The Pattis Family Foundation Chicago Book Award is open to writers working in a variety of genres, including history, biography, social sciences, poetry, drama, graphic novels, and fiction—all relating to Chicago. Dawn Turner received the inaugural Pattis Award in 2022 for Three Girls from Bronzeville.
The Newberry Library and The Pattis Family Foundation are pleased to announce the winner of the second annual $25,000 Pattis Family Foundation Chicago Book Award. Toya Wolfe, author of Last Summer on State Street, will receive the award, which celebrates works that transform public understanding of Chicago, its history, and its people.
“Toya Wolfe’s debut novel is an endearing, memorable, and page-turning work with broad appeal and deep ‘Chicago heart,’” said Daniel Greene, former President and Librarian of the Newberry and Pattis Award jury member. “Set during an important turning point in the history of public housing in Chicago, Last Summer on State Street is a compelling story of friendship, community, and home.”
In addition to awarding Toya Wolfe, the juried panel also recognizes Heather Hendershot as the shortlist award recipient for authoring When the News Broke: Chicago 1968 and the Polarizing of America. Hendershot will receive an award of $2,500.
Sitewide Banner Message
Books for fall classes, thought-provoking, exhibition-related items and more... Visit in person or online to see all the exciting new offerings that we have in store for you!
Pattis Award Winners
The Stephen Curry Underrated Literati Book Club Pick!
"[A] powerful novel.... Tragic, hopeful, brimming with love, Wolfe's debut is a remarkable achievement."--New York Times Book Review
Named a Best Book of Summer by Good Housekeeping, Chicago Magazine, The St. Louis Post Dispatch, Chicago Tribune, Veranda, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Publishers Weekly, and more!
For fans of Jacqueline Woodson and Brit Bennett, a striking coming-of-age debut about friendship, community, and resilience, set in the housing projects of Chicago during one life-changing summer.
Even when we lose it all, we find the strength to rebuild.
Felicia "Fe Fe" Stevens is living with her vigilantly loving mother and older teenaged brother, whom she adores, in building 4950 of Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes. It's the summer of 1999, and her high-rise is next in line to be torn down by the Chicago Housing Authority. She, with the devout Precious Brown and Stacia Buchanan, daughter of a Gangster Disciple Queen-Pin, form a tentative trio and, for a brief moment, carve out for themselves a simple life of Double Dutch and innocence. But when Fe Fe welcomes a mysterious new friend, Tonya, into their fold, the dynamics shift, upending the lives of all four girls.
As their beloved neighborhood falls down around them, so too do their friendships and the structures of the four girls' families. Fe Fe must make the painful decision of whom she can trust and whom she must let go. Decades later, as she remembers that fateful summer--just before her home was demolished, her life uprooted, and community forever changed--Fe Fe tries to make sense of the grief and fraught bonds that still haunt her and attempts to reclaim the love that never left.
Profound, reverent, and uplifting, Last Summer on State Street explores the risk of connection against the backdrop of racist institutions, the restorative power of knowing and claiming one's own past, and those defining relationships which form the heartbeat of our lives. