The American Writers Museum, which opened yesterday in downtown Chicago, is decidedly not a library. While there is a Readers Hall filled with comfy couches and a selection of popular works to browse, this first and only museum dedicated to celebrating American writers and their influence on American history and culture is chock full of content that appeals to four of the five senses (sorry, nothing to taste here).
Read the full post on Literary Hub.
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 made reality through a group of immensely talented and dedicated writers, actors, directors, musicians, and more, led by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the music, lyrics, and book based on Ron Chernow’s doorstop of a biography about the ten dollar Founding Father most famously known for being killed in a duel by Aaron Burr.
Read the full post on the American Writers Museum blog.
In the middle of summer on the beautiful campus of Dominican University in Oak Park, Ill., there was a lot of talk of icebergs. But it wasn’t because people wanted to cool off – it was because more than 300 people from 18 countries had gathered for the 17th Biennial International Hemingway Society Conference (co-hosted by the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park, an American Writers Museum affiliate) to celebrate the work of one of America’s greatest authors known for the hidden depth of his works.
Read the full, original post on the American Writers Museum blog.
My introduction to Laura Ingalls Wilder was a used copy of The Long Winter when I was seven or eight years old. I immediately fell in love with the Ingalls family story of pioneer life in the late 1800s. More than 20 years later, that book is a bit more worn, and I proudly consider LIW one of my favorite authors. Like millions of fans around the world, I’ve repeatedly read all of Wilder’s Little House books and seen the TV series. So why does a story about a family traveling west in a covered wagon resonate so much nearly 60 years after Wilder’s death?
Read the full, original post on the American Writers Museum blog.
In early October, I visited Boston for a few days to explore a city I have long admired but have only been to once before. This former Midwest and D.C. gal was all about diving headfirst into the history and arts and culture of one of our nation’s first cities, and I made the most of it.
Established in 1630, Boston is probably most well known for its role in the American Revolution, its 2.5-mile Freedom Trail hosting 16 historic sites such as the Old North Church, the Paul Revere House, and the site of the Boston Massacre. Also included on the Trail is the Old Corner Bookstore, once an apothecary and home to the Puritan dissident Anne Hutchinson, and also the oldest commercial building in Boston, according to theFreedom Trail Foundation.
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Read the full, original story at SavingPlaces.org.
