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Illinois became the first state in the United States to pass legislation to end book bans. Signed by Governor JB Pritzker June 12, House Bill 2789 takes effect January 1, 2024. Introduced by Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, who serves at the State Librarian, the bill received significant support both in the House and

Queer bars are the site of some of my most treasured memories. They’re also one of my favorite settings for books. Whether it’s a true story about a real bar or a fictional tale about a favorite haunt, I can’t stay away from books with queer bar settings. On this list, you’ll find fiction and

I have been a fan of The Little Mermaid since my early childhood days of demanding rewatches of our well-loved VHS cassette tape of Disney’s The Little Mermaid. The story has always snagged my interest. I love Ariel’s character, a mermaid who struggles with navigating her family relationships while staying true to herself. Ariel’s fiery

Black-owned Chicago-based alternative comics publisher Iron Circus Comics is having quite the year. In the past 12 months, the publishing house earned two Eisner awards for an anthology, had at least two books banned in the Great Banning Epidemic, and the pilot of their first animated feature reached 8.9 million views since it debuted in

We can’t all be Auguste Dupins or Miss Marples. If we were to appear in our very own mystery novel, some of us would undoubtedly be relegated to the role of the sidekick: we’d be John Watson, or worse, Arthur Hastings. We’d muck up every crime scene, confess our suspicions of the butler to the

The launch of ChatGPT in the fourth quarter of 2022 shook up many industries, including publishing. In fact, plenty of doomsaying articles floated the idea that the software might replace many jobs; the list inevitably includes creative jobs such as writing, editing, and translating, and it feels a lot like a ticking bomb. Do we

Today is a good day. The apparent apocalypse seems to have retreated from the East Coast, and there are new books. I live. And the new releases I have for you today are a pretty good mix — there’s an engaging murder mystery set in ’70s Texas with a queer protagonist, a unique tale of

Pageboy, Elliot Page’s long-awaited memoir, gives a fragmented but close-up perspective of Page’s life and experiences growing up as someone who has always known that he was a boy even when everything in society told him otherwise. We follow him from childhood through close to the present day and he is unflinching in the detail

Cormac McCarthy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Road, No Country for Old Men, Blood Meridian, and more, has died at the age of 89. He passed away from natural causes in his Sante Fe home, according to his publisher, Knopf. McCarthy won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for his bleak dystopian novel, The Road.

In Waypoints: My Scottish Journey (8 hours), Scottish actor Sam Heughan, best known for playing Jamie Fraser in the TV series “Outlander,” describes the experience of hiking the West Highland Way, from his journey’s impulsive beginning to its funniest and most painful moments, all the way to its successful end. With disarming asides and humorous