CHICAGO RESEARCH SUMMIT 2023Curiosity and Creativity in the City: Enhancing Student Learning Through Chicago-Based Research
Join the staff of Lake Forest Book Store for lunch with local author Rebecca Makkai to celebrate her newest novel.
Additional copies available for purchase and signing
Space is limited, be sure to RSVP at 847-234-4420
“A successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is content to forget her past–the family tragedy that marred her adolescence, her four largely miserable years at a New Hampshire boarding school, and the murder of her former roommate, Thalia Keith, in the spring of their senior year. Though the circumstances surrounding Thalia’s death and the conviction of the school’s athletic trainer, Omar Evans, are hotly debated online, Bodie prefers–needs–to let sleeping dogs lie. But when the Granby School invites her back to teach a course, Bodie is inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent flaws. In their rush to convict Omar, did the school and the police overlook other suspects? s the real killer still out there? As she falls down the very rabbit hole she was so determined to avoid, Bodie begins to wonder if she wasn’t as much of an outsider at Granby as she’d thought–if, perhaps, back in 1995, she knew something that might have held the key to solving the case.”
Rebecca Makkai’s last novel, The Great Believers, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; it was the winner of the ALA Carnegie Medal, the Stonewall Book Award, the Clark Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and it was chosen as one of the Ten Best Books of 2018 by The New York Times. Her other books are the novels The Borrower and The Hundred-Year House, and the collection Music for Wartime–four stories from which appeared in The Best American Short Stories. A 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, Rebecca is on the MFA faculties of the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe and Northwestern University, and is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago.
Join us IN PERSON on Thursday, September 29 at 7 pm central to help celebrate the launch of Anca L. Szilágyi‘s second novel, Dreams Under Glass. Anca will be in conversation with Exile MVP Rebecca Makkai!
About Dreams Under Glass:
An art school grad turned paralegal faces a shocking and surreal death at her law firm against a backdrop of the 2008 financial crisis in New York City.
“A darkly delicious exploration of modern entrapment, Dreams Under Glass is both a coming-of-age novel and a horror story about gluttony, greed, and art. Szilágyi binds the spell with confectionary precision and a collector’s sense of wonder and ceaseless want. This book rattles with its refraction of a world in which telling the truth might be the most difficult art.”
-—Nancy Jooyoun Kim, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Story of Mina Lee
“Szilágyi’s sharp, wry prose captures millennial ennui and ambition alike in this sometimes-dark, sometimes-electric, completely fascinating novel.”
-—Sonora Jha, author of Foreign and How to Raise a Feminist Son
About the authors:
Anca L. Szilágyi is the author of Daughters of the Air (Lanternfish Press, 2017), which Shelf Awareness called “a striking debut from a writer to watch,” and Dreams Under Glass (Lanternfish Press, 2022). Her writing appears in Orion Magazine, Lilith Magazine, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, Artist Trust, 4Culture, Hugo House, and Jack Straw Cultural Center, among others. Originally from Brooklyn, she has lived in Montreal, Seattle, and now Chicago, where she teaches creative writing at StoryStudio Chicago and elsewhere.
Rebecca Makkai is the Chicago-based author of the novels The Great Believers, The Hundred-Year House, and The Borrower, as well as the short story collection Music for Wartime. The Great Believers was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and received the ALA Carnegie Medal and the LA Times Book Prize, among other honors. Makkai is on the MFA faculties of Sierra Nevada College and Northwestern University, and she is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago.
About the event:
You can purchase their books through the respective links or in store and Anca and Rebecca are happy to sign or personalize copies! If you can’t make it to the event, signed copies will be available and we ship nationally!
Please note the following COVID protocols for those attending IN PERSON:
Please email us at books@exileinbookville.com or phone us at (312)-753-3154 if you have any questions or concerns.
StoryBoard Kick Off!
Mark you calendars for August 12 at 7 pm CT. StoryStudio Chicago Artistic Director Rebecca Makkai will be in conversation with five of the StoryBoard faculty members in webinar fashion on Zoom, a conversation that will be free and open to the public!
Authors on Tap: Steve Almond and Rebecca MakkaiRebecca Makkai is the Chicago-based author of the novels The Great Believers, The Hundred-Year House, and The Borrower, as well as the short story collection Music for Wartime. The Great Believers was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and received the ALA Carnegie Medal and the LA Times Book Prize, among other honors. Makkai is on the MFA faculties of Sierra Nevada College and Northwestern University, and she is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago.
