Here at the American Writers Museum, three of our favorite activities are writing, reading, and drinking. Which is why we’ve decided to host a night that incorporates all three. If you get thirsty like us on Thursdays, then join us June 28 for our Literary Cocktail Tasting event. We’ll have four cocktails inspired by our […]
Every week, the AWM is excited to bring you stories written by our visitors in our Story of the Day exhibit. Check back weekly for new stories, and visit the Museum to try out our typewriters and possibly be featured here! Some words of wisdom: The liberal arts; they don’t teach you how to think or what […]
Every week, the AWM is excited to bring you stories written by our visitors in our Story of the Day exhibit. Check back weekly for new stories, and visit the Museum to try out our typewriters and possibly be featured here! Come visit us this weekend at Printer’s Row Lit Fest. If it’s too hot for you, […]
Every week, the AWM is excited to bring you stories written by our visitors in our Story of the Day exhibit. Check back weekly for new stories, and visit the Museum to try out our typewriters and possibly be featured here! We celebrated our 1st anniversary this week, so we chose a few stories that people wrote […]
Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, and a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a team of poets and their typewriters who compose commissioned poetry on demand. She teaches English and Creative Writing at DePaul University and is the author of eight […]
From Chicago to Dublin and back, I have seen the likes of two nations’ writers museums, and, as they would say in Ireland, it was craic (crack)— “the serious work of play.” The idea for the American Writers Museum (AWM) spawned from the influence of The Dublin Writers Museum. The two museums are unacquainted cousins […]
Dr. Eve L. Ewing is a sociologist of education and a writer from Chicago. She is the author of Electric Arches and Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side and the co-author of No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks. She is a scholar at the University of Chicago School of Social […]
Before America had an official poet laureate, the functions of that office were performed by the poetry consultant to the Library of Congress. Gwendolyn Brooks became the twenty-ninth poetry consultant. Her tenure at the Library of Congress was a success; she defined the work of the poet laureate. She was an activist poetry consultant, welcoming […]
In October of 2016, the Smithsonian Museum of American History began a Kickstarter campaign to raise money toward the conservation of Dorothy’s ruby slippers that were used in the 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz. The slippers in the museum are one of several pairs made for the movie. While I was familiar with the […]
If you haven’t heard about the little show about a Founding Father that started out as a hip-hop mixtape and became a Broadway sensation, then you’ve been holed up in the library for too long. Hamilton: An American Musical first hit the stage at the Public Theatre in New York City in 2015, a dream […]