Legendary Sci-Fi Author Gene WolfeSupporters of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame and members of Chicago’s literary and arts communities will gather at the incredible Sanfilippo Estate on March 17, 2012, to present Gene Wolfe with the first “Fuller Award,” acknowledging an outstanding lifetime contribution to literature.

The Master of Ceremonies for the award presentation and performance will be Gary K. Wolfe, Professor of Humanities and English at Roosevelt University and award-winning editor and critic. Neil Gaiman, Michael Dirda, Luis Urrea, Michael Swanwick, Peter Straub, Jody Lynn Nye, Patrick O’Leary, Audrey Niffenegger, and David G. Hartwell are just a few of the many luminaries set to pay tribute to the writer whose body of work, including the Chicago-set Free Live Free, distinguishes him as one of our city’s finest literary treasures.        

Guests can purchase tickets through Eventbrite to attend the performance and award presentation, which includes a staged reading of one of Gene’s short stories, adapted by Chicago writer Larry Santoro and performed by members of Terra Mysterium. After the reading, guests will be treated to a concert by R. Jelani Eddington, one of the world’s most accomplished pipe organists on Sanfilippo’s 80-rank, 8,000 pipe organ. 

Those who purchase a Dinner Ticket will head to the Carousel Pavilion following the performance to enjoy a meal featuring delicacies from Barrington’s own chef Jeramie Campana of Wild Asparagus. 

Peter Sagal, host of NPR’s news quiz show ‘Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me!” will be the toastmaster during dinner, introducing Special Guests as they offer up speeches and toasts in honor of Gene Wolfe.

After the meal, guests are welcome to explore the Carousel Pavilion and visit with Special Guests while enjoying the dessert table, gourmet coffee station, and specialty cordials. 

If you wish to be seated with friends, we encourage you to purchase a table together (tables seat 10 people). Otherwise we will determine the seating based on your answers to the questions we have included in your registration. 

Proceeds from the event will go toward a permanent home for the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, currently housed at the Cliff Dwellers Club of Chicago. More information can be found here. 

Attire is business casual (or steampunk if you are so inclined.) No tickets will be available at the door. 

Directions to the Private Estate will be included with your ticket purchase. The estate is about 45 minutes from Downtown Chicago. 

Contact: Valya Dudycz Lupescu (valyadl@gmail.com), Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.

By Meghan Owen 

Christine SneedChristine Sneed’s career as a fiction writer began while studying poetry. It was three years into her graduate studies at Indiana University before she built up the nerve to tackle fiction with an aim toward possibly becoming a professional fiction writer.  The move paid off when, while still a student, she won the Lois Davidson Ellis Literary Award for best short fiction.  She has since stacked a number of other awards and literary achievements, including being published in 2008 Best American Short Stories and having her first collection of short stories, Portaits of a Few of the People I’ve Made Cry, win the 2009 Grace Paley Prize and named as a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, first fiction category. Now to top of what has been a whirlwind year for Sneed, Portraits has won the Chicago Writers Association’s Book of the Year Award for best traditionally published book. “I’m really honored to win the (CWA) award,” Sneed said.  “I’m incredibly flattered, and it’s lovely to have the support of the writing community.” 

Sneed, who now teaches creative writing at DePaul University, said writing, for her, is not the anguishing experience some writers make it out to be. “I’m very lucky,” she said. “I write pretty quickly, and it’s usually a very joyful experience.”  

Her individual stories and poetry have been published in literary journals such as The New England Review, The Southern Review and the American Literary Review.  In choosing which pieces went into Portraits, she selected stories that seemed to have an inherent through-line and whose voices chimed with a distinct concinnity. 

By Meghan Owen 

“The best parts of writing are those striking moments when characters like the Armless Wonder pop up in your imagination, when you can just see him in the dark, cigarette tip burning, and smell the smoke and hair oil.” – James Finn Garner 

James Finn GarnerIt is this imagery that fuels James Finn Garner’s hardboiled and hilarious Honk Honk, My Darling: A Rex Koko, Private Clown Mystery, the non-traditional fiction winner of the Chicago Writers Association’s Book of the Year Award.  However, the Chicago writer wasn’t always in the “funny” business.  When he moved to Chicago from Detroit, he originally wrote for real estate trade organizations.  Alas, the profession struck James as profoundly boring.  Over time, he began to integrate himself into the Windy City’s improv scene.  Garner performed in a wide selection of comedy venues such as JazzPoetry…TRUTH!, the Theatre of the Bizarre at the Elbo Room, and the Waveland Radio Playhouse, which gave birth to his clown detective, Rex Koko.  

Garner’s “clown noir” sat on the backburner for many years as he pursued other writing endeavors, including his New York Times Best Seller, Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, and its offspring, Once Upon a More Enlightened Time and Politically Correct Holiday Stories.  Despite the successes of his previous traditionally published works, Garner self-published Honk Honk, My Darling, first as an e-book and recently in soft cover. 

