NPL will be closed Thursday, July 4 for the Independence Day holiday. Our Fell Avenue lot bookdrop and off-site bookdrops will remain available. We will reopen at 9 am on July 5.
Poetry is Normal Presents Valerie Wallace.
Join us for a reading from the new book of this Chicago poet. Supported by the Normal Public Library Foundation.
About the book:
Selected by Vievee Francis for the Four Way Books Intro Prize, Valerie Wallace’s House of McQueen is a glittering debut by an assured new voice. Inhabiting the life and work of Alexander McQueen, Wallace builds a fantastical world using both original language and excerpts drawn from interviews, supermodels, Shakespeare, and more. At turns fierce and vulnerable, here is a collection that leaps from runway to fairytale to street with wild, brilliant grace.
About the author:
Valerie Wallace the author of House of McQueen, selected by Vievee Francis for the Four Way Books Intro Prize in Poetry, and the chapbook The Dictators’ Guide to Good Housekeeping (dancing girl press 2011). Her work was chosen by Margaret Atwood for the 2012 Atty Award, and she has received an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award and the San Miguel de Allende Writers Conference Award in Poetry. She earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and served as an editor with RHINO from 2008-2016. She is Associate Director, Communications for the project Virtue, Happiness, & the Meaning of Life at the University of Chicago and teaches courses and workshops in Chicago and elsewhere.