In poetry, lyric, and sloganeering, Chicago is often described as a town of swagger and bluster, violence and blight. But in storytelling, whether fiction or nonfiction, Chicago often appears to be a place of subtle contrasts, ever changing, and the city setting is often baked into narrative like character, influencing action and plot.
In this class we’ll look at some examples of Chicago as setting, and write from prompts inspired by our readings to generate our own settings.
JP SOLHEIM has been published in Bellevue Literary Review, MQR: Mixtape, Midwest Weird Audio Literary Magazine, The Pinch and The Southampton Review. They hold a PhD in French from the University of Michigan and an MFA in Writing and Literature (fiction) from the Bennington Writing Seminars, and taught at the University of Michigan, Université de Paris VII and University of Illinois at Chicago, as well as writing centers across the United States. They serve as the Associate Director of the BookEnds novel revision fellowship at The Lichtenstein Center of Stony Brook University.
