin
• Mary Elise Monsell
• John Paterson
• Keiler Roberts
• Jay Ryan
• J.R. Summers
• Don Terras
• Stephen Vick
• Patti Waldmeir
• Michele Weldon
• Joyce Burns Zeiss

This event is free and open to the public, and features free refreshments.