Memoirous

The Chicago Book Expo is a pop-up bookstore and literary fair open to the public being held on Sunday, November 24, 2013, in the Uptown neighborhood from 11am-5pm at St. Augustine College, 1345 W. Argyle in Chicago. I'll be presenting at this @ 4 pm. Pop-Up Memoir, Jane Hertenstein In this pop-up book venue, Jane Hertenstein, author of numerous flashes, will guide participants through a lively workshop of isolating a memory (your first apartment! the one who got away!) and helping you to shape your own mini-memoir. Hope to see some familiar faces: like Aleksander Hemon who will also be presenting opposite of me on the schedule--drat. Aleksandar Hemon: The Book of My Lives [Chaplin Hall]

In reading Aleksander Hemon’s collection of short stories (linked?) Love & Obstacles I am at once struck by the similarities of his bio and the presumed narrator of his stories. It is also hard to write this review without unintentionally applying the weird angles with which Hemon comes to the English language; I keep wanting to write in choppy tourist-ese, a beguiling translation from an original language into what is English but without the usual syntax and adjectives a person who has spoken English all their life would never employ. I saved as a souvenir some tour notes a guide handed to me before I boarded a bus in Montenegro to go to Albania. My husband and I in a desperate attempt to get to Albania booked a tour from a kiosk along the beach promenade in Budva. “What do you mean you don’t want return ticket? No one stays in Albania!” We also declined the “adequate lunch” as we wanted to save a few Euros. Hemon’s stories are a feast. But never too far behind the romper...