For “Ray Bradbury: Tribute to a Visionary,” local authors Joe Meno, Audrey Niffenegger, and Sam Weller will speak in the Cindy Pritzker Auditorium of the Harold Washington Library Center (HWLC) as part of Columbia College Chicago’s “Story Week Festival of Writers” at 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, March 19, 2013.
The Harold Washington Library Center, the central library of the Chicago Public Library System, is located at 400 South State Street in downtown Chicago. The Columbia College Chicago Fiction Writing Department presents the 17th Annual Story Week Festival of Writers – March 17-22, 2013 – programs in partnership with the Chicago Public Library (CPL).
According to the CPL, a “panel of distinguished guests explore the literary and visionary legacy of Ray Bradbury.” A shorty story writer, novelist, and screenwriter who mostly worked in the science fiction and fantasy genres, Ray Douglas Bradbury (1920-2012) was born in Waukegan in Far Northern Illinois. His family lived in Waukegan on and off until they permanently settled in Los Angeles in 1934.
His best known work is Fahrenheit 451, which Ballantine Books published in 1953. A reference to the temperature at which Bradbury believed book paper autoignites it is a dystopian science fiction novel.
Fahrenheit 451 depicts a future where “firemen” burn books and the regime keeps the populace distracted with interactive soap opera broadcasts on flat-screen televisions.
The story began as the short story “Bright Phoenix,” which was published in 1947. François Truffaut (1932-1984) wrote and directed the 1966 film adaptation that starred Oskar Wemer (1922-1984) and Julie Christie.
Another famous Bradbury book, The Martian Chronicles, which was first published in 1950, is a compendium of short stories that has been translated into over thirty languages. It depicted human colonists nearly exterminating native Martians (telepathic shape-shifters) by accident and a small number of humans creating a new civilization there after the outbreak of an atomic war on Earth.
Three novels by Bradbury are set in Green Town – Dandelion Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and Farewell Summer – a fictionalized version of Waukegan. The Green Town library depicted in Something Wicked This Way Comes was inspired by the Carnegie library in Waukegan, where Bradbury had spent a good deal of time in his youth.
Bradbury wrote the screenplay himself for director Jack Clayton’s adaptation of Something Wicked This Way Comes as a fantasy/horror film. It starred Jonathan Pryce as the sinister carnival proprietor, Mr. Dark; Jason Robards (1922-2000) as the young hero’s librarian father, Charles Holloway; and Pam Grier as a seductive witch in Dark’s employ. Although Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)
Panel participant Joe Meno is a Chicago fiction writer and playwright whose works include Office Girl, The Great Perhaps, and The Boy Detective Fails. A winner of the Nelson Algren Literary Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Great Lakes Book Award and the Society of Midland Authors Fiction Prize, he is a Story Week Board Member.
Audrey Niffenegger, visual artist and writer whose works include the bestseller The Time Traveler's Wife, Her Fearful Symmetry, and The Night Bookmobile. A professor in the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago, she is at work on a new novel, The Chinchila Girl in Exile. She is a Story Week Board Member.
The authorized biographer of Ray Bradbury, Sam Weller’s book, The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury was a Los Angeles Times bestseller. He is also a Story Week Board Member.
Mort Castle, editor of On Writing Horror from Writer's Digest Books, has published over 350 short stories and four novels. He is a seven-time Bram Stoker Award Nominee and a teacher.
Seating is in the Cindy Pritzker Auditorium is on a first come, first served basis. Reservations are not required for this event. Books may be purchased and authors will sign books at the program's conclusion.
The Columbia College Chicago Fiction Writing Department presents the 17th Annual Story Week Festival of Writers: Vision and Voice with the support of the CPL, the Illinois Arts Council, and The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation. Randall Albers, Chairman of the Fiction Writing Department, is Founding Producer of the Story Week Festival of Writers.
There are a number of events at Columbia College Chicago, HWLC, Buddy Guy’s Legends, and the Chicago Cultural Center. Note that the schedule of events incorrectly lists individual events as occurring in 2012, but this is not the schedule of events from last year.
The last events will be “Chicago Classics” from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. on Friday, March 22, 2013 at the Chicago Cultural Center’s Preston Bradley Auditorium. Chicago Tribune writer and WGN host Rick Kogan and others will talk about their favorite Chicago authors.
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Jay Rowell, Director of the Illinois Department of Employment Security (which is almost 100% funded by the federal government), stated in an e-newsletter, “The Great Recession had made it abundantly clear that the stereotypical ‘unemployment office’ of the past is no longer useful in this emerging economy.”
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We do so because working families and successful employers are key to building a more prosperous state of Illinois.
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