Archive for October, 2012

When they come out with a new American Girl pub crawl doll, it'll be named "Beth"

October 28, 20129 CommentsPosted in book tour, guide dogs, Seeing Eye dogs, travel, Uncategorized, visiting libraries

The Wisconsin Book Festival runs from November 8-11 this year and features Patricia McCormick (a finalist for the National Book Award), Pulitzer Prize winners Richard Russon and David Maraniss, Peabody Award Winner Ben Sidran, Guggenhei Felowship Award Winner Jo Ann Beard, Alex Award Winner Lynda Barry, and ASPCA Henry Berg Award Winner…ME! The theme for this year’s […]

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Wanna win an Oscar? Play a character with a disability

October 21, 201225 CommentsPosted in blindness, radio, Uncategorized

I turned the radio on just in time last Friday to hear Fresh Air’s movie reviewer David Edelstein say The Sessions ( a new semi-fictional movie about the life of a writer paralyzed below the neck from childhood polio) was better than some of the other “disability-of-the-week Oscar-bait” pictures he’d seen. Cynical? Maybe. His statement […]

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Her book is going to be published by McSweeney's

October 19, 20127 CommentsPosted in Uncategorized, writing

My friend Audrey Petty has spent years gathering stories from residents of Chicago’s Henry Horner Homes, Robert Taylor Homes, Stateway Gardens and Cabrini-Green — all publicly-funded buildings that no longer exist. Audrey collected oral histories from residents and gathered them in a new book called High Rise Stories: Voices from Chicago Public Housing, and I’m […]

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From Halsted to Diversity

October 15, 201236 CommentsPosted in Beth Finke, blindness, memoir writing, Uncategorized, visiting schools, writing

Every semester Janie Isackson shepherds the DePaul students enrolled in her Explore Chicago: From Halsted to Diversity class onto the Red line in Lincoln Park so they can all come visit me down here in Printers Row. Long Time, No See is required reading for the course, which involves trips to neighborhoods all over Chicago to […]

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