Michael McColly - "Walking Chicago's Coast" - Lisa Roberts, PhD.
Michael McColly will discuss his new book Walking Chicago's Coast: A 63-Mile Journey to the Indiana Dunes. He will be in conversation with Lisa Roberts, PhD. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion.
At 57th Street Books
Presented in Partnership with the University of Chicago Divinity School
About the Book: Blending travelogue, memoir, and environmental reportage, Walking Chicago's Coast takes readers on an urban journey. Michael McColly begins his walk at his far–North Side Chicago apartment and proceeds for two long days along the shore of Lake Michigan to the Indiana Dunes National Park. As he walks, McColly reflects on the layers of history, the constructed magnificence, and the troubling divides in this polyglot mecca of the Midwest.
From its descriptions of grand parks and architecture to packed sandy beaches to polluted neighborhoods called "sacrifice zones" along industrial waterways and rivers, Walking Chicago's Coast shows how such urban hiking lets one contemplate a city's grandeur and history, confront environmental and social realities, and trigger emotions and memories. Through Superfund sites, brownfields, scrapyards, and industrial ruins, McColly discovers the remarkable patterns of urban nature and the surprising beauty along his path.
About the Author: Michael McColly’s essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Sun Magazine, The Boston Review, and other journals. He is the author of the 2006 Lambda Literary Award-winning memoir, The After-Death Room: Journey into Spiritual Activism which chronicles his journey reporting on AIDS activism in Africa, Asia and America.
He has been a lecturer in Creative Nonfiction in Northwestern’s Master’s Program in Creative Writing and at Columbia College
His present nonfiction focuses on the subject of urban walking and its surprising effects on not only personal health but on public and environmental health as well. In his recent work, Walking the Coast of Chicago, he blends environmental reportage, natural history, and memoir, as he describes an urban pilgrimage of 63 miles to the Indiana Dunes National Park.
About the Interlocutor: Lisa Roberts, PhD. is an educator, curator, writer and administrator. Her career has focused largely on museums and museum-like institutions, particularly of a botanical nature. She is the former director of Garfield and Lincoln Park Conservatories in Chicago and spent the early part of her career at the Chicago Botanic Garden and the Field Museum of Natural History. In 2005 she was invited to Casablanca to program a major public park and subsequently worked on a number of educational and cultural sister city exchanges between Casablanca and Chicago, becoming co-chair of the committee in 2014. Other international projects have taken her to burgeoning museum developments in Myanmar and Niger. She is the founder naturalia, inc. which provides consulting services to museums, gardens, parks, and nonprofit organizations worldwide. She has written, taught and lectured widely and has served as an advisor to a variety of civic and community organizations. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago where she researched the history and philosophy of education in museum settings. She was named a Fulbright Specialist from 2021 – 2025.
Related Titles
Blending travelogue, memoir, and environmental reportage, Walking Chicago's Coast takes readers on an urban journey. Michael McColly begins his walk at his far-North Side Chicago apartment and proceeds for two long days along the shore of Lake Michigan to the Indiana...