You can purchase their books through the respective links and Steve and Rebecca are happy to sign or personalize copies! If you can’t make it to the event, signed copies will be available and we ship nationally!
Please note the following COVID protocols for those attending IN PERSON:
Please email us at books@exileinbookville.com or phone us at (312)-753-3154 if you have any questions or concerns.
*There is no need to register if you are attending in person!
My Monticello: Jocelyn Johnson in conversation with Rebecca Makkai
Event Time: 11:30 a.m.
Event Location: Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, Chicago IL
The inaugural American Writers Festival on May 15, 2022 in Chicago coincides with the American Writers Museum’s fifth anniversary. The free literary festival will be held at four stages inside the Chicago Cultural Center and one stage at the American Writers Museum, and feature more than 75 beloved contemporary authors, artists and playwrights. Participating writers will address their perspectives on many of today’s most timely and controversial topics including immigration, book censorship, racism and equality through themes within their literature.
As a special bonus, the AWM will waive museum admission fees on Sunday, May 15 and Monday, May 16 – AWM’s fifth anniversary – to encourage more people to experience the literary works of the greatest American writers.
April 30, 2022, 5:30 PM at Shoreacres
Ragdale’s 14th Annual Novel Affair brings together acclaimed authors and guests for an evening of creativity and conversation in support of Ragdale, the region’s most prominent artists residency community located in Lake Forest. The Saturday, April 30 event, held at Shoreacres, begins with a cocktail reception followed by short presentations given by our featured writers/artists. The evening concludes with opportunities for guests to have books signed by featured guests. Books available for purchase by Lake Forest Book Store.
If you can’t attend, but would like to support Ragdale, you can DONATE HERE.
Jessamine Chan, author
Jonathan Eig, journalist and biographer
Alex Kotlowitz, journalist, author
Scott Lundius, executive director, The Morrison-Shearer Foundation
Sahar Mustafah, author
Melissa Ann Pinney, photographer
Erika L. Sánchez , poet
Natasha Trethewey, poet
Rebecca Makkai, author
When we sit down to write, the first words, scenes, characters, conflicts, and settings we come up with are often the least original ones of which we’re capable. Digging past the obvious, the stock (and even the products of the collective unconscious), we might finally arrive at stories that are strikingly new and memorable. In this class we’ll cover some key elements of originality — specificity, idiosyncrasy, complexity, repetition, and change — and talk about accessing them both in drafting and revision.For writing to succeed, it must be both well-executed and original. While originality might seem intuitive, or even a product of the writer’s personality, it’s in fact a skill that can be sharpened. That’s what we’ll be doing.
Online Workshop Via Zoom
Saturday, April 30th, 2022 | 2:00pm – 4:00pm CT
$68 for members
$75 for non members
Lan Samantha Chang, author of The Family Chao,
in conversation with
Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers
The Friends of the Bronxville Public Library (FOBPL) is pleased to host award-winning author Lan Samantha Chang, who will discuss her new novel, The Family Chao. FOBPL is equally thrilled to host acclaimed author Rebecca Makkai to moderate this event.
For the recent MyHometownBronxville article, click here.
Thursday, April 21, 2022
7:00-8:00 p.m. via Zoom
This event is free, but registration is required.
To register, please click here.
Registration closes on April 21, 12:00 p.m.
(Zoom link will be provided through Eventbrite Registration on April 21.)
THE FAMILY CHAO is an electrifying and devastating portrait of a Chinese American family grappling with trauma, grief, race, love, and longing. Brimming with comedy, suspense, and heartbreak, Lan Samantha Chang’s masterpiece is one of the most ambitious novels about America in recent years.
Lan Samantha Chang is the award-winning author of a collection of short fiction, Hunger, and novels The Family Chao, Inheritance and All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost. A recent Berlin Prize Fellow, she also has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Chang is the first Asian American and the first female director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She lives in Iowa City. For more on Lan Samantha Chang and The Family Chao, click here.
Moderator Rebecca Makkai is the Chicago-based author of the novels The Great Believers, The Hundred-Year House, and The Borrower, as well as the short story collection Music for Wartime. The Great Believerswas a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and received the ALA Carnegie Medal and the LA Times Book Prize, among other honors. Makkai is on the MFA faculties of Sierra Nevada College and Northwestern University, and she is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago. For more on Rebecca Makkai, click here.
Signed copies of The Family Chao are available for sale now at Womrath Bookshop.
The FOBPL appreciates your donations. Thank you!
