Corrina Lesser's Blog

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Spudnik Press: Chicago's Community Print Shop
When I listen to the Anthology of American Folk Music on my iPod, I can hear the vinyl crackle underneath Chubby Parker’s frolicking King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O —one era’s technology audible in this one. Harry Smith, an eccentric and bohemian, was the man behind this unprecedented compilation of early American music. Smith, who was primarily bi-coastal with stints in New York’s Lower East Side and the West coast, also found himself for a time in Boulder, Colorado. A friend of the poet... Continue Reading >>
A Literary Superstar
  No matter your reading taste, it isn’t often that you encounter a writer who’s a living legend.  Jonathan Franzen is one of those writers – his reputation as a novelist and a thinker loom impressively in our literary landscape. His own relationship to his place in contemporary literature has at times seemed uneasy. Despite authoring two novels and a handful of essays, it wasn’t until The Corrections came out in 2001, just days after September 11, that he was catapulted to writerly... Continue Reading >>
Reading (and riding) the Lake Shore Limited
If you commute via public transportation you know the sensation well. Seat secured, book (or fill-in-digital e-book device) in hand, several minutes into the ride you realize that you’re nearly at your stop (or, if you’re in the middle of a particularly riveting scene, missed it altogether.) Inconveniences of backtracking aside, it’s an exquisite feeling. Not every writer is so engrossing as to create a fictional world that so completely overcomes our present one. Sue Miller is that rare writer.... Continue Reading >>
Once upon a time...
An Evening of Modern Fairy Tales Thursday, April 7; 6:00 pm Harold Washington Library Center FREE event! Click here to reserve seats for the program. “Once upon a time…” It’s with such simplicity that so many satisfying stories begin; a line at once expected and unfailingly seductive. For many of us, fairy tales are the foundation of our reading lives, following the archetypal characters (read: innocent young beauty tortured by evil stepmother miraculously rescued... Continue Reading >>
Doctor/Writers
I had a moment while programming our fall Festival when I realized that most of all that I know about neonatology, the niche within medicine that focuses on the care of the tiniest of babies, is from the writer Perri Klass’s The Mystery of Breathing; a book I read in manuscript form as an editorial associate at Houghton Mifflin as an assistant to Klass’s then-editor, Janet Silver. Klass was on my mind because she was the first doctor-writer we lighted upon when conceiving of a program we’re... Continue Reading >>

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