Al Hippensteel is the editor of The Dearborn Express, our free neighborhood newspaper, and he’s in the memoir-writing class I lead in Printers Row, too. Before class one day Al asked if anyone might be interested in writing book reviews for the paper, and his fellow memoir-writer Lorraine Schmall jumped at the chance. Her latest […]

I’m just back from the Iota Short Prose Conference on Campobello Island, where I was a student rather than a teacher. Mike flew with me and Whitney from O’Hare, rented a car at the Bangor Airport and drove us to our destination: the easternmost point in the United States. We settled right in to our quiet […]

One of my favorite Indie bookstores in Chicago (outside of Sandmeyer’s, right down the street here in Printers Row) is The Book Cellar in the Lincoln Square neighborhood. The Book Cellar is my kind of store. Suzy, the owner, is a caring woman who supports local authors, the thoughtful bookworms Suzy hires are happy to […]

Hello from our little inn in Lubec, Maine. We won’t be heading across the river to the Iota: The Conference of Short Prose at Roosevelt Campobello International Park until later this morning, but in the short 24 hours we’ve been here I already have a lot to write about. A worker at our gate at […]

Two of the “What My Parents Believed” essays read out loud at our Printers Row memoir class last week seemed perfect for a Fourth of July post, and writers Robert and Maggy generously agreed to let me share excerpts from each of their essays here. Three cheers for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Robert’s […]