The literary community of Chicago has long responded to political and social change and this year is no exception. Public funding is being stripped from arts, humanities and science institutions that foster America’s generative creativity and imagination. In anticipation, writers, bookstores and literary enterprises began the year with Writers Resist, a citywide flexing of creative voices against a president who has made clear his narrow and faulty view of Chicago. It’s a year where independent bookstores, when confronted with Amazon’s brick-and-mortar plans, banded together to remind readers and consumers that buying local helps retain communities. It’s a time when the first national museum dedicated to writers comes to town, when the city comes together to celebrate the centennial of the late Pulitzer Prize winner and Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Brooks, when young people gain sustenance from the biggest slam poetry festival in the country and our independent publishers continue to shape conversations across the nation.
This list reflects behind-the-scenes influence, unlike the artist list that we run alternate years—although many of the individuals listed here are also poets, writers and interdisciplinary artists in addition to their work educating, organizing, advocating, producing, selling, exhibiting and encouraging.
Pulling together a list of fifty people who demonstrate our city’s literary clout—locally, nationally and internationally—relies on crowdsourcing and not a small degree of angst in shuffling good people on and off the list. It’s not a bad problem to have. It reflects a dynamic landscape of civic groups, bookstores, educators, advocates, publishers, discourse enablers and power shapers who create space for ideas and words to flourish. (Toni Nealie)
Lit 50 2017 was written by Toni Nealie and Amy Strauss Friedman
#48: Christian Picciolini
Author & Anti-Hate Activist
The night that white supremacist Dylann Roof was killing congregants in the AME Church, former extremist Christian Picciolini was at The Book Cellar in Chicago, warning people of rising domestic terrorism. Since then, the founder of nonprofit peace advocacy organization “Life After Hate” has been touring nationally and internationally to help people leave hate groups. “I hope that by exposing racism, hate will have fewer places to hide,” he says. The author of WHITE AMERICAN YOUTH: My Descent into America's Most Violent Hate Movement—and How I Got Out (formerly Romantic Violence) helps people disengage from hate organizations. He won an Emmy for directing and producing ExitUSA’s “There is life after hate” PSA. Picciolini is an ambassador for United Nations-affiliated iChangeNations and won a National Statesman Award. He is also a media producer.
(Photo by Joe Mazza/Brave Lux)