Rosellen Brown

"Lost in Darkness" speaks to the voices never heard, the stories never told. The voices of those with no guarantee of hearth and home. Books on housing usually don't make the best-seller lists. Housing isn't "sexy". You won't hear these stories in the late-night on Letterman or Leno. But many of us are just a couple of paychecks away from the street. Recent studies have confirmed it: Twenty-first Century Chicago faces an alarming crisis - a severe shortage of affordable house. This collection captures the real, human stories of housing and homelessness. The words of human beings who shuffle, invisible, through half-lives of bus shelters, viaducts and abandoned basements.

ACM has released its 50th issue, an issue dedicated to our hometown of Chicago. To be perfectly honest, we never thought we’d make it to a 50th issue. ACM has never been known for fundraising skills, financial acumen, or an airtight organizational structure. Mostly we’ve just been known for being independent since 1977 and for publishing young and exciting writers as frequently as we can manage it on a shoestring budget. We like it that way. So when we realized that we were in fact still around and viable and putting out our 49th issue, it struck us that the best way to celebrate that nice, round number was to set about celebrating our roots and publishing a Chicago issue.*