By Meghan Owen 

Pamela FerdinandThree Wishes: Our True Story of Good Friends, Crushing Heartbreak, and Astonishing Luck on Our Way to Love and Motherhood tells the story of three women – Pamela Ferdinand, Beth Jones and Carey Goldberg – and their intersecting journey to become mothers.  Winner of the Chicago Writers Association’s traditional non-fiction Book of the Year Award, Three Wishes captivates in many ways. But its greatest achievement is the manner in which it honestly details the path these three successful women took and how one by one, they decided to use anyonymous sperm to become single mothers only to then find love. 

Once the three coauthors  shared the collective experience of losing love, finding a sperm donor and then finding love again, they came together to write Three Wishes. All three women are journalists whose work has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, Boston Globe, and Washington Post, so the writing of this book was both a familiar and strange terrain. 

The coauthors’ friends encouraged them to write about their shared experience, and they listened. It wasn't much of a leap to begin the project, said Jones. “We're all writers

By Meghan Owen

Krista AugustKrista August, a math major graduated from Northwestern University, has a head for numbers.  She also has a love for art history and the complexity of architecture.  She never expected to become a writer, let alone a winner of the Chicago Writers Association’s Book of the Year Award, in the non-traditional, non-fiction category.  Yet, throughout her journey of exploring Chicago’s numerous outdoor sculptures, she found herself a new skill and title as an “author”. 

“The best kind of work?” says August. “The best kind of work is the kind that takes up your entire day in a good way.”   

When you look on August’s award-winning project, Giants in the Park, you see how her work is her passion. 

Giants in the Park, a self-published book about the numerous portrait statues that decorate Chicago’s Lincoln Park, took August approximately three years to compile. “I had a system,” she explained. “For the first month, I worked on gathering information about the person celebrated in bronze. For the second month, I investigated the statue itself, along with both the producer and the sculptor.” 

Three debut authors and a New York Times Best-Selling author who self-published his latest work are the winners of the Chicago Writers Association’s first Book of the Year Awards.

The awards will be presented at 7 p.m. Jan. 14 at The Book Cellar, 4736-38 Lincoln Ave., in Chicago’s Lincoln Square. The event is free and open to the public.

The winning books are “Portraits of a Few of the People I’ve Made Cry” by Christine Sneed, “Honk Honk, My Darling: A Rex Koko Private Clown Mystery” by James Finn Garner, “Three Wishes: A True Story of Good Friends, Crushing Heartbreak, and Astonishing Luck on our Way to Love and Motherhood” by Pamela Ferdinand, Carey Goldberg and Beth Jones, and “Giants in the Park: A Guide to Portrait Statues in Chicago’s Lincoln Park” by Krista August.

The finalist judges included three best-selling authors – Jonathan Eig (“Get Capone: The True Story of Al Capone” and “Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig), Julie Hyzy (Manor House Mysteries and White House Chef Mysteries), and Robert W. Walker (“City for Ransom,” “Children of Salem” and “Shadows in the White City”) and Chicago publisher Sharon Woodhouse (Lake Claremont Press). 

“These are all outstanding, truly deserving works,” said Randy Richardson, CWA President. “I commend all of the winners, and, indeed all of the eight finalists. These awards show what a talented group of writers we have. The judges did not have an easy job at all. They had to make some very tough choices between an extremely competitive field of finalists. I am so thankful for the work that the judges put into this.”

Walker, author of more than 50 books, who judged the non-traditionally published fiction category, which featured Garner’s book Rex Koko book and a short story collection by Michael Burke, acknowledged the difficulty in making a decision. “Let me begin by saying that my task was no easy one,” Walker wrote in support of his decision to choose the “clown noir” over the short story collection.

Garner previously traditionally published three books, including the New York Times Best Seller  “Politically Correct Bedtime Stories,” which has sold more than 2.5 million copies in the United States, self-published the Rex Koko book because he could not find a traditional publisher to take it on. Walker credited Garner for taking literary risks. “The novel defies categorization and flies in the face of convention while at the same time using the conventions of humor and mystery, a rare find,” Walker wrote, “a paradox that works.”

Similarly, Hyzy found it to be a tough call. The award-winning mystery writer judged the traditional fiction category, which featured Sneed’s “Portraits” and Kelly O’Connor Mcnees’ historical fiction, “The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott.” “They’re so different – so completely different – that I had difficulty choosing one over the other,” Hyzy wrote. “Both authors are extremely talented at setting scenes and creating believable characters.” She gave the edge to Sneed’s book. “Wonderful, wonderful read,” she wrote. “I enjoyed every word.”

In the traditionally published non-fiction category, Eig selected the co-authored “Three Wishes,” as “A well-written, powerfully honest, and uplifting book.”

Lake Claremont’s Woodhouse judged the non-traditionally published non-fiction category. She described August’s “Giants” as “beautifully executed,” and “a passionate, personal project (combining history, art, love of Chicago, love of books.”)

The awards, divided into four categories (traditionally and non-traditionally published fiction and non-fiction), were open to books published in 2010 and the first half of 2011 and authored by CWA members. (Non-traditional is defined as self- and print-on-demand published.)

The awards are sponsored by ChicagoHotels.org, whch offers a selection of more than 300 hotels in Chicago. It belongs to CheapHotels.org a network of hotel booking sites.