Archival Inclination By Liesl Olson
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few years ago, in the fall of 2018, Chicago writer and sociologist Eve L. Ewing made a visit to the Newberry Library. Ewing was poised to publish her third book, a collection of remarkable poems called 1919, an imaginative response to historical accounts of the race riots that swept through Chicago in 1919. She also had agreed to serve as an advisor on the Newberry’s year-long, collaborative series of programs exploring the history and legacy of the riots, including a program in which she would perform her new poems. An admirer of Ewing’s writing and activism, I was excited to show her the Newberry. I had no idea that her visit would lead to an extraordinary new acquisition for the library: Ewing’s own papers. I met Ewing in the Special Collections Reading Room, where I had pulled collection materials that I thought might interest her. Born and raised in Chicago, where she attended Chicago Public Schools and then the University of Chicago (where she is now an assistant professor in the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice), Ewing is a daring, high-volume writer across genres. She published her first non-fiction book, Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side in 2018 while simultaneously writing a new superhero series for Marvel Comics. She is the coauthor with poet Nate Marshall of the play No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks (2017), which is performed by puppeteers, musicians, and actors working in shadow.
Ewing and literary scholar Kenneth Warren during a discussion at the Newberry, September 2019.
Ewing and Liesl Olson in the Newberry’s Special Collections Reading Room, December 2018.
The Newberry Magazine
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