Celebrating the work of one of America’s most neglected literary minds
35th Annual Nelson Algren Birthday Party
April 6, 2024
Bloomingdale Arts Building
2418 W Bloomingdale Av street parking
Western Av - 3 blocks south of Armitage
CTA Blue Line to O’Hare at Western
None of Algren’s was in print when the Nelson Algren Committee planned its first event in 1989. We promote Algren’s values and bring about the recognition he was so consistently denied throughout his life.
Ernest Hemingway called him one of America’s greatest novelists, second only to William Faulkner.
A Heroic Line of Losers by Hugh Iglarsh
Algren’s Eye: Photography and the City by Warren Leming
Understanding Nelson Algren by Brook Horvath
Archaism V. Modernity: Stach’s Calendar in Man With the Golden Arm by Frederick Dumas
Nelson Algren: The End is Nothing, the Road is All
documentary film
The Golden Arm Swings Anew…Nelson Algren is Back from Oblivion by Max Vanzi
Committee Background
Active Core Members: Nina Gaspich, Hugh Iglarsh, Kurt Jacobsen, Mary Wisniewski, David Witter and Warren Leming.
Founders include: Stu McCarrell, Studs Terkel, Warren Leming, Alice Prus, Char Sandstrom.
In 2010, the annual Birthday Party was dedicated to anti-war activist and historian Howard Zinn. The celebration unwound before 120 attendees in a Wicker Park church basement. From folding chairs on paint-chipped concrete floor, guests calloused workers and fresh faced college kids, rose to offer standing O’s to assorted anti-establishment speakers, poets, actors, writers, musicians, scholars and the woman who in leading the audience in song, required all to repeat stanzas in Polish.