An Inconvenient Hour

You know that odd hour when Saturday daytime is over but Saturday night hasn’t yet started? Chicago author Jeffrey Wolf (pictured) figured the perfect activity to enliven that peculiar interval would be a reading series showcasing the Far North Side’s many talented writers. Since November (except for a summer hiatus, which ends in September), his fabulously named An Inconvenient Hour: Prose, Poetry, and Coffee has been held monthly on a Saturday from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at Metropolis Coffee. “Metropolis is not only Edgewater’s de facto community meeting place but a space that nurtures art and intellectual curiosity,” says Wolf. “I go there every morning to do my own writing.” The series has featured such local luminaries as Ananda Lima, Kyle Beachy, CM Burroughs, Kim Brooks, Rachel Swearingen, and Aviya Kushner in scintillating lineups of three or four readers. (Full disclosure: I’m scheduled to read November 12.) And it keeps with Chicago’s reputation as a thriving place for live literature. “As Midwesterners, we both feel genuine emotions and spend most of our day hiding them,” says Wolf, a Columbia College fiction professor. “We also have a penchant for mythologizing. I think live lit taps into all of that.” 1039 W. Granville Ave., Edgewater