Events Calendar

Rosellen Brown will read from her novel The Lake on Fire, published by Sarabande.

“What a remarkable feat of imagination, recreation and literary craft is this superb novel set in turn-of-the-century Chicago.? What really drives it, in the best tradition of Dreiser, Doctorow, Bellow, Tillie Olson, Anzia Yesierska and Henry Roth, is the deeply sympathetic involvement in moments of consciousness and action, by which a seemingly lost world is triumphantly retrieved.” —Phillip Lopate

Brown will be joined in conversation by Linda Kerber UI professor emerita of history and lecturer in law, who will talk with her about the historical context and cultural significance of the time, with a focus on Jewish immigrant experience and women’s history.

Brown is the author of 10 novels, including Civil Wars and Tender Mercies. Her stories have appeared frequently in O. Henry Prize Stories and Best American Short Stories. She teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.