Lit 50 2023: Fiction | Newcity Lit

For this year’s list, we organize everything by category.

Lit 50 2023: Who Really Books In Chicago introduction
Lit 50 2023: Nonfiction
Lit 50 2023: Comics & Kids Books
Lit 50 2023: Translation
Lit 50 2023: Poetry

Laura Adamczyk
In Laura Adamczyk’s debut novel, “Island City,” a woman spills out her life story to a bar full of strangers. Adamczyk says she was able to write the novel with the help of friends, in particular, her professors from Knox College. Raised in the small town of Wilmington, southwest of Chicago, Adamczyk attended Knox and discovered “some really nice mentors” there. She wrote a lot of “Island City” in Galesburg, with one professor loaning a studio, and another offering house space. Formerly with The A.V. Club, Adamczyk is also a book critic and the author of a book of short stories, “Hardly Children.” She says she is able to finish projects by making a habit of writing that is “stronger than not writing.” (Mary Wisniewski)

Lisa Barr
Lisa Barr’s novel “Woman on Fire” got an early ally in the actress Sharon Stone. Back in October 2021, Barr sent Stone an advance reader’s copy. “I decided to send it to one celebrity and give it a shot,” Barr says. Three weeks later, she got a text from Stone, saying “I love it, has it been optioned?” “You could hear me scream from here to California,” Barr says. “We signed the deal six weeks later.” The movie is in process, though the writer’s strike and other factors have delayed things. Meanwhile, Barr just turned in a new manuscript, “The Goddess of Warsaw,” a thriller involving the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Barr is also the author of “The Unbreakables” and “Fugitive Colors.” (Mary Wisniewski)

Melanie Benjamin
A prolific historical novelist who has imagined the lives of Alice Liddell (inspiration for “Alice in Wonderland”) and Anne Morrow Lindberg, Melanie Benjamin ventured into the not-as-distant past of 1960s surf culture in her latest novel “California Golden.” Benjamin is the author of several successful books, including “The Swans of Fifth Avenue,” “The Aviator’s Wife,” “Mistress of the Ritz,” “The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb,” “The Children’s Blizzard,” and “Alice I Have Been.” She didn’t start writing until her kids were out of the house. “Writing is my full-time job, and I’m really lucky that way,” Benjamin says. She thinks the pandemic was good for books, since people stayed home and read. But the post-pandemic period is still good for fiction. “People want good storytelling,” she says. (Mary Wisniewski)

Jessamine Chan
Jessamine Chan is the author of “The School for Good Mothers,” a New York Times bestseller, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and one of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2022. Chan’s fiction has focused on moral gray areas. “I like writing about situations with no clear solutions and prefer asking questions, rather than offering answers.” Chan adds, “It is always important to be a writer, though in our post-Roe world, at a time of book bans, climate emergencies, and so many other crises, it feels particularly urgent to make art.” (Billy Lombardo)

Tracy Clark
Tracy Clark sees a skunky drainpipe in the shadows of the 159th Place vehicle emissions testing station and thinks, “Wonderful place to bury a body.” Born and raised in South Shore, Clark stayed near home all through her education and working life. She says “Chicago is my town. This is where I was born, where I live, probably where I will die.” Clark’s fascination with her city comes across clearly in the unique and varied settings she’s used in her four Cass Raines mysteries and debut Harriet Foster thriller. The two Black female investigators have infiltrated many of the city’s seventy-seven neighborhoods as they work horrific “puzzles.” “Broken Places” (2018) was the first of Clark’s published six novels; her second Harriett Foster novel, “Fall,” is due out on December 5. Winner of the Sue Grafton Memorial Award, Clark now writes full-time. (Donald G. Evans)

Sonali Dev
Sonali Dev launched her literary career in 2014 with a hugely successful first novel, “A Bollywood Affair.” Six hit novels followed, with a seventh, “Lies and Other Love Languages,” due out on September 26. Like Jane Austen, Dev writes love stories that reflect greater cultural issues, chiefly female empowerment. “The reality of being a woman in today’s world and getting to a place of being entirely ourselves, those are essentially the stories I want to tell,” Dev says. Born in Mumbai in 1972, Dev moved to Michigan in 1996. She has been in the Chicago area since 2008, living in Naperville. In a romance publishing landscape overwhelmingly populated with white characters, Dev’s sales consistently put her in the bestselling ranks while also garnering an avalanche of accolades from respected places like the Library Journal, The Washington Post and Kirkus Reviews. (Donald G. Evans)

