Rick Kogan – Page 32 –

Harriet Choice, with educator and musician Muhal Richard Abrams, at a Jazz Institute of Chicago event in 2004.

An appreciation: Pioneering female journalist and jazz critic Harriet Choice has died at 82

July 17, 2023 at 7:07 p.m.

Thousands of people knew Harriet Rosenfeld Choice by the words she wrote for this newspaper, decades worth of her enthusiastic and influential coverage of the jazz scene, which compelled her...

Novelist Toya Wolfe will be presented with the Pattis Family Foundation Chicago Book Award at the Newberry Library.

Bughouse storytelling event to honor novelist Toya Wolfe’s ‘Last Summer on State Street’

July 14, 2023 at 5:00 a.m.

Toya Wolfe writes in her spectacular novel "Last Summer on State Street" that "The memories won't go away; they're proof that once upon a time, I lived in a brick...

Designer and illustrator Monte Beauchamp returns with a new BLAB!

Designer and illustrator Monte Beauchamp brings comic anthology ‘BLAB!’ back to compelling, colorful life

July 12, 2023 at 3:03 p.m.

"BLAB!" is back and though you may not even know what "BLAB!" is, I tell you that it is among the most creative books to ever come from Chicago, even...

Astor Club co-owner Victoria Bilter descends the entry stairwell of the restaurant on July 6, 2023. The Astor is a private members club.

Chicago’s new and swanky private Astor Club opens for business in the heart of the Gold Coast

March 12, 2024 at 12:01 p.m.

It has been a long time since people gathered for dinner in the basement space of the building at 1300 N. Astor Street in the heart of the Gold Coast,...

Dick Biondi greets Pamela Enzweiler, who was in 1961 the president of his fan club and later the director/producer of a film about his life.

Dick Biondi appreciation: The Chicago DJ was the soundtrack for a generation

July 3, 2023 at 11:40 a.m.

For the generation of kids who came into their teens during the early 1960s, the soundtrack of their nights came from transistor radios buried under pillows, the music slightly muffled...

Gen. Italo Balbo as he landed his seaplane on the lakefront in July 15, 1933.

Writer Dawn Raffel’s ‘Boundless as the Sky’ is inspired by Italo Balbo’s flight to Chicago for the World’s Fair

June 29, 2023 at 5:15 a.m.

Inspiration can strike like lightning or it can sneak up on a person. Few know that better than Dawn Raffel. She is an accomplished writer and her two most recent...

Josh Lettiere holds a copy of his book, "Mickey Sojourn," during an interview at Cork & Kerry at the Park in the Armour Square neighborhood on June 22, 2023, in Chicago.

His debut novel ‘Mickey Sojourn’ takes readers on a wild ride, from Hollywood dreams to bank robberies

June 27, 2023 at 5:00 a.m.

A man who once robbed banks was sitting outside a South Side tavern last week. "I was sentenced to 60 months and wound up doing four and a half years...

Coach Gil Thorp is eligible for senior discounts. As the comic turns 65, a new writer hopes to ‘bring the strip into our current age’

June 21, 2023 at 5:55 a.m.

Gil Thorp turns 65 this year on Sept. 8. This may not come as a shock. To many of you, that name means nothing. For thousands, Gil Thorp is but...

Newsman Mike Flannery of WFLD-Channel 32 at the FOX studio newsroom in Chicago on June 19, 2023.

Mike Flannery is bowing out after 50 years of covering the wild and wacky world of politics

June 20, 2023 at 10:01 a.m.

Mike Flannery walked into the newsroom of the Chicago Sun-Times on June 18, 1973, a fresh-faced, hopelessly curious and wildly energetic 22-year-old and now he is calling it quits, leaving...

RAGBRAI is an annual bike ride across Iowa that attracts thousands of bikers and is now the subject of a new film title "Shift."

RAGBRAI is an annual bike ride across Iowa. This documentary shows what it means to those who ride it.

June 7, 2023 at 9:20 a.m.

They ride and ride and then ride some more, tens of thousands of them. All ages, sizes and shapes, they ride across Iowa every year in the summer heat. They...

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