Chicago Public Library joins the Columbia College Chicago Fiction Writing Department as it presents the 16th Annual Story Week Festival of Writers: Surviving the American Dream. CPL welcomes Bonnie Jo Campbell, the nationally acclaimed author of Once upon a River, who is joined by Don DeGrazia for a conversation and a Q&A.

Campbell’s collection Women and Other Animals details the lives of extraordinary females in rural and small town Michigan, and it won the AWP prize for short fiction. Her story “The Smallest Man in the World” has been awarded a Pushcart Prize. Her novel Q Road investigates the lives of a rural community where development pressures are bringing unwelcome change in the character of the land. Her critically acclaimed short fiction collection American Salvage, which consists of fourteen lush and rowdy stories of folks who are struggling to make sense of the twenty-first century, was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award in Fiction.

Don De Grazia is a full-time fiction writing professor at Columbia College Chicago, where he also earned his B.A. and M.F.A. After completing his master’s thesis, American Skin, De Grazia sent it off to London’s prestigious publisher Jonathan Cape, who offered him a contract. Hailed as an American classic, the book was so highly acclaimed by critics that it caught the attention of publishers around the world, and in April 2000, American Skin was released in the U.S. by Scribner. It is now in its fourth printing and was recently anthologized in The Outlaw Bible of American Fiction. A member of the Screenwriters Guild of America, De Grazia is currently adapting the script for American Skin. He has written for the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader, and other publications. He resides in Chicago, where he is at work on his second novel, Reel Shadows, a chapter of which appeared in the March 2009 issue of TriQuarterly. De Grazia is also the co-founder of “Come Home Chicago,” a series that celebrates our city’s unique storytelling tradition with readings and entertainment held at the legendary Underground Wonder Bar.