CHF Chicago Humanities Festival

Conversation

  • E-Mail
    (e.g. amandasmith@gmail.com)

    (Please separate multiple email addresses with commas.)

    (You may use or edit the message above.)

  • PRINT

  • Share

  • TEXT SIZE

High Rise Stories

ABOUT 

  • ABOUT Audrey Petty

    Audrey Petty is a native Chicagoan. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in such literary magazines as StoryQuarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Cimarron Review, Crab Orchard Review, Nimrod, and African American Review. Her nonfiction has been featured in The Oxford American, Saveur, ColorLines, Cornbread Nation 4, The Southern Review, Gravy, and Best Food Writing 2006 anthology. Her book, High Rise Stories, will be published by McSweeney's early next year.

    Profile

  • ABOUT Sara Levine

    Sara Levine is the author of the novel Treasure Island!!!  and a collection of short stories Short Dark Oracles. Her essays have been anthologized in The Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction and A Best of Fence: The First Nine Years. She has a PhD in English literature from Brown University and is professor and chair of the writing program at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Profile
Click next to learn more...

1 of 1

Narcotics, violence, and the perpetuation of poverty—for many of us, these are the lingering images of the Chicago housing projects Cabrini-Green and Robert Taylor Homes. But what was life in the homes actually like? University of Illinois professor Audrey Petty interviewed former residents for their firsthand accounts of Chicago public housing. Her oral history, which also includes such housing complexes as Stateway Gardens and the Henry Horner Homes, offers a revealing collective story of community, displacement, removal, and relocation. Forthcoming in McSweeney’s Voice of Witness book series, High Rise Stories is both a crucial addition to Chicago’s social history and a portal to a meaningful conversation about poverty, housing reform, and urban renewal in the United States. Sara Levine, author of Treasure Island!!! and a member of the faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, will interview Petty.

blog Read the CHF blog post about this program.

This program is generously underwritten in part by the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation.

Photo by zol87 (cc by-nc)

Learn More

Similar Programs

Conversation

Little Rock: The Long Arc of the Civil Rights Movement

In 1957, nine black teenagers walked through the doors of Little Rock Central High School for the first time. Ernest Green was the eldest of the Little Rock Nine and the first to graduate. Green went on to serve in the Labor Department of the Carter administration and to a career in business, electoral politics, and economic development. In 1999, he and other members of the Nine received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest national honor bestowed to civilians.

Lecture

The Trials of Muhammad Ali

Since it was founded as a nonprofit organization in 1966, Kartemquin Films has produced documentaries that examine social issues through the stories of real people. Kartemquin’s latest feature-length film covers Muhammad Ali’s toughest bout: his battle to overturn a five-year prison sentence for refusing US military service in Vietnam. At the time the most recognizable face on earth, Ali found himself in the crosshairs of conflicts concerning civil rights, religion, and wartime dissent.

Support CHF - Donate Now

Festival Sponsors

© Copyright 2012 Chicago Humanities Festival