News: Department hosts reading by Chicago author Billy Lombardo

9/16/09 | In an event sponsored by the Department of Language and Literature, local author Billy Lombardo kicked off Benedictine’s Homecoming 2009 festivities with a reading from his latest book, How to Hold A Woman, a powerful portrayal of a dysfunctional family dealing with loss. The reading was followed by a discussion and book signing.

Lombardo grew up in the shadows of old Comiskey Park in the Bridgeport neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side and began writing as a poet in the Chicago slam poetry scene. Praised for creating “characters… of shimmering emotional complexity,” he has received acclaim for writing with “the wonder and candor of a master storyteller.” His 2005 collection of short stories, The Logic of a Rose: Chicago Stories, celebrates Chicago and won the 2005 G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction. The book was also a Chicago Tribune Best Fiction Pick of 2005, Society of Midland Authors Award Runner-up in Fiction and a ForeWord magazine Book of the Year finalist. Most recently, Lombardo and his work were featured in a Chicago Tribune article (“The Growth of Billy Lombardo”).

Lombardo is also the author of Meanwhile, Roxy Mourns and has published fiction in venues including StoryQuarterly, Other Voices, Cicada and the Bryant Literary Review. His latest novel, Man With Two Arms, is slated to be published by Overlook Press in February 2010.

A graduate of Loyola University, Lombardo teaches fiction at The Latin School of Chicago. He is also the co-founder and Artistic Director of Polyphony H.S., a student-run national literary magazine for high school writers and editors. Lombardo lives in Forest Park with his wife, Elisa, a singer/songwriter, and their sons Seth and Kane.

To learn more about Billy Lombardo, visit his website here.