Rob Spillman, the author of “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” will read from and sign his book on April 12 as part of Northeastern Illinois University’s Visiting Writers Series.
The reading will take place at 3 p.m. on the Main Campus in Student Union Room 214, 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave., and is free and open to the public.
Spillman—the award-winning, cofounding editor of Tin House magazine—has devoted his life to the rebellious pursuit of artistic authenticity. Born in Germany to two driven musicians, his childhood was spent among the West Berlin cognoscenti, in a city 200 miles behind the Iron Curtain. There, the Berlin Wall stood as a stark reminder of the split between East and West, between suppressed dreams and freedom of expression.
After an unsettled youth moving between divorced parents in disparate cities, Spillman would eventually find his way into the literary world of New York City, only to abandon it to return to Berlin just months after the Wall came down.
Twenty-five and newly married, Spillman and his wife, writer Elissa Schappell, moved to the anarchic streets of East Berlin in search of the bohemian lifestyle of their idols. Spillman soon discovered he was chasing the one thing that had always eluded him: a place, or person, to call home. In his intimate, entertaining, and heartfelt memoir, Spillman narrates a colorful, music-filled coming-of-age portrait of an artist’s life that is also a cultural exploration of a shifting Berlin.
Now in its fourth year, the Visiting Writers Series brings nationally and internationally renowned writers to Northeastern to read and engage with students and the community.
