Chicago connection: September 2008 Archives

Oprah had high praise on her talk show today for her latest book club selection, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (Ecco, 566 pages, $26.95), saying, "It's everything you want a book to be. I think this book is right up there with the greatest American novels ever written."

It took author David Wroblewski more than a decade to finish the book, which was a best seller over the summer and received much advance buzz and rave reviews. On the surface it's the story of a boy and his dog in rural Wisconsin; on a deeper level it weaves coming-of-age, family intrigue, mysticism and more.

David Wroblewski took his time (more than 10 years)
writing The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.
(Michael Buckner~Getty Images)

Wroblewski will participate in a live, interactive Webcast with Oprah Book Club members. Details will be announced at a later date on Oprah.com. To join the book club (membership is free): www.oprah.com/bookclub.

Here is the Sun-Times' review of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle ...

Amy Leach of Evanston is one of six women awarded this year's Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award, which is given annually to women writers who demonstrate excellence and promise in the early stages of their careers.

Amy Leach

Leach and the other recipients -- Jennifer Culkin, Joanne Dominique Dwyer, Jolie Lewis, Hasanthika Sirisena and Therese Stanton -- will be honored in a ceremony tomorrow in New York City, where they each will receive $25,000.

Leach is working on her first book, a collection of essays described as addressing "the spiritual and the everyday with a comc's sense of timing to create something entirely original that falls on the boundary between prose and poetry." Her work has appeared in The Iowa Review, A Public Space and Identitytheory.com.

The awards program was created by novelist Rona Jaffe, who died in 2005.