Blue in Chicago

Blue in Chicago collects together the sharp, bittersweet stories of Bette Howland and restores to our bookshelves an extraordinarily gifted writer, who was recognised as a major talent before all but disappearing from public view for decades, until nearly the end of her life.

Bette Howland was an outsider: an intellectual from a working-class neighborhood in Chicago; a divorcee and single mother, to the disapproval of her family; an artist chipped away at by poverty and perfection. Each of these sides of her life plays a shaping role in her work. Mining her most precarious struggles for her art in each of these stories, she chronicles the fears and hopes of her generation.

Blue in Chicago, and other stories introduces readers to a wry, brilliant observer and a writer of great empathy and sly, joyous humor. Published in the US under the title Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage.

'If there’s a Howland bandwagon (and there should be), hold me a seat, or I’ll stand. No problem, I’ll stand.’ – Paris Review