David Ellis
David Ellis has an intimidating résumé—he is a best-selling novelist and a highly successful lawyer and judge. Before coming to the bench, Ellis was the House prosecutor in the impeachment trial against former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. In 2014, he was sworn in as the youngest-serving Illinois Appellate Court justice in the First District. The New York Times Book Review called Ellis’ latest book, “Look Closer,” about a murder in elite Chicago society, “wildly entertaining.” Ellis has written nine other books, as well as eight with James Patterson. Ellis is the winner of the Edgar Award—a high prize in crime fiction. (Mary Wisniewski)

Julia Fine
Julia Fine is the author of “What Should Be Wild,” “The Upstairs House,” and her latest work, “Maddalena and the Dark.” Fine teaches regularly at StoryStudio and lives in Portage Park. “We tend to place analysis and empathy at odds with one another, and I think good literature can act as a corrective. I honestly think cultivating empathy and giving people a door to other minds can nudge them in the right direction.” Fine adds, “I’m interested in the messiness of human beings, and how we’ve been socialized to hide or be ashamed of that messiness in ways that ultimately do us a disservice.” (Billy Lombardo)

Alison Hammer
Alison Hammer is the solo author of “You and Me and Us” and “Little Pieces of Me,” and she’s half of the writing duo, Ali Brady (with Bradeigh Godfrey). They’ve published “The Beach Trap” and “The Comeback Summer,” with another on the way in 2024. Hammer’s work explores the complexities of relationships and what those relationships teach us about ourselves. “I believe writers are an important part of every generation. Art imitates life, and writers play a crucial role in how history will remember us. I make an effort to reflect the world I’m living in. One that’s diverse and beautiful and complicated.” (Billy Lombardo)

Sandra Jackson-Opoku
As a member of the OBAC Writers’ Workshop in the early 1970s, Sandra Jackson-Opoku read her poetry in the streets, in parks, in front of “The Wall of Respect,” at taverns. Now, she publishes short stories, journalism and nonfiction pieces; has nearly completed two children’s books; is finishing a sweeping historical saga; will soon shop her cozy culinary mystery, “Sweet Potato Crimes”; adapted her first novel to the stage; is plotting a TV series adaptation; and has written television programming. “I don’t necessarily try consciously to make my fiction, creative nonfiction or drama sound poetic, but poetry is wrapped around my tongue and it comes out in whatever I write,” she says. That lyricism and brevity—the use of “the smallest most specific words I can find”—serves Jackson-Opoku’s interest in African-inspired spirituality. She was the winner of the City of Chicago’s first Esteemed Artist Award for literary arts. (Donald G. Evans)

James Kennedy
After James Kennedy studied physics and philosophy, he worked as a software engineer and a teacher while bouncing through various experiments in honing his creative skills, like music and improv comedy. Fortunately he never shook his desire to be a writer, and after penning the quirky young-adult fantasy “The Order of Odd-Fish” in 2008, he shifted over to adult fiction with gusto, publishing the science-fiction thriller “Dare to Know” in 2021, which Lit 50 Hall-of-Famer Daniel Kraus blurbed as “what happens when Willy Loman sees through the Matrix.” The Times of London Saturday Review called it the science-fiction “Book of The Year” for 2021. His next novel, the horror thriller “Bride of the Tornado,” comes out this month. In addition, he says that, for the past twelve years, “I’ve also been running the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival, in which kid filmmakers create short movies that tell the entire stories of Newbery-winning books in about ninety seconds. This video contest culminates in annual live screenings attended by hundreds in New York, Chicago, Boston, San Antonio, and other cities all over the country.” (Brian Hieggelke)

