Poetry, fiction, painting, photography -- all are alive and thriving in Chicago. After Hours is willing to go the distance to turn the spotlight on the Chicago literary renaissance that is happening as we live, breathe, write and create this city of big shoulders, this city on the make.

We have quite a legacy ... Nelson Algren, Carl Sandburg, Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Saul Bellow (even Hemingway if he hadn’t left town). These are writers in whose words you could hear the roar of the el passing behind your apartment, could smell the lake, could see the tired souls who work their way through life. These are writers who shed the illusions spun from ivory towers and took up the sound and fury of neighborhood taverns, back yards and front stoops.

It is this voice that defines the Chicago School ... the voice of writers who let the city get under their skin and into their blood. And it is through these writers that the city comments on the social condition, the political condition and the human condition. It’s time for this school to be recognized by the country, the world, and by universities and major publishers.

After Hours intends to be the artist’s view from street level ... the close-enough-to-taste-it view ... the common voice that tells the truth firsthand.

Albert DeGenova
Publisher/Editor