The Printers Row Lit Fest is alive and well and living in September.
I’ve already lost track of which pandemic surge, which variant peak did what, but after surviving an unceremonious defunding by the Tribune in 2019 and producing a fair anyway, the festival was forced to cancel entirely in 2020, along with most of the rest of the culture, and then pushed out of its longtime June slot last year as September seemed a safer bet.
No one knew how it would work in its new timing. Would vendors be happy? Would folks come out for authors? But at the end of the weekend, the organizers got the message: people seemed to prefer September. And so this longstanding hello to summer is now a goodbye to summer.
Newcity and the Lit Fest have grown up together; we created the Lit 50, the first of our Leaders of Culture lists, as a way to establish a written manifestation of the community that was starting to form and congregate around the book fair. And so this annual edition, which took off a year itself due to the pandemic, is back, no longer in its familiar June nest, but now in August (September was already taken with the Art 50 and Fall Arts Preview).
We’ll see you on Dearborn Street next month, and raise a glass to surviving and thriving.
If you’re new to the Lit 50, you might wonder where all the familiar authors are. We rotate between creative and behind-the-scenes players each year; this year it’s the latter.
BRIAN HIEGGELKE
Look for Newcity’s August 2022 print edition at over 300 Chicago-area locations this week or subscribe to the print edition at Newcityshop.com
IN THIS ISSUE
Immersive Delight Nick Cave dares us to dream
Literati of the Moment In conversation with Michelle Boone, Adrian Matejka and Fred Sasaki of the Poetry Foundation
Lit 50 Meet the folks who keep book culture buzzing in Chicago
AND
Poetry The Astounded Soul A new poem from Mike Puican
