Lillian Boxfish took 1930s New York by storm, working her way up to become the highest-paid advertising woman in the country. Now it's the last night of 1984 and Lillian, 85 years old but just as sharp and savvy as ever, is on her way to a party--but decides to indulge in some detours along the way. On a walk that takes her more than 10 miles around the city, Lillian meets a wide swath of humanity while reviewing her own life of excitement and adversity, passion and heartbreak. A love letter to city life, Kathleen Rooney’s new novel paints a portrait of a remarkable woman across the canvas of a changing America, from the Jazz Age to the onset of the AIDS epidemic and from the Great Depression to the birth of hip-hop. Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press and a founding member of Poems While You Wait. She teaches English and creative writing at DePaul University and is the author of eight books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction, including the novel O, Democracy! A winner of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry magazine, her reviews and criticism have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the New York Times Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, the Rumpus, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago with her spouse, the writer Martin Seay.
Please join us for the launch of local author Kathleen Rooney's new novel, LILLIAN BOXFISH TAKES A WALK.
Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, and a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a team of poets and their typewriters who compose commissioned poetry on demand. She teaches English and Creative Writing at DePaul University and is the author of eight books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction, including the novel O, Democracy! (Fifth Star Press, 2014) and the novel in poems Robinson Alone (Gold Wake Press, 2012). With Eric Plattner, she is the co-editor of René Magritte: Selected Writings (University of Minnesota Press, 2016 and Alma Books, 2016). A winner of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry magazine, her reviews and criticism have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times Magazine, The Rumpus, The Nation the Poetry Foundation website and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago with her spouse, the writer Martin Seay, and her second novel, Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in January of 2017.