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In their first post-election 60 Minutes interview, the President- and First Lady-elect said they’d like to open the White House up to the people. They mentioned poetry and jazz. I knew that Michelle Obama had seen spoken word and poetry slam poets while in Chicago, so I called them. I reminded myself that their house, [...]

Book awards are usually time sensitive, covering the best books of the year, so I was surprised to see that a first novel I reviewed way back in 2007 received a very generous today in Dublin, Ireland. The book is Man Gone Down by Michael Thompson, and the award is the International IMPAC Dublin Literary [...]

It’s been awhile since Bill Ott has offered a quiz on the Back Page of Booklist, but his latest installment includes a doozy: in honor of ALA’s upcoming annual conference, he’s concocted a three-column challenge called ”Literary Chicago” (PDF) where you’re called upon to match 26 authors with their respective book titles and Windy City settings. We don’t have a good [...]

Here’s some video of poetry slam founder Marc Kelly Smith, who I wrote about yesterday. The first link (excuse the lighting) is a show I put together for the Society of Midland Authors April program in the beautiful Cliff Dwellers Club on Michigan Avenue. The room is all windows, high in the air, with a [...]

I first met poet and poetry slam founder Marc Kelly Smith in a class that he taught at Lewis University in Romeoville, Illinois, way back in 1991. An enthusiast of poetry and fiction in all of their personalities for a long while, I can say with pride that I am but one of a legion of [...]

Last week, the New York Times asked, “Is Slam Poetry Going Soft?” I was intrigued by the question, but I didn’t think they answered it. So I asked Mark Eleveld, a Booklist reviewer, the author of The Spoken Word Revolution Redux, and a poetry publisher himself, to take a crack at it. Mark’s credentials and [...]

Craig Johnson, riding high on the acclaim for the latest book in the Walt Longmire series, The Dark Horse, was in Chicago last Saturday for an appearance at the Printers Row Lit Fest. After his panel, he could be seen enjoying a beer at the Dark Horse Tap and Grille, appropriately enough. While we talked, he sold his [...]

The £30,000 Orange Prize is the FUBU of awards: an all-female judges’ panel picks a winner from a roster of books by female authors including the likes of Toni Morrison. The panel picked Home, by Marilynne Robinson as this year’s winner. Of course, a gender-driven prize could not exist without some controversy. In 2001, an all-male [...]

The 2009 Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards for Excellence in Children’s Literature were announced yesterday. The winners are: Fiction and Poetry Nation, by Terry Pratchett Nonfiction The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary, by Candace Fleming   Picture Book Bubble Trouble, by Margaret Mahy, illustrated by Polly Dunbar

We all know Stephen King wrote The Body, but this is probably the first time he’s written on a body. The July issue of Esquire features a new story by King, “Morality,” the first few lines of which have been lovingly painted across the bod of Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli. The story is about a [...]