Read/Write Library welcomes Dr. Eve L. Ewing to discuss her award-winning first collection of poetry, essays, and visual art, Electric Arches, cited by NPR, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Review of Books, and others as one of the best books of 2017.

Each Hungry for Stories discussion encourages participants to question the culture and expression we value as a city through not just exploring a wide range of contemporary books, but also their creators’ perspectives on Chicago and the local communities and that inform and support their work. With the selection of vastly different forms, genres and voices from across the city, Hungry for Stories is growing a community committed to reading outside of their comfort zones.

This discussion is free for current Hungry for Stories subscribers and their guests, $10 suggested for the public and all attendees are welcome to actively participate regardless of subcriber status. To learn more and subscribe for future books and discussions, visit: http://readwritelibrary.org/hungry-for-stories-chicago-book-club

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About Electric Arches

Electric Arches is an imaginative exploration of black girlhood and womanhood through poetry, visual art, and narrative prose. Blending stark realism with the surreal and fantastic, Eve L. Ewing’s narrative takes us from the streets of 1990s Chicago to the story of an alien arrival in an unspecified future, deftly navigating the boundaries of space, time, and reality with delight and flexibility. Ewing imagines familiar figures in magical or surreal circumstances—blues legend Koko Taylor is a tall-tale hero; LeBron James travels through time and encounters his teenage self. She identifies everyday objects—hair moisturizer, a spiral notebook—as precious icons. Her visual art is spare, playful, and poignant—a cereal box decoder ring that allows the wearer to understand what black girls are saying; a teacher’s angry, subversive message scrawled on the chalkboard. Electric Arches invites fresh conversations about race, gender, the city, identity, and the joy and pain of growing up, through a distinctive new voice.

About Dr. Eve L. Ewing (http://eveewing.com/)

Dr. Eve Louise Ewing is a sociologist of education whose research is focused on racism, social inequality, and urban policy, and the impact of these forces on American public schools and the lives of young people. She is a Provost’s Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Chicago; in 2018, she will begin as Assistant Professor in the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. Her book When the Bell Stops Ringing: Race, History and Discourse amid Chicago’s School Closures is forthcoming from University of Chicago Press in fall 2018 and explores the relationship between the closing of public schools and the structural history of race and racism in Chicago’s Bronzeville community. She often uses public platforms to discuss these social issues, particularly Twitter, where she is a well-recognized commentator with over 100,000 followers and 25-40 million views each month.

Eve is also an essayist and poet. Her first collection of poetry, essays, and visual art, Electric Arches, was published by Haymarket Books in fall 2017, and she co-edited the fiction anthology Beyond Ourselves. Her work has been published in many venues, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Poetry Magazine, The Indiana Review, and the anthology The Breakbeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. She co-directs Crescendo Literary, a partnership that develops community-engaged arts events and educational resources as a form of cultural organizing. Eve is one-half of the writing collective Echo Hotel, alongside Hanif Abdurraqib.

Eve has been an educator in both traditional and community-based settings, including Chicago Public Schools, After School Matters, Harvard University, and Wellesley College. She is the current President of the Board of Directors of MassLEAP, a non-profit organization dedicated to building and supporting spaces for youth, artist-educators, and organizers to foster positive youth development through spoken word poetry forums throughout Massachusetts.

Born and raised in the Logan Square community of Chicago, Eve is a proud alumna of Chicago Public Schools. She completed her doctorate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Prior to that, she received an undergraduate degree with honors in English Language & Literature from the University of Chicago, with a focus on African-American literature of the twentieth century. She also holds an MAT in Elementary Education from Dominican University and an M.Ed in Education Policy and Management from Harvard. She loves her family and friends, music, art, cartoons, traveling, reading, and food (especially fried chicken and carne asada tacos).

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Tags: Chicago, Eve L. Ewing, Hungry for Stories #11 — Electric Arches ft. Eve L. Ewing, Illinois, Read/Write Library Chicago, West Town