Judith Valente

From the back cover: "Over the decades, Catholics in Chicago have earned a reputation for 'prayerful heterodoxy.' That means they pray deeply about their faith and feel empowered and compelled to say what they believe, while respecting and celebrating the unity and diversity that both defines and challenges them. In this slim volume of stories, essays, poems, and passionate personal pleas, more than thirty Chicago Catholics reveal their hopes for the church they love--sometimes ardently, sometimes painfully, but always faithfully....Taken together, their experiences paint a portrait of the Catholicism being lived at this moment in this unique American city." The concept behind the book, written on the eve of Francis Cardinal George's retirement, was to take "snapshots" of the local church for the benefit of the next archbishop (and whoever else might be interested).

"Judith Valente’s poems are deeply rooted in the everyday world, and yet transport us to a place in the soul, a place that C.S. Lewis once described as “the real, real world.” She is a poet concerned with those moments that telescope the sacred in the ordinary, offer a clarifying vision of what it means to be human, and remind us we are part of something larger than ourselves. These are love poems to life, whether she is writing about a lunar eclipse, the origin of the alphabet, the art of finding beauty in flaws, or an imagined stroll with William Carlos Williams. The poems contain a keen sense of place. They transport us to a summer parade in rural Illinois, a beach under stars on the island of Maui, a sacred festival in Chiang Mai, a classroom in a Catholic girls school in northern New Jersey. In language that is at once accessible and inventive, these open-handed poems remind us it is a miracle simply to be alive." http://vacpoetry.org/discovering-moons.html

In our logo we have called ourselves "a journal of Chicago writing and art." The Chicago school of literature is very much like the people, the politicians, the style, the neighborhoods of the city that inspires an artistic vice that is unpretentious, aware of the realities and inequalities of materialism yet sentimental in a streetwise-front-stoop-backyard sort of way. So often Chicago is thought of as unrefined or unsophisticated ... a city of big-shouldered thugs, scandal, dirty alleys ad factory workers. But what Chicago lacks in polish, it makes up for in honesty. Chicago writers pull no punches. Chicago writers find a beauty in big-shouldered thugs, scandal, dirty alleys ad factory workers. *

There is no question of the strength of the writing that has come from this city-Algren, Castillo, Brooks, Bellow, Farrell; Sandburg, etc. etc. But there was no journal striving to showcase that Chicago style of writing-a style that is so often shunned or misunderstood. So here it is...After Hours...a showcase of Chicago writers and artists. -taken from issue.