CHICAGO, IL. (June 14, 2009) – June 6 and 7, the Printers Row Lit Fest marked its 25th year of literary bliss, and Columbia was there front and center. Like every year since its inception, the Lit Fest took over the South Loop’s historic Printers Row, closing down streets to make way for more than 250 authors, tents and tables full of books, publishers and local colleges and universities – all there to celebrate the written word.
The festival featured literary luminaries in readings and panel discussions, including Neil Gaiman, Elmore Leonard, Dave Eggers, Stuart Dybek, and from Columbia, acclaimed cartoonist Ivan Brunetti and the Pushcart Prize winning Nami Mun.
The Columbia Arts and Entertainment tent, set up at the Fest entrance at Harrison and Dearborn, boasted two days of readings and music from faculty, staff, alumni, and students. Books by faculty and alumni were for sale, along with beautiful, glossy photography books from The Center for American Places. Shop Columbia claimed their own table, selling objects of art, jewelry, tote bags, and much more, all designed and produced by students.
Readings at the Columbia tent attracted many festival-goers, entertaining them with a range of authentic voices and perspectives. Writers of fiction, nonfiction, plays, and poetry took the microphone during the course of the afternoon, with live bands playing jazz, alternative rock, and acoustic guitar closing out the day.
In all, it was a successful event that sent droves of Chicagoans home with bagfuls of summer reading, and a relatively rain-free celebration of a quarter-century of an iconic Midwestern Lit Fest.
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