I’m happy to announce that my essay, Marquette Park: Members Only, is going to be included in an anthology: The Best of the Rust Belt. It’s set for release in the summer of 2024.
Marquette Park: Members Only was originally included in The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook, a quirky and eclectic anthology of Chicago writers (and one guy from New York) pontificating over their neighborhoods. Readers interested in urban writing will be sure to enjoy this new anthology from Belt Publishing.
Admit it. The title of this book asks a good question. How would you answer it?
What is a College Student? is a companion to a study-skills, critical thinking or composition course. The textbook targets first-generation, urban-commuter, Generation 1.5, developmental and other non-traditional students.
Estimates vary, but according to an NCES assessment of college student demographics, a whopping 71.6% of college students in 2012 showed at least one characteristic considered “nontraditional.” What’s more striking: 26.3% of them exhibited four or more nontraditional characteristics. Parties interested in those characteristics should click on the links, but anyone teaching composition or study skills in college these days will be familiar with them.
The fact is, most of our students are “nontraditional.” It has become traditional to teach them.
Readers of Liquid Ink know that I have spent 20 years teaching community college students. I got so frustrated trying to find an appropriate textbook that I took to the task of writing one myself.
The book offers an introduction to college culture and custom, including considerations of concepts like tenure, academic freedom, the difference between “research” and “teaching,” and the flowchart of professional relationships in a college, particularly how it differs from that of a high school. The book also presents a step-based reading methodology, as it focuses on developing in the student a sense of natural curiosity that drives all inquiry.
What is a College Student? is an ebook read via VitalSource or RedShelf. The price is $40. Anyone can purchase a copy here.
Teachers and professors can request a review copy here.
I’m thrilled to announce my forthcoming book, “What is a College Student?” It’s a textbook due for publication in the late summer of 2023.
While this textbook is appropriate for any Rhetoric, Composition, Study Skills or Developmental language course taught in any college or university, its lessons are informed by my two decades of experience teaching first-generation, urban-commuter, and community college students. Students will find provocative ideas about active learning and the perspective shifts that occur when they dedicate themselves to college study. The book introduces reading methodologies and reflective exercises. It can function as a course of its own or a supplement to any course focused on orienting students to college expectation and culture. The book should also prove an honest guide to high school students curious to know if college is the right path for them.
I’m excited to be partnering with Kendall-Hunt for this project. I’ll offer more news in the coming weeks.
I’m sad to report that my memoir, which won Memoir Magazine’s Grand Prize, is going out of print. Those readers who always wished to pick one up but kept putting it off should still be able to buy a copy over the coming week or two. If you have not heard of this title, you can find information about it on my Publications page. The book is currently available anywhere books are sold, but will more than likely require a personal order.
While this is sad news, it’s just the way of publishing. Thank you to all the readers who have supported my work over the years.
Between the years of 1996-1999, Gint Aras lived a hapless bohemian’s life in Linz, Austria. Decades later, a random conversation with a Polish immigrant in a Chicago coffeehouse provokes a question: why didn’t Aras ever visit Mauthausen, or any of the other holocaust sites close to his former home? The answer compels him to visit the concentration camp in the winter of 2017, bringing with him the baggage of a childhood shaped by his family of Lithuanian WWII refugees. The result is this meditative inquiry, at once lyrical and piercing, on the nature of ethnic identity, the constructs of race and nation, and the lasting consequences of collective trauma.
I’ve penned an essay about the war in Ukraine for the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. Please check it out here.
I haven’t written much here for a while, primarily because I’m at work on some new writing.
In the meantime, I’ve got a short story in this anthology, titled “Open Heart Chicago: An Anthology of Chicago Writing,” edited by Vincent Francone. The story is titled “The Parabola of a Single Bullet Shot into the Night Sky.” It features the things you’ve come to know an love from yours truly, including death, love and mind-bending stuff.
I’m joining nine other writers this Friday night, May 14th, for a romping f-bomb reading. Hope you’ll join us on Zoom. This is the only literary thing I’ve done since the pandemic started, so I’m a bit excited.
It’s 8:00 PM Eastern Time (That’s 7:00 PM in Chicago, 4:00 AM May 15th in Klaipėda) on Zoom. The Meeting ID is 841 3942 5601, and the Passcode is 001155.
Here’s the flyer:
I’ll be reading from my submission to the Volumes Bookcafe Erotica Anthology, “Between the Covers.”
An Excerpt from The Memoir Prize 2021 Grand Prize Winner: Relief by Execution: A Visit to Mauthausen, by Gint Aras. The full Relief by Execution: A …
Relief by Execution: A Visit to Mauthausen by Gint Aras
Just yesterday, I received unexpected holiday news. My memoir, RELIEF BY EXECUTION: A VISIT TO MAUTHAUSEN, was awarded the Memoir Prize for Books from Memoir Magazine.
Huge thanks to the judges at Memoir Mag. It’s a tremendous honor.
I interviewed an American visual artist, Denise Bellezzo, who faced an ordeal trying to get the State Department to repatriate her from an artists’ colony in Peru.
It was published by Untoward Magazine. You can read it here.
Photo by Denise Bellezzo
Liquid Ink 
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