I first encountered Chicago author Kathleen Rooney years ago at The Neo-Futurists’ funky New Year’s Eve bash, where her collective Poems While You Wait was delightfully typing up custom poetry […]
It’s something of a surprise to be reminded that Oscar Wilde—the author of The Picture of Dorian Gray and the subject of a scandalous 1895 trial over consensual homosexual acts—wrote […]
Vividly set amongst the winding cobblestone streets and shadowy canals of 18th century Venice, Chicago writer Julia Fine’s Maddalena and the Dark is a wonderfully moody, gothic fairy tale about […]
Most readers are familiar with the more prestigious annual book prizes out there, among them the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the PEN America Literary Awards. A new […]
Toya Wolfe’s debut novel Last Summer on State Street is a harrowing, poignant, and visceral evocation of life and death in the Robert Taylor public housing development in its final […]
When was the last time you told a story to a stranger at a bar? Not an anecdote about your day at work, or that funny internet meme that’s going […]
Edna Ferber’s The Girls, a novel about three independent-minded South Side women yearning for vibrant lives, was originally published more than a century ago, but it’s written with such verve […]
If ever a trigger warning was needed, it’s the one for David Scott Hay’s new novel [NSFW], which cautions the reader that the novel includes “sex, drug use, witchcraft, profanity, […]
Anyone who’s joined a beginners’ writers workshop knows the difficulty of reviewing prose that is nowhere near polished. It’s awkward, stressful even, trying to devise cogent thoughts about art that […]
It’s Halloween, and everyone’s entitled to one good scare. Lucky you. Third Coast Review has once again asked several Chicago area horror writers and artists for their recommendations on the […]
Antony Barone Kolenc’s The Merchant’s Curse is a historical mystery with a strong supernatural element, set in 12th-century England and written for children and young teens. Even more, it’s a […]
Don’t stay where you’re not wanted. In Ling Ma’s short story collection Bliss Montage, her characters learn this the hard way. Or at least, some of them do. These eight […]