Novel Affair 2022

1601 Shore Acres Road,Lake Bluff IL 60044

30 April, 2022

Description

After a two-year hiatus, Novel Affair returns in 2022, at Shoreacres, located in Lake Bluff, IL. Event DetailsRagdale’s 14th Annual Novel Affair brings together acclaimed authors and guests for an evening of creativity and conversation in support of Ragdale, the region’s most prominent artists residency community located in Lake Forest. The Saturday, April 30 event, held at Shoreacres, begins with a cocktail reception followed by short presentations given by our featured authors/artists. The evening will end with an opportunity for guests to purchase books from Lake Forest Book Store, and have them signed by our featured artists. Location DetailsAs the name suggests, Shoreacres affords a Lake Michigan view from its understated Colonial Revival clubhouse, designed in 1923 by Chicago's premier country house architect, David Adler, who created a relaxed yet elegant atmosphere. ParticipantsJessamine Chan, author Jonathan Eig, journalist and biographer Alex Kotlowitz, journalist, author Scott Lundius, executive director, The Morrison-Shearer Foundation Sahar Mustafah, author Melissa Ann Pinney, photographer Erika L. Sánchez , poet Natasha Trethewey, poet Photo by Beowulf SheehanJessamine Chan’s short stories have appeared in Tin House and Epoch. A former reviews editor at Publishers Weekly, she holds an MFA from Columbia University and a BA from Brown University. Her work has received support from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Wurlitzer Foundation, Jentel, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Anderson Center, VCCA, and Ragdale. She lives in Chicago with her husband and daughter. Photo by Joe Mazza -- Brave Lux Inc.Jonathan Eig is the author of five books, three of them New York Times best sellers. Ken Burns calls him a "master storyteller." Joyce Carol Oates referred to his book, Ali: A Life, as “an epic of a biography.” Eig was born in Brooklyn and graduated from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. He is a former staff writer for The Wall Street Journal. His books have been published in more than a dozen languages. His first book, Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig, won the Casey Award for best baseball book of the year. Ali won the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sportswriting. Photo by Kathy RichlandAlex Kotlowitz is the author of four books, including his most recent, An American Summer, which received the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize. His first book, the national bestseller There Are No Children Here, was selected by the New York Public Library as one of the 150 most important books of the twentieth century. The Other Side of the River received The Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Nonfiction. Alex’s work has regularly appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and on This American Life. His documentary work includes The Interrupters, for which he received a Film Independent Spirit Award and an Emmy. His other honors include two Peabodys, a George Polk Award, the Harold Washington Literary Award and the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his books and journalism which “illuminate astonishing national inequities through the lens of individual experience.” Alex is a professor at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. He and his wife, Maria, live in Chicago. Born and raised in St. Louis, MO, Scott Lundius began his career as a professional dancer. He soon moved his home base to New York City where he joined the Jose Limon Dance Company with whom he toured internationally as an ensemble member and soloist. Since retiring as a performer, Scott has worked in the arts and culture sector with organizations in New York including Pentacle and the Prospect Park Alliance; in New Mexico with Taos Center for the Arts and Taos Talking Pictures; and in Illinois with Chicago Dancemakers Forum, Marwen, Old Town School of Folk Music, the National Public Housing Museum and, most recently, as the executive director of the Morrison-Shearer Foundation. Photo by Tamara HijaziSahar Mustafah is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, an inheritance she explores in her fiction. Her first novel The Beauty of Your Face (W.W. Norton, 2020) was named a 2020 Notable Book and Editor’s Choice by New York Times Book Review, a Los Angeles Times United We Read selection, and one of Marie Claire Magazine’s 2020 Best Fiction by Women. It was long-listed for the Center for Fiction 2020 First Novel Prize, and was a finalist for the 2021 Palestine Book Awards. She writes and teaches outside of Chicago. Melissa Ann Pinney is a Guggenheim Fellow whose evocative studies of the emerging identities of American women & girls have received critical acclaim since featured in Pleasures & Terrors of Domestic Comfort at MOMA. Pinney’s photographs are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Eastman Museum; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; MOMA; SFMOMA; Whitney Museum of American Art; and many others. Pinney has exhibited her work nationally and internationally and received grants from the Illinois Arts Council, and the NEA. Pinney's monographs include: Regarding Emma (2003), Girl Ascending (2010), and TWO, with Ann Patchett (2015). Pinney is working on a book of her Chicago Public School pictures: Signals & Mysteries, to be published in 2023. Erika L. Sánchez is the author of Lessons on Expulsion, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, and Crying in the Bathroom, forthcoming in July 2022. Photo by Nancy CrumptonNatasha Trethewey was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, the daughter of poet, professor, and Canadian emigrant Eric Trethewey and social worker Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough. The daughter of a mixed-race marriage, Trethewey experienced her parents’ divorce when she was six. She subsequently spent time in Atlanta, Georgia, with her mother and in New Orleans, Louisiana, with her father. Encouraged to read as a child, Trethewey studied English at the University of Georgia, earned an MA in English and creative writing from Hollins University, and earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. A former US poet laureate, Trethewey is the author of five collections of poetry: Monument (2018), Thrall (2012), Native Guard (2006), Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002), and Domestic Work (2000). She is also the author of a book of creative nonfiction: Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (2010). Ragdale is an artists' retreat located on the grounds of architect Howard Van Doren Shaw's 1897 Arts and Crafts summer home in Lake Forest, Illinois.The artists' community supports more than 1,500 regional students and 200 creative practitioners each year through residencies, financial aid and fellowships, curatorial projects, and educational programs.