Mary Kubica
Mary Kubica is as meticulous as she is prolific, writing eight carefully crafted suspense novels since her debut, “The Good Girl,” in 2014. Her latest, “Just the Nicest Couple,” came out early this year. Kubica prefers the terms “domestic suspense” or “psychological suspense” to describe her stories. She says, “The term thrillers, to me, often implies more action and gore, and that’s not what my books are.” It is Kubica’s nuanced character studies that imbue her stories with an uncomfortable tension on and below the surface. “I try hard to make my characters as authentic as possible,” she says. Kubica was born and lives in suburban Chicago. She has often used Chicago as a primary or secondary setting. Her latest book, “She’s Not Sorry,” will be out April 2, 2024. Her books have sold more than three million copies and been translated into more than thirty languages. (Donald G. Evans)

Ling Ma
Just before Ling Ma was laid off from her job at Playboy, she began writing a meditation on work. Ma had found inspiration in “Live at the Sunset Strip.” “[Richard Pryor] is really funny, really depressing, really vulnerable, and sad, and a little angry,” Ma says. “I wanted to do something like that.” “Severance” is a satirical, apocalyptic, coming-of-age, roman à clef, immigrant office story. Ma had achieved the “maximalism” to which she aspired. Her subsequent short story collection, “Bliss Montage” (2022), won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and The Story Prize. Born in Sanming, Fujian, China and raised in America, Ma has mostly remained in Chicago since 2001, when she came to study at the University of Chicago. “Chicago is very integrated into my writing routine, and provides a visual context for what I’m imagining,” she says. Recently, Ma received the Windham-Campbell Prize. (Donald G. Evans)

Mary Anne Mohanraj
Being a fast typist led Mary Anne Mohanraj into a literary life. Mohanraj’s temp secretary jobs often left her idle, so she started composing poems to appear busy. She’d studied English at the University of Chicago, with the intention to teach literature. Since then, she’s published nearly a dozen books, ranging from erotica to science fiction to children’s stories to cookbooks. She’s written poetry and essays, edited volumes of books, and regularly blogs at her own website. Born in Sri Lanka, Mohanraj grew up in Connecticut. She left Chicago after her undergraduate years, but returned in 2005 to pursue a university teaching career. Sri Lanka has figured prominently in Mohanraj’s oeuvre. Defiance of her family’s arranged marriages inspired early erotica pieces, after which she wrote about the civil war, intergenerational conflict, and food from her home country. “I left when I was two, but it has shaped me,” Mohanraj says. (Donald G. Evans)

Sahar Mustafah
Sahar Mustafah’s 2020 novel, “The Beauty of Your Face,” impressed critics with its unflinching examination of tragedy, prejudice, faith and transformation. The novel, together with Mustafah’s 2017 story collection, “Code of the West,” elevated her status as a leading literary voice. Mustafah says, “I enjoy how fiction can help me explore and reinvent lived experiences and the social/political climate.” Mustafah was born and mostly raised in Chicago, to Palestinian parents. She spent five formative years in her father’s village of Al-Bireh in the West Bank, until the first Intifada broke. She teaches creative writing. Her complex, intergenerational debut novel features Muslim characters and explores Islamophobia, as well as family and faith. “I consider my book very American in the sense that my characters desire fulfillment of those same ideals of happiness and liberty,” Mustafah says. “But their paths are obstructed because they are not white and not Christian.” (Donald G. Evans)

Jeneva Rose
Jeneva Rose has been writing for as long as she can remember, but didn’t start writing novels seriously until 2016, when she decided she was going to actually finish a book. Now she has six books—her latest, “You Shouldn’t Have Come Here,” is a New York Times bestseller. She started her successful TikTok account in 2020 as a way to reach readers during the pandemic. The account was the source of a viral misunderstanding—Rose enlisted her husband to help promote her book “The Perfect Marriage” by having him pretend to be the adulterous and possibly murderous main character. But some on social media who didn’t watch the whole video mistakenly believed he was a killer. Rose and her husband had to clear this up, but the incident made it into the Daily Mail, and the book sold over a million copies. It pays to creatively promote. (Mary Wisniewski)

Rachel Swearingen
Rachel Swearingen is the author of “How to Walk on Water and Other Stories.” She’s in the final stages of writing her first screenplay as well as two new novels. In January she spent a month at a writing retreat in Berlin through The Reader Berlin. Swearingen says, “I tend to circle around the dangers and delights of the imagination. The tensions between art and commerce and the ways we often don’t value or see those on the margins. We need storytellers who are able to cut through the noise and the content coming at us. Literature has and will always be important. I try to remember that everything we write goes into the larger time capsule.” (Billy Lombardo)

Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi
Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi’s three novels—”Fra Keeler” (2012), “Call Me Zebra” (2018), and “Savage Tongues” (2021)—highlight a remarkable output that also includes prolific writing on books, authors and art. Born in Los Angeles and raised in Iran, Spain, the United Arab Emirates and the United States, Oloomi has received a multitude of awards, including a Fulbright Fellowship, a PEN/Faulkner Award and a John Gardner Fiction Book Award (both in 2019), and a 2015 Whiting Award. “Best American Short Stories 2023” selected her short story, “It Is What It Is,” which features Chicago. She now splits time in South Bend and New York. (Donald G. Evans)

Elizabeth Wetmore
Elizabeth Wetmore returned to the scene of her childhood in her outstanding debut novel, “Valentine” (2020). A West Texas native, Wetmore places her novel in the ruggedly beautiful oil fields of Odessa, circa 1976. It’s a place littered with contradictions, such as the bookmobile and strip club that occupy the same parking lot. Wetmore’s novel explores, through a half-dozen female perspectives, the aftermath of a horrific attack on a fourteen-year-old Mexican American girl. Willingly but reluctantly, these women rise up to confront the baked-in prejudices in this border town. Wetmore says, “I think the central project of white people, both in places like West Texas and elsewhere, is to see ourselves and our internalized racism clearly and then do the work of reconciliation—to listen and understand the harm that has been caused by the dominant power structures; to ask for forgiveness; and most important, to ask, how can I help, then listen carefully to the answers and then take action.” “Valentine” made the New York Times bestseller list. (Donald G. Evans)

FEATURED FICTION

Toya Wolfe
Like the narrator in her debut novel, “Last Summer on State Street,” Toya Wolfe spent her formative years in Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes. Wolfe was a finalist for the PEN Open Book Award and the recipient of The Pattis Family Foundation Chicago Book Award. “Last Summer on State Street” was a Stephen Curry Literati Book Club pick. Wolfe is currently at work on a TV adaptation of “Last Summer on State Street.” “I can’t imagine writing anything that doesn’t showcase Black people, Chicago, and people at work,” Wolfe says. “I’ve had so many kinds of jobs, and lately, I’ve been interested in characters who love or hate what they do, and how that refines our character.” (Billy Lombardo)

Rita Woods
Rita Woods “never wanted to be anything else” but a writer. Pragmatism led her instead to become a medical doctor. Then, long into her alternate career, she heard across a Washington, D.C. rotunda, “What are you writing?” It was how the literary-obsessed Woods was greeted in high school. That “stab in the heart” inspired Woods to return to her writing. “Remembrance” (2020) and “The Last Dream Walker” (2022) incorporate elements of magical realism, history and myth. Woods says, “Children believe that unicorns and fairies are real. As adults we stop giving ourselves permission to believe. I want to open that door.” Incredible Black women who “cannot be beaten down” propel intricate, layered stories of slavery and freedom. Woods obsesses on the research, spending two hours investigating “how turpentine is made.” The author, a longtime Homer Glen resident, is at work on a time-travel novel set in her native Detroit. (Donald G. Evans)

FICTION
The Hall of Fame

Jesse Ball

Rachel DeWoskin

Stuart Dybek

Gillian Flynn

Gina Frangello

Syed Haider

Lindsay Hunter

Daniel Kraus

Rebecca Makkai

Eric May

Cris Mazza

Joe Meno

Audrey Niffenegger

Sara Paretsky

Lori Rader-Day

Kathleen Rooney

Renee Rosen

Veronica Roth

Marcus Sakey

Scott Turow

Luis Urrea