Both of the memoir-writing classes I teach are taking time off in June, and one of the last topics I assigned before the break was this: choose a photograph, any photograph, and describe it to me in 500 words or less. “But please don’t say, well, this is a woman in a yellow skirt with […]

Our neighborhood independent bookstore is celebrating its 30th anniversary in style — Sandmeyer’s Bookstore is throwing a party Wednesday night at Jazz Showcase, right down the street. Ulrich and Ellen Sandmeyer wanted a few local authors to speak while Harry and the Hit Men (a terrific cover band they’re flying in from the Bay Area […]

Last fall I started teaching a second weekly memoir-writing class for senior citizens. Anna Perlberg is one of the students in that second class at Lincoln Park Village, and it’s been a treat to hear her unveil her stories out loud to us every Thursday. Anna’s husband Mark Perlberg co-founded the Poetry Center of Chicago […]

Here’s my husband Mike Knezovich with a book review. Sometimes when I’m at an airport, a hotel lobby, walking down a city street, in an elevator, I watch the humans and think: Really, we’re all monkeys. I learned there is some truth to that glib observation a few years ago when I wrote a freelance […]

You might remember my friend Lauren Bishop-Weidner from a post I wrote two years ago. That post linked to a thoughtful and honest essay Lauren wrote for Two Hawks Quarterly about what it’s like to be able to see and love and live with someone who can’t. That piece was called On His Blindness; the […]