200 | Gillian Flynn: Sharp Objects

Through his now classic documentary investigations such as The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War, Errol Morris established himself as a filmmaker committed to seeking the truth, whether proving the innocence of a wrongfully committed man or interrogating Robert McNamara, the architect of the Vietnam War. Morris comes to CHF with his new book The Ashtray, inspired by a philosophical debate over the nature of reality, to share his worldview and urge all of us to establish and support the truth, especially at this moment when its very existence appears under siege in so many ways. No Morris fan should miss this event.

Preorder your copy of The Ashtray: (Or the Man Who Denied Reality) through the CHF box office and save 20%.

A book signing will follow this program.

Presenters:

Errol Morris is an award-winning director and author. His films include The Thin Blue Line; Gates of Heaven; Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control; The Fog of War, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for 2003; and most recently Wormwood, a six-part series for Netflix. He is the author of two New York Times best sellers--Believing is Seeing and Wildreness of Error--as well as The Ballad of Abu Ghraib (co-authored with Philip Gourevitch) and Hear, All Ye People; Hearken, O Earth.

Milos Stehlik is founder and artistic director of Facets Multimedia. Since 1975, he's been responsible for Facets' public programs including the Chicago International Children's Film Festival, as well as Facets Video, a pioneering catalog of over 65,000 films in digital formats.

In her illustrated memoir The Best We Could Do, Thi Bui explores her experience as the child of refugees from Vietnam, her family's harrowing escape after the fall of Saigon, her parents' childhoods during years of war and upheaval, and their efforts to raise a family in the United States. Bui, a former public school teacher who spent 12 years writing her book—including learning how to draw comics—explores how history and tradition, love and sacrifice, are at the center of her ideas about identity and home. Bui is joined by Patricia Nguyen for a conversation about the journey from refugee to citizen in a moment of travel bans and border walls.

Preorder your copy of The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir through the CHF box office and save 20%.

A book signing will follow this program.

Presenters:

Thi Bui was born in Vietnam and immigrated to the United States as a child. She studied art and law and thought about becoming a civil rights lawyer, but became a public school teacher instead. Bui lives in Berkeley, California, with her son, her husband, and her mother. The Best We Could Do is her debut graphic novel, and is a finalist for The National Book Critics Circle Award in the nonfiction category.

Patricia Nguyen is an artist, educator, and scholar born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Performance Studies at Northwestern University. Her research and performance work examines critical refugee studies, oral histories, inherited trauma, and memory in the Vietnamese diaspora. She has published work in Women Studies Quarterly, Harvard Kennedy School's Asian American Policy Review, and Women & Performance. She is also the founder and executive director of Axis Lab, an arts organization that focuses on inclusive and equitable development for the Southeast Asian community.

For 16 years, the Bachelor franchise has been a mainstay in American TV viewers' lives. Each season the die-hard fans—dubbed "Bachelor Nation"—run fantasy leagues and throw viewing parties organized around the show. Whether producing a picture-perfect scene out of a fairy-tale romance or a close-up of Bachelor Arie Luyendyk Jr.’s graphic make-out sessions, the show's fans have managed to carve out a shared space for conversations about love, marriage, feminism, and more. Los Angeles Times reporter and Hollywood insider Amy Kaufman will speak with famed Bachelor recap writer Ali Barthwell to discuss the show and our collective attraction—love it or hate it—to reality television.

Preorder your copy of Bachelor Nation: Inside the World of America's Favorite Guilty Pleasure through the CHF box office and save 20%.

A book signing will follow this program.

Presenters:

Amy Kaufman is a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, where she has covered film, celebrity, and pop culture since 2009. On the beat, she reports from industry events like the Academy Awards, the Sundance Film Festival and the Grammys. In addition to profiling hundreds of stars -- Lady Gaga, Julia Roberts, Stevie Nicks, Jane Goodall -- she has broken major investigative stories on sexual harassment in Hollywood. Amy currently lives in Los Angeles with her Australian Shepherd, Riggins, and dreams of living in a Laurel Canyon tree house.

Ali Barthwell is a writer, performer, and steak lover from Chicago. Her work has been featured in Vulture, the Chicago Tribune and The A.V. Club. Ali attended Wellesley College, where she founded the Dead Serious ImprovFest. She has been a member of the Second City National Touring Company and the Cards Against Humanity Writers Room. Ali has appeared on Netflix’s Easy and Win It All, as well as Huffington Post’s "Here to Make Friends". Her favorite member of The Avengers is Captain America.

Beloved Chicago vocalist Dee Alexander has won over audiences in both her hometown and around the world by combining a golden voice with technical acuity, and a musical range that moves from stunning interpretations of standards to spellbinding original compositions. For this evening with CHF, Alexander brings her magic to the Great American Songbook, celebrating the complex lyrics and enchanting melodies of some of our favorite shared songs. Join Alexander and her band for a musical adventure.

This program is generously underwritten by the Helen B. and Ira E. Graham Family.

Presenters:

Born on Chicago’s west side, Dee Alexander is one of Chicago’s most gifted and respected female vocalist/songwriters. Her talents span every music genre, yet her true heart and soul are experienced in her performance of Jazz music. Ms. Alexander has received numerous awards including the Chicagoan of the Year in Jazz award in 2008 and the 3Arts Award for Music in 2012. She also leads her own Dee Alexander Quartet and the Evolution Ensemble.

Questlove—the Grammy Award-winning cofounder of The Roots and musical director for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon—is a creative powerhouse: musician, bandleader, designer, culinary entrepreneur, professor, and all-around cultural omnivore and tastemaker. Now he comes to CHF with a new mission: Creative Quest, an impassioned guide to living your best creative life, from finding a mentor to maintaining a creative network to coping with critics. In a candid and wide-ranging conversation with Ben Greenman (co-author, Mo' Meta Blues), Questlove will share his wisdom on inspiration and originality, and some of his own experiences, including life lessons from musical forefathers (George Clinton), collaborators (D’Angelo), and like-minded artists (Ava DuVernay and Björk).

Ticket purchase includes a copy of Creative Quest. An option for 1 book + 2 tickets is available through the box office at (312) 605-8444.

This event will feature open captions to increase access to program content.

This program recognizes Ariel Investments, recipient of CHF's 2016 Civic Leadership Award.

Presenters:

Questlove is a drummer, DJ, producer, culinary entrepreneur, designer, New York Times bestselling and James Beard Award–nominated author, and cofounder of the Roots. He is the musical director for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where the Roots serve as the house band, and a four-time Grammy Award–winning musician. He is the author of New York Times bestseller Mo’ Meta Blues, Soul Train: The Music, Dance and Style of a Generation, and Creative Quest. He is also an adjunct professor at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

Ben Greenman is a New York Times-bestselling author and former New Yorker editor who has written more than fifteen books of fiction and nonfiction, including the novel The Slippage, the short-story collection What He's Poised To Do , and collaborations with George Clinton and Brian Wilson. His most recent books are a book-length study of Prince, Dig If You Will The Picture, and Don Quixotic, a collection of microfictions about the 45th president of the United States.

The stories of people seeking refuge, shaped by political violence and geographic displacement, are many, and Clemantine Wamariya has her own singular story to tell. She grew up in a close-knit family in Rwanda, eating pineapple cake and playing in her mother’s tropical garden. At just six years old, she and her older sister fled Rwanda's 1994 genocide, and began a six-year, seven country odyssey before they were granted refugee status in the United States. But the past is always present. “The memory makes me want to burn everything, raze the whole galaxy, and my brain won’t hold the plot. But I have to find a way to tell you: This happened. Men came, seeking to destroy my body and demolish my future. But I cannot be ruined.” Choose Chicago Chair Desiree Rogers joins Clemantine for an unforgettable conversation about turning experience into story, survival into living, and memory into action for justice and the prevention of atrocities.

Preorder your copy of The Girl Who Smiled Beads through the CHF box office and save 20%.

A book signing will follow this program.

This program is presented in partnership with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Presenters:

Clemantine Wamariya is a storyteller and human rights advocate. Born in Kigali, Rwanda, displaced by conflict, Clemantine migrated throughout seven African countries as a child. At age twelve, she was granted refugee status in the United States and went on to receive a BA in Comparative Literature from Yale University. She lives in San Francisco.

Desiree Rogers is the Chair of Choose Chicago and former CEO of Johnson Publishing Company.  A graduate of Harvard Business School, Rogers was named the first African-American Social Secretary by President Obama in 2008.  A breast cancer survivor, she serves on the cabinet of the Conquer Cancer Foundation. Rogers is also on the board of numerous organizations including World Business Chicago, Donors Choose, Museum of Science and Industry and the Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

In the age of selfies and Instagram stories, what is the status of traditional autobiography? Novelist Alexander Chee dares to double down on the form. In How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, Chee explores his life and roles: son, gay man, Korean American, artist, activist, lover, and more. Chee's novels (including the acclaimed The Queen of the Night) have been described as “masterful” (Roxane Gay), “incomparable” (Junot Díaz) and “incendiary” (New York Times). Nami Mun joins him to discuss this commanding, heartbreaking, and wry manifesto on how identify is formed in life and art, and the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction.

Preorder your copy of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays through the CHF box office and save 20%.

A book signing will follow this program.

Poems While You Wait is a group of Chicago poets who periodically set up shop to produce poems on the spot (see what we did there?) at events taking place around the city. We're thrilled to welcome them and their clackety typewriters to CHF's spring festival. Look for their table setup in the SAIC lobby in between your programs and get a personalized poem to take home!

Presenters:

Alexander Chee is a novelist, essayist and an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. He is a contributing editor at The New Republic, an editor at large at The Virginia Quarterly Review, and a critic at large at The Los Angeles Times. His books include The Queen of the Night, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel and Edinburgh, which won the Iowa Writers’ Workshop’s Michener Copernicus Prize in Fiction. He is also the recipient of a 2003 Whiting Award.

Nami Mun grew up in South Korea and New York. For her novel Miles from Nowhere, she received a Whiting Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Chicago Public Library’s 21st Century Award, and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers and the Asian American Literary Award. Previously, Nami has worked as an Avon Lady, a street vendor, a photojournalist, an activities coordinator for a nursing home, and a criminal defense investigator. Her work can be found in The New York Times, Granta, Tin House, The Iowa Review, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Tales of Two Americas, and elsewhere.

As Confederate memorials across the United States come down, new monuments are rising, commemorating anti-slavery efforts, women’s suffrage, and even recent events such as the Orlando nightclub massacre. Brothers Andrew Lichtenstein and Alex Lichtenstein offer another avenue to revisit and reimagine America’s past. In Marked, Unmarked, Remembered, photojournalist Andrew and historian Alex combine new images of lesser known, often nearly forgotten historic sites with essays seeking to shed new light on the connection between place and history. The Lichtensteins come to CHF to provide a history lesson through images.

Preorder your copy of Marked, Unmarked, Remembered: A Geography of American Memory from the CHF box office and save 20%.

A book signing will follow this program.

The annual Richard Gray Visual Art Series recognizes a significant gift from founding CHF board member and distinguished art dealer Richard Gray.This program is presented in partnership with the College Arts and Humanities Institute at Indiana University.

Poems While You Wait is a group of Chicago poets who periodically set up shop to produce poems on the spot (see what we did there?) at events taking place around the city. We're thrilled to welcome them and their clackety typewriters to CHF's spring festival. Look for their table setup in the CAA lobby in between your programs and get a personalized poem to take home!

Presenters:

Andrew Lichtenstein is a photographer, journalist, and educator. His first book, on the Iraq war, Never Coming Home, was published by Charta Press in 2007. He teaches at the International Center of Photography and the New School and lives in Brooklyn.

Alex Lichtenstein is Professor of History at Indiana University, Bloomington, and Editor of the American Historical A specialist on the history of labor radicalism, civil rights, and anti-apartheid activism, he has published widely on the history of prison labor, radicalism in the American South, and the South African labor movement. His works on history and photography include Margaret Bourke-White and the Dawn of Apartheid (with Rick Halpern) and, with his brother Andrew, Marked, Unmarked, Remembered: A Geography of American Memory.

Poet, writer, and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib uses his distinctly ruminative voice and deep investment in popular culture and music to dissect the everyday threats to the lives of black Americans. In They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, inspired by the music of Ice Cube, Abdurraqib ranges over a cross-section of experiences, from attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown’s grave in Ferguson to the first time he was ordered to the ground by police officers—for attempting to enter his own car. Chicago poet and author of Wild Hundreds, Nate Marshall joins Abdurraqib for what's sure to be an dynamic if sobering conversation.

Preorder your copy of They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us from the CHF box office and save 20%.

A book signing will follow this program.

Poems While You Wait is a group of Chicago poets who periodically set up shop to produce poems on the spot (see what we did there?) at events taking place around the city. We're thrilled to welcome them and their clackety typewriters to CHF's spring festival. Look for their table setup in the CAA lobby in between your programs and get a personalized poem to take home!

Presenters:

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His first collection of poems, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much was nominated for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book prize. His first collection of essays, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us was named a book of the year by Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, The Los Angeles Review, The Chicago Tribune, among others. His next books are Go Ahead in the Rain and They Don’t Dance No’ Mo’.

Nate Marshall is from the South Side of Chicago. He is an editor of The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop and the Director of National Programs for Louder Than A Bomb Youth Poetry Festival. His book Wild Hundreds has won the Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s award for Poetry Book of the Year and The Great Lakes College Association’s New Writer Award, among others. His last rap album, Grown, came out in 2015 with his group Daily Lyrical Product.