The 2014 Chicago Literary Hall of Fame Fuller Award

You may recall that two years ago, the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame awarded its inaugural Fuller Award for lifetime achievement to Gene Wolfe. You can read about the spectacular event here.

The 2013 Award went to Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Lisel Mueller, although with little fanfare per by her family’s request.

On Saturday, October 6, 2014, the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame honored Harry Mark Petrakis with the 2014 Fuller Award at a ceremony and reception held at the National Hellenic Museum in Chicago. 

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This from the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame’s blog:

“Harry Mark Petrakis has been writing very good books for a very long time. He started writing short stories in the late 1940s and finally sold one to The Atlantic in 1955, or nearly six decades ago. At 91, Harry continues to produce literature at the highest levels, is working now on another memoir, Song of My Life, that he says will be more forthcoming still than his other memoirs. In those six decades, Harry has established himself as the premiere chronicler of Chicago’s Greek Town. He has set much of his fiction there. He has authored essays based on his long experiences living in that neighborhood. He has written about his travels to Greece, and his family history of immigration from Crete to America. He has explored Greek history and mythology–its heroes, literary and otherwise. In short, Harry has created and recreated a world of vast possibility and tragedy, a world of gamblers and gangsters, priests and peasants, cabbies and cooks: generations upon generations of the lucky and the cursed. Kurt Vonnegut once blurbed, ‘I’ve often thought what a wonderful basketball team could be formed from Petrakis characters. Everyone of them is at least fourteen feet tall.’”

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It was another lovely ceremony from an writer important to Chicago’s literary landscape, with readings and speeches from friends and admirers, a moving tribute by Harry’s son, and a gracious and eloquent acceptance by Harry.

(Photographs by 8 Eyes Photograph. More photos from the event are available on 8 Eyes Photography’s website.)

Crossroads and Connections

Chicago has such a great theater scene, with more than 200 small, critically acclaimed theatre companies. I’ve seen Shakespeare in a former church, sketch comedy in a grungy basement, a puppet show in a smoky pub. I love all the opportunities to see provocative theater, emerging playwrights, and innovative ensembles.

When a friend called my attention to Cameron McNary’s “Of Dice and Men” being performed by Otherworld Theatre, there was no question. The play appeals to my love of theatre and my love of things geeky—I wanted to see it right away.

I met my friend Sean at The Public House Theatre for the 7:30pm show, and we settled onto the couch that forms the first row. The Pub House has two theatrical spaces, and the other play, “Bye Bye Liver,” had a later start time in the adjoining space. The stage was part castle, part basement bedroom dressed with beloved science fiction and fantasy books and D&D accoutrements.

Broken down simply, “Of Dice and Men” is about a group of six friends on the edge of dramatic changes in their lives. They are Dungeons & Dragons players, and many of them have been playing together since high school, sharing life’s ups and downs while throwing the polyhedral dice. These are not caricatures of gamers/geeks, they are authentic, well-rounded characters, clearly envisioned by a writer who knows and loves that world so well.

“Of Dice and Men” opens with a familiar scene, narrator (and Dungeon Master) John Francis is taking books off his shelves and dividing them into two boxes: To Keep or To Give Away. The play follows John Francis as he prepares to move to another city and say goodbye to his friends and their weekly D&D game. Before John Francis can make his announcement, however, another of his friends reveals that he has enlisted in the Marines to go to Iraq.

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The play begins at that moment on the crossroads—one of my favorite ideas to explore because it is both familiar and powerful. At certain points in our lives, each of us comes to a crossroads; and we have to make choices about the things, ideas, and people we hold onto, and those we choose to let go.

It may be Dungeons & Dragons, it may be comic books, it may be old movies or cds. We get to that place and take stock of what we’ll bring and with whom we want to move forward. It’s what you do in games, and it’s what you do in life. “Of Dice and Men” explores this beautifully, with humor, intelligence, and emotion.

I loved it.

The writing is smart, the play is well-crafted, the cast is wonderful. “Of Dice and Men” was the kind of play that had me smiling through about 80% of it, tearing up for at leat 10%, and fully engaged the entire time.

The cast has terrific on-stage chemistry and sold me on their characters’ friendship. I loved the brash John Alex, the noble Jason, and all the rest. They are authentic, endearing, and playful when they need to be (for example, when a piece of the set wall came crashing down onto John Francis and Brandon).

At one point in the play, the character of John Francis questions the stereotype of the gamer and the inherent value of gaming. It’s a question that can be applied to many of the seemingly “pointless” things we do to fill our time. “Of Dice and Men” doesn’t just ask the question, it attempts to answer it by showing us these friends inside and outside of their D&D game.

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The things we love to do with friends form the backdrop for our friendship. Yes, these activities are fun and allow us to step out of our mundane lives for a few hours. More importantly, things like gaming or watching football set aside time and space for us to connect—to talk about our lives while rolling dice or watching the screen or playing cards. Their value is in the connection.

The Otherworld Theatre Company was founded by Tiffany Keane in June 2012 “to bring a theatrical experience to the Science Fiction and Fantasy genre.” You can read about her choice to stage “Of Dice and Men” here. I wish I had known about their adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 last summer, but I will definitely be attending future performances.

“Of Dice and Men” is a play about friendship and the things that bring us together—whether that’s a love of D&D, golf, Doctor Who, or college sports. I urge geek and non-geek friends alike to check out the play as it runs on the weekends through the end of March. Tickets are $15.

There’s also an independent feature film version of “Of Dice and Men” set to be released later this year. I look forward to seeing that too:

OF DICE AND MEN – Official Main Trailer from Kelley Slagle on Vimeo.

Not Yet

For the record, I am not an 80-year-old woman. Not yet.

The Silence of Trees is not an autobiography. It is fiction set in a historical context.

Last night I paid my first visit to a couples bookclub for The Silence of Trees. I am most often invited to speak at bookclubs comprised predominently of women. If there are men present, it’s for a mixed-gender bookclub, but they do not usually attend as couples.

This group met when they had been seated together for the wedding of one of their children. They hit it off so well that they decided to continue to start this bookclub.

The hosts and guests were gracious and enthusiastic, their discussion lively and a lot of fun, but the hostess was slightly disappointed that I was not an 80-year-old woman.

She was sure that the novel was actually an autobiography, and she was prepared to welcome Nadya to her home. She had decorated the dining room table with a tablecloth and china that she thought would befit an elderly Eastern European guest.

When I walked in the door, she was completely thrown off. She couldn’t shake the image she had constructed in her mind of the author and narrator as the same person. What followed was an interesting conversation about how I could put myself into the mindset and create the voice of an older woman.

I’m thrilled that the character of Nadya was believable, that’s so important, but I couldn’t stop thinking about our discussion all the way home. I wonder if other writers get asked variations of that question, “How did you write this character (who is unlike you in some way: be it gender, race, age, etc.) with such authenticity?”

Clearly, when writing science fiction, horror, or fantasy, the author is creating characters who are magicians, clones, werewolves, monsters, and aliens. There’s an inherent suspension of disbelief when you open a genre book. I wonder if the genre audience is better prepared to accept a character who is unlike the writer in some way?

Can I explain the magic that happens when I sit down and slip into a character to write his or her story? Not really. It’s like trying to explain the terrain of the imagination.

When I sit down to to write, sometimes five hours will pass by in a flash. When I look up from my writing, it will be some ungodly hour in the morning, and I’ll have written thousands of words and feel as if I’ve been out of ordinary time and space for a while.

That’s the magic of writing.

After that comes the hard work of craft: shaping and revising to make sure I’ve told the story in the best way possible.

That’s the work of writing.

I love what I do. I’m so grateful that people want to read my words.

I thank you for reading–wholeheartedly.

Now back to the work.