WICKER PARK — The Chicago Review of Books announced its annual award winners Thursday in categories like fiction, nonfiction, poetry and essay/short story.
Now in their eighth year, the awards honor works published by authors from the Chicago area’s literary community. Chicago-based novelist Rebecca Makkai emceed the ceremony at Volumes Bookcafe, 1373 N. Milwaukee Ave., in Wicker Park.
The 2023 Fiction Award was given to “Bliss Montage” by Ling Ma (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), besting a short list that included “Island City” by Laura Adamczyk, “Maddalena and the Dark” by Julia Fine, “Biography of X” by Catherine Lacey, “Extended Stay” by Juan Martinez, “Book of Extraordinary Tragedies” by Joe Meno and “Good Night, Irene” by Luis Alberto Urrea.
Jonathan Eig’s “King: A Life” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) received the 2023 Nonfiction Award. The other nominees included “Who is the City For?: Architecture, Equity, and the Public Realm in Chicago” by Blair Kamin with photographs by Lee Bey; “Choosing Family: A Memoir of Queer Motherhood and Black Resistance” by Francesca T. Royster; “B.F.F.: A Memoir of Friendship Lost and Found” by Christie Tate, and “The Wandering Womb: Essays in Search of Home” by S.L. Wisenberg.
“I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times” by Taylor Byas (Soft Skull) won the 2023 Poetry award, amid other poetry entries “Dialect of Distant Harbors” by Dipika Mukherjee, “Where Are the Snows” by Kathleen Rooney, “Trace Evidence” by Charif Shanahan and “Super Sad Black Girl” by Diamond Sharp.
And Block Club Chicago reporter Madison Savedra topped the Essay/Short Story with “After the Buses: Meet the Migrants at the Center of Texas’ Manufactured Crisis” in Block Club & Borderless Magazine.
Other nominees in the category included “Life and Death in Chicago’s Most Dangerous Bike Lane” by Casey Toner, Mina Bloom, and Illinois Answers Project in Block Club Chicago, as well as “Black cowboy culture in Chicago lives on” by Bianca Cseke & Meha Ahmad in WBEZ; “Question Mark, Ohio” by Joe Meno and Dan Sinker, an immersive short-form narrative series on Instagram and online; and “Why you talking to a bum?” by Katie Prout in Chicago Reader.
Javier Ramirez and Kristin Enola Gilbert, co-owners of Exile in Bookville, 410 S. Michigan Ave., received the Adam Morgan Literary Leadership Award in recognition of their stewardship of independent bookselling and efforts toward enhancing the local literary community.
The Chicago Review of Books Awards are voted on by a committee of Chicago booksellers and Chicago Review of Books staff. The Review’s parent organization, the Stories Matter Foundation, also includes StoryStudio Chicago in North Center, co-sponsor of Thursday’s event.
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