Authors Electric

Not Silicon Valley: The Big Sky town of Missoula, MT It is difficult not to write about the current American crises of racial injustice, corruption, pandemic, and economic decline presided over by our criminal president. I'll give it a try and rant about a publishing annoyance this go-around.  Start with the updated adage that century's road to hell is paved with well-intended apps. There are no problems that our smartphones can't solve - except the big ones - no mistakes Grammarly can fix - except the worst ones. Sometimes we need to get it wrong to find what's right. My first draft attempt at a story usually turns out to be pathetically wrong, but it can lay down a pathway to what works, if I persist, and am lucky. Monk (1917-1982) This is why I've always loved Thelonious Monk , the prince of making "wrong" notes who threw rules and familiar chords into fireplaces like spent Russian champagne glasses, the king of confounding expectations a...

CQR founder Syed Afzal Haider The other day I was pleased to lunch once again with Syed Afzal Haider , genial founder of  Chicago Quarterly Review  as well as CQR's fiction editor, friend and retired Chicago Tribune book editor John Blades . Haider has published this literary gem since 1994, making it the Windy City's oldest continuously in-print literary journal, no small feat amid the sea of changes in publishing since then.  Decidedly nonprofit - with emphasis on the "non," CQR has always been entirely self-sustaining and independent. It is a labour of love, cover-to-cover, a success in the most unconventional terms. It is simultaneously an anachronism and an example of cashless future Utopianism. It's both forward looking and set in its ways.  It maintains a handsome Internet presence in the form of its Website and Facebook page, but crankily insists on remaining available only in print, with no ebook editions.   I'm proud to have been ...