See Literary Icon Percival Everett In Chicago For Book Launch At Studebaker Theater

Chicago's historic Fine Arts Building and Exile in Bookville will co-present an evening with literary icon Percival Everett at the Studebaker Theater (410 S. Michigan Avenue) on Thursday, March 28 at 7 p.m. A finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and Booker Prize, and recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle, Everett is the author of more than 30 books. His novel Erasure was adapted into the critically acclaimed Oscar-nominated film American Fiction.

At the March 28 book launch event, Everett will discuss his new novel James with author Gabriel Bump. James is a brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view.

Tickets for the event with Percival Everett at the Studebaker Theater (410 S. Michigan Avenue) on Thursday, March 28 at 7 p.m. are $10 and go on sale to the public at 10 a.m. on February 1. For more information and to purchase event tickets, visit fineartsbuilding.com/events/percival-everett. Pre-signed copies of James are available for preorder at exileinbookville.com and will be sold onsite at the event, with a 10% discount offered to event attendees for preorders and onsite purchases.

In addition to pre-signed copies of James, Exile in Bookville will have pre-signed copies of select additional Everett titles available for sale at the Studebaker Theater event. Everett will not be signing or personalizing books during this event.

About James by Percival Everett

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. While many narrative set pieces of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river's banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim's agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light. Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a “literary icon” (Oprah Daily), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.

Percival Everett's most recent books include Dr. No (finalist for the NBCC Award for Fiction and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award), The Trees (finalist for the Booker Prize and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award), Telephone (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), So Much Blue, Erasure, and I Am Not Sidney Poitier. He has a poetry collection forthcoming with Red Hen Press. He has received the NBCC Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the PEN Center USA Award for Fiction, and is a Distinguished Professor of English at USC.

The Fine Arts Building, which celebrated its 125th anniversary last year, is a home for art in all forms: from pioneers like Poetry magazine's founding publisher Harriet Monroe, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, sculptor Lorado Taft and the Chicago Little Theatre, to the ongoing legacies of painters, musicians, booksellers, puppeteers, dancers, photographers and craftspeople who inhabit the building today, the Fine Arts Building is buzzing with more than a century of Chicago creativity and innovation. A Chicago Landmark since 1978, the building features original manually-operated elevators, Art Nouveau murals from the late 19th century and the recently renovated Studebaker Theater, one of the city's oldest and most significant live theatrical venues. Second Fridays open studios events are free to attend from 5-9 p.m. on the second Friday of each month, and include gallery openings, special performances and artistic demonstrations. For more information, visit fineartsbuilding.com.

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