Art and writing events in Chicago

Northwestern University’s 4th Annual Spring Writers’ Conference takes place from April 12-14. Activities include a reading by David Shields, author of Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, which provoked so much discussion last year. In a recent interview of Shields in HTML Giant, Shields defends the controversial premise of his book:

The book is about art that strives to have as thin a membrane as possible between life and art. Kafka: “A book should be an axe to break the frozen sea within us.” To me, in our highly artificial culture, more fiction can’t do that. It’s only more bubble-wrap. The work that can do that, for me, is work that aims to teach us how to endure existence rather than helps us to escape it.

The reading is April 14 at 5:30 PM in Evanston. Full details for the conference are here. Events are free and open to the public.

Several exhibits close in April at the Art Institute of Chicago. I especially recommend John Marin’s watercolors, and “The Sausage Photographs” of Peter Fischli and David Weiss, exploring the “poetics of banality.” Both exhibits close on April 17.

For a bit of nostalgia, enjoy this slideshow of authors and their typewriters at Flavorpill.