For the sixth consecutive year, the University of Illinois Press will have a large presence at the Chicago Tribune Printers Row Lit Fest.  Festival goers can visit the University of Illinois Press tent on Dearborn Street, between Congress and Polk. Press staff will sell Chicago- and Illinois-themed books from 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. on June 4-5. 

New featured titles for sale include the photography book Illini Loyalty: The University of Illinois by Larry Kanfer and Alaina Kanfer, and Illinois: A History in Pictures by Gerald Danzer, professor emeritus of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The Lit Fest program committee has invited multiple University of Illinois Press authors to speak about their recent books.

Authors Ellen Steinberg & Jack Prost will discuss From the Jewish Heartland: Two Centuries of Midwest Foodways, the inaugural volume in the Press’s Heartland Foodways series.

“We noshed our way around Chicago and the rest of the Heartland sampling the best of Jewish cuisine,” says co-author Ellen Steinberg.  “In the process, we collected family stories, and heirloom recipes, documenting how Jewish settlers adapted to their new environments.  No other kind of research could be more fun, or caloric.”

The From the Jewish Heartland program will be on Saturday, June 4, at 4:00 p.m. on the Good Eating stage.

Other University of Illinois Press authors who will participate in Lit Fest programs on June 4-5 include:  Jasmine Alinder (Moving Images: Photography and the Japanese American Incarceration), Matt Carlson (On the Condition of Anonymity:  Unnamed Sources and the Battle for Journalism), Jonathan Cavallero (Hollywood’s Italian American Filmmakers:  Capra, Scorsese, Savoca, Coppola, and Tarantino), Michael Charry (George Szell: A Life of Music), Gerald Danzer (Illinois:  A History in Pictures), and Matthew Ehrlich (Radio Utopia:  Postwar Audio Documentary in the Public Interest).

C-Span’s Book-TV will be on site to record some of the author presentations for future broadcast.

The Printers Row Lit Fest was founded in 1985 by the Near South Planning Board to attract visitors to the Printers Row neighborhood (once the city’s bookmaking hub).  By 2002, it had grown to five city blocks (on Dearborn, from Congress to Polk), attracting more than 200 booksellers from across the country displaying new, used and antiquarian books, and featuring seven stages with more than 100 free literary programs.  It is considered the largest free outdoor literary event in the Midwest-drawing more than 125,000 book lovers to the two-day showcase.