Printers Row Lit Fest 2021

Hey all, ICYMI: Printers Row Lit Fest is this weekend!

Particularly of note to SF readers might be Andrea Hairston on Saturday and Colson Whitehead on Sunday. Other SF/SF-adjacent authors include Rita Woods, Daniel Kraus, Julia Fine, and Maryse Meijer.

Summer Update!

 Hi all! Obviously, I have not been posting very much on here. It's been a very strange year-and-a-third! And still going!

However, I'm still keeping the Upcoming Events updated (98% of why this site exists), so check that out—by and large, the majority of clubs seemed to have adapted to virtual settings just fine, and some have started returning to in-person meetings. Author readings and other events have take

Bookstores, also, seem to be doing better than we might have feared. I have not gotten to too many in-person since the pandemic started, but with vaccination and my bike back in order, I plan on visiting more over the next couple months. A couple observations:

• City Lit Books has reopened under new ownership. Full disclosure: I am working there! Doing my best to keep the SF section in good shape. Their book clubs and author events are starting up again.
• Volumes Bookcafe has closed their Wicker Park location; their Gold Coast shop remains open. They are looking for a new Wicker Park location and have a crowdfunding drive to that effect.
• Exile in Bookville now has a physical location: they've taken over the lovely space in the Fine Arts Building formerly occupied by The Dial, formerly occupied by Selected Works.
• I'm not fully updated on all the Chicagoland bookstores, but a lot of the main city shops—Bucket O'Blood, Unabridged, Myopic, Women & Children First, The Seminary Co-Op/57th St.—seem to be doing okay!

Con News! Not too much to report, but, thus far—Windy Con is planning for an in-person weekend with streaming options; I hope to be there. I don't think I'll be attending WorldCon in DC this year, but it looks like there's a contingent of Chicagoans headed there via TrainCon and other methods. Chicon 8 is still a little over a year away, but I'm keeping my eye on it. Hoping to volunteer to bring some Chicago-scene focus to it, but we'll see!

That's about all the news for now.

Calendar Updates & Capricon

Hey readers, happy 2021...I'm sitting here looking at the first serious Chicago snow, and it's pretty nice.

I've spent some time cleaning up the Upcoming Events Calendar. Sadly, quite a few groups have paused or disbanded over the last year, although most of the more prolific and long-running groups have held on, and a number of new groups have started.

Capricon is coming up next week, February 4-7! You can jump right to the schedule here. I'll be chatting in a few different panels. It's a pretty good list, check it out!

In Case You Missed It/So You Don't: OBOC Finale, Pocket Con, & A Few More

The Chicago Writers Podcast most recent episode is a discussion with Michael Zapata, author of The Lost Book of Adana Moreau.

One Book, One Chicago's selection this fall is Mohsin Hamid's Exit West. The season finale—although quite a few groups will be discussing the book for a month or two after—is a discussion with Hamid, this Thursday, December 3rd, at 7pm.

Pocket Con, a one-day teen-friendly comic-con focused on artists of color, is happening (virtually) this Saturday, December 5th.

Worldcon is going to be in Chicago in 2022 (Chicon 8), and it looks like the Chicon folks are going to be well-represented at Smofcon 37.25 this weekend. Smofcon is a con for con organizers, might be of interest to folks interested in helping out at a convention, improving or starting their own.

It's a little bit away—but then again, here's hoping that lockdown winter passes faster than the regular kind—Capricon, one of Chicago's two home conventions, is also virtual this time, February 4-7. The guests of honor list looks real nice!

As always, you can also check out the Upcoming Events page for loads of book clubs and other events!

"Ring Shout" by P. Djèlí Clark

A powerful and spooky novella that's a delight to read, Ring Shout is a darkly fantastic alt-history—a community fighting literal demons in the Klu Klux Klan. Narrator Maryse Boudreaux hunts these monsters with the help of a magic sword, ethereal advisors, and two other talented Black women, and soon discovers that the dark magic under the white hoods is evolving in dangerous ways. It's a fast but fairly intricate novella, doing a really good job of fleshing out its world and characters while propelling the story forward.

"Waste Tide" by Chen Qiufan

In the first scene of Waste Tide, an environmental activist attempts a dangerous boarding of a giant ocean freighter. It's daring, acrobatically gifted, we understand the motivation—and it fails, disastrously. That kind of sets the tone for the novel, which shows a host of conflicting characters and factions being shown their own hubris by factors beyond their control.

I'd heard Chen Qiufan talk at FutureCon, and happened to run across Waste Tide at a bookstore not long after. A cyberpunk tale set in a Chinese town built around e-waste recycling, the novel follows local and foreign characters as they attempt to contain or exploit an unexpected technological mutation.

This was a fairly absorbing read; I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. The social elements were the most compelling part of the book for me—the "waste people" organizing, and the elites who profit off of their labor. The plot is somewhat diffuse, misdirecting—the first half or more of the book concern a double-edged deal with an green-washing American company that turns out to be a narrative macguffin—and characters exhibit a kind of ineffective agency. They do things, they make choices, but they're rendered largely irrelevant by larger events: more powerful factions, a massive tsunami, a kind of accidental Singularity.