As the (Pil)crow flies

For some reason I'm stuck in the mindset that festival season starts in June around here, what with Blues Fest and Printers Row dominating my summer calendar. Leave it to author Amy Guth to snap me out of it. For four days in May, she's curating the all-new Pilcrow Lit Fest, which kicks off with her monthly Fixx Reading Series and ends with a little Sunday Salon Chicago action.

Guth is still adding events and authors to the lineup, and it's been fun watching it grow over the past few months. Authors like Jami Attenberg and Timothy Schaffert will be in town, as well as a fistful of local writers. It's an interesting, small-scale fest, taking place in some unusual venues, including the second floor of Trader Todd's (Ogre, unfortunately, is not listed as a participant).

Guth has also programmed in a fund-raiser for New Orleans Public Libraries called "Rebuilt Books," in which authors will destroy and then reconstruct their books as art to be auctioned off.

The whole thing is a welcome addition to the scene, and contrasts nicely with the Printers Row monolith. While Printers Row is a blast because of the sheer size, Pilcrow offers what appears to be a more intimate feel. Hell, when it comes to drinking in public during the summer, and passing it off as being literary, I say the more the merrier.