Chicago, the “Windy City,” offers a host of cultural attractions — the Art Institute, the Shedd Aquarium, the Navy Pier, Millennium Park, and the Museum of Science and Industry to name just a few. There’s also a lesser-known cultural attraction that I will soon be visiting: The American Writers Museum. Although I’ve been to Chicago at least 10 times during my life, I had never heard of this museum until my wife gave me a membership to it as a Christmas gift. As it happens, it’s no surprise I had never heard of the American Writers Museum; it’s only been open to the public since May 2017. But if it turns out to be a “hidden treasure,” I may come to value it as much as Chicago’s other cultural sites.

Located at 180 North Michigan Avenue, the museum “celebrates the breadth of American writing through interactive exhibits and programming that honors the past, promotes the present, and inspires the future of writing in the United States.” One of the current programs being offered is the “My America” series, featuring immigrant writers (some of them refugees) describing the path that led them to the U.S. and what it means to them to be an American. There is also the ongoing “Little Squirrels” storytime program, which brings preschool children to the museum to listen to stories read by volunteers. I checked the museum’s website to see what might be going on during my visit to Chicago from January 29-31. Alas, I’ll come too late to hear Julissa Arce discuss her memoir, My Underground American Dream, and too early to see and comment on a documentary film, Paul Laurence Dunbar: Beyond the Mask. The film would have been especially interesting since I’ve learned from reading David McCullough’s The Wright Brothers that Dunbar was a good friend of Orville Wright’s.

Nevertheless, I should find plenty to occupy myself at the museum. There’s a temporary exhibit on “Tools of the Trade” that examines the various devices American writers have used to record their ideas. Apparently there are no less than 12 different models of typewriters on display here. There is also a gallery focusing on Chicago writers and a readers hall where visitors can gain some insight into what Americans were reading at different times in our history.  One exhibit I’ll be sure to take in is the “Mind of a Writer” gallery. The emphasis here is on what goes through a writer’s mind as he or she translates thoughts into words and then moves them onto the pages of a story. Games are available that allow the players to explore the vocabularies of famous writers and to experiment with words themselves. I’ll have to be careful not to be overly competitive.

No doubt, there will be some surprises in store for me when I visit the American Writers Museum at the end of the month. I’ll describe my experiences there in a follow-up blog posting in February.