Author Barry Pearce in Conversation with Robert Wilder

Join us Saturday January 31st at 4:30pm at Garcia Street Books for a reading from the new book The Plan of Chicago by author Barry Pearce. He will also be in conversation with local author Robert Wilder, writer of Daddy Needs a Drink, Tales from the Teacher's Lounge, and the YA novel NICKEL

The Plan of Chicago has an unusual structure – nine linked stories set in nine Chicago neighborhoods – and unusual range. The characters – half men, half women – include immigrants from Poland, Mexico, Ireland, and Somalia. They work as house painters, taxi drivers, sketch artists, and scam artists – often exploited by or exploiting others to make it in an unforgiving city. Chicago features heavily in these characters’ plans, though the plan of Chicago – shaped by divisions of race, class, gender, violence – often forces them apart. Despite that division, incongruous lives intersect here in unexpected ways. An Irish tradesman in a changing neighborhood struggles with the complications of befriending an African American coworker. His boss’s self-absorbed wife, a Polish immigrant, learns to count people in new ways working for the U.S. Census. A Romanian boy who helps his father fake accidents tests the limits of filial loyalty, and the insurance claims adjustor investigating his case confronts dark baggage when his partner works with rape victims. Through these varied characters – Black and White, straight and gay, wealthy and working-class – Pearce captures the breadth and depth of the city that sits dead center in America and perhaps better 

than any other, can reveal its promise and flaws. 

Barry Pearce’s parents immigrated to the U.S. from Ireland and settled on the South Side of Chicago, where he grew up with six siblings. He graduated with a degree 

in journalism from Northwestern University – the first in his family to attend college – and earned an MFA in creative writing at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. 

He won the Nelson Algren Award Grand Prize, an Illinois Arts Council Award, and The Mercedes Delos Jacobs Book Prize. The Mercedes Delos Jacobs Book Prize. Pearce lives 

in Chicago, where he ghostwrites nonfiction books and occasionally teaches.

Robert Wilder is the author of a novel, NICKEL, and two critically acclaimed books of essays: Tales From The Teachers’ Lounge and Daddy Needs a Drink, both optioned for television and film.

He has published essays in Newsweek, Details, Salon, Parenting, Creative Nonfiction, Working Mother and elsewhere. He has been a commentator for NPR’s Morning Edition, The Madeleine Brand Show, On Point and other national and regional radio programs. Wilder’s column, also titled “Daddy Needs A Drink,” was printed monthly in the Santa Fe Reporter for close to a decade. He was awarded the 2009 Innovations in Reading Prize by the National Book Foundation.

Wilder has lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for over twenty years.

The authors' books will be available for purchase at the event, or if you can't join us send a store pickup request or order online at Bookshop.org

Titles from Robert Wilder:

From Barry Pearce: