This list of Chicago Writers provides easy access to, and an overview of, articles about them on this site. It’s based on the writers David Starkey and I included in our 1999 book Smokestacks & Skycrapers, and also contains some writers based on my 2006 book Black Writing from Chicago. Together these two lists will represent one of the best resources on Chicago literature as there is anywhere on the internet. Go here for the complete Black Writers List.
Supplementing these two lists are five essays—the Introductions, Afterwords and Forewords to Smokestacks & Skyscrapers and Black Writing from Chicago—which give sweeping overviews of Chicago writing and lament those writers we were not able to include in these two books. These laments add important names to those listed below.
—Links go live when material becomes available—
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- Introduction to Smokestacks & Skyscrapers
- Afterword to Smokestacks & Skyscrapers
- Introduction to Black Writing from Chicago
- Foreword to Black Writing from Chicaco
- Afterword to Black Writing from Chicago
- List of Black Writers (mostly from Chicago)
- Post about The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.
When Smokestacks & Skyscrapers came out in 1999, Fred Gardaphe, editor of New Chicago Stories, wrote: “Whether it is referred to as a second or third city, Chicago has always produced first-rate American literature. Smokestacks & Skyscrapers is proof enough that the Chicago literary tradition is alive and well and not just created by tough guys. A new look for a new century, this anthology demonstrates a joyful and passionate commitment to literary arts that creates a renewed sense of Chicago realism.”
The writers we included in Smokestacks & Skyscrapers are:
- Jacques Marquette, S.J.
- Metea
- Juliette Kinzie
- Benjamin Franklin Taylor
- Simon Pokagon
- Eugene Field
- Harriet Monroe
- Henry Blake Fuller
- Jane Addams
- Hamlin Garland
- Elia Peattie
- George Ade
- Finley Peter Dunne
- Robert Herrick
- Edgar Lee Masters
- Frank Lloyd Wright
- Theodore Dreiser
- Willa Cather
- Edith Wyatt
- Sherwood Anderson
- Carl Sandburg
- Upton Sinclair
- Vachel Lindsay
- H.L. Mencken
- Ring Lardner
- Vincent Starrett
- Edna Ferber
- Ben Hecht
- James T. Farrell
- Albert Halper
- Meyer Levin
- Richard Wright
- Nelson Algren
- Cyrus Colter
- Willard Motley
- Studs Terkel
- John Frederick Nims
- Karl Shapiro
- Saul Bellow
- Gwendolyn Brooks
- Harry Mark Petrakis
- Richard Stern
- A.K. Ramanujan
- Lorraine Hansberry
- Mike Royko
- Leon Forrest
- Michael Anania
- Sterling Plumpp
- Philip Caputo
- Daniel Pinkwater
- Stuart Dybek
- Roger Ebert
- Haki R. Madhubuti
- Carolyn Rodgers
- Carol Anshaw
- Paul Hoover
- David Mamet
- Albert Goldbarth
- Tony Ardizzone
- Barry Sileski
- Marc Smith
- Angela Jackson
- James McManus
- Neil Tesser
- Maxine Chernoff
- Ana Castillo
- Carlos Cumpian
- Sandra Cisneros
- Li-Young Lee
- Mark Turcotte
- Campbell McGrath