SEPTEMBER
Last fall the city of Aurora decided to make itself a center of literary activity. Mike O’Kelley of the Aurora Economic Development Commission says the long-term plan includes building a cultural campus where “people can come to be immersed in the ideas and feel of midwest literature.” They’re getting a head start with this weekend’s Midwest Literary Festival, which features lectures, workshops, and panel discussions by about 130 authors and illustrators–though not all are from the midwest. High-profile guests scheduled to speak at the 1,800-seat Paramount Arts Centre include Anne Lamott (today at 11) and Jacquelyne Mitchard (at 2); Frances Mayes will appear tomorrow at 1, following an 11 AM screening of the not-yet-released film adaptation of her book Under the Tuscan Sun. The festival runs from 10 to 8 today and from 11 to 6 Sunday. The Para-mount is at 23 E. Galena; all festival activities take place on Stolp Island in the Fox River downtown and most–including the lectures, the movie, and a raft of kids’ stuff–are free. See www.midwestliteraryfestival.com or call 630-897-5500 for more information.
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“Showed a Czech film” and “Dresses like a Communist” are just two of the notes the FBI took on Arnold Mesches between 1945 and 1972. Three years ago the artist, activist, and teacher, who’s now 79 and lives in Manhattan, used the Freedom of Information Act to request a copy of his files and received a large box of reports with blacked-out names and other details. “Not only did they have the dates my kids were born, they also had how much they weighed,” he told the New York Times last year. “I can’t tell you how nonsensical it was.” Mesches combined the files with newspaper clippings, paintings, drawings, photos, and handwritten text to create a series of “illuminated manuscripts” juxtaposing the documents with images of, among others, Marilyn Monroe, Nikita Kruschev, and Malcolm X. The resulting exhibit, Arnold Mesches: FBI Files, opens today and runs through October 31 at Columbia College’s Glass Curtain Gallery; hours today are 9 to 5. It’s at 1104 S. Wabash in Chicago; Mesches will give a lecture on October 17 at a reception running from 5 to 8. For more information call 312-344-6650 or see www.colum.edu/glasscurtain.
“Never come give it up, whatever you may squander / The figs in the pockets and the cousins down under / By blood are the passions passing us up / By pill is the poison feeling / The heat it kills me everyday / By graveyard vigil and candles I bake / And kitchens are aching for archangel falls / Of soft baby bottoms and polished skulls, amen.” Those eight lines are all that’s available so far from former Smashing Pumpkin Billy Corgan’s forthcoming book of poetry. He’ll reveal more when he kicks off the Poetry Center’s annual reading series tonight with a benefit multimedia performance of his verse at 6:30 at the Art Institute’s Rubloff Auditorium, 111 S. Michigan in Chicago (enter on Columbus). Tickets are $35; call 866-468-3401 or go to www.ticketweb.com. For more, see www.poetrycenter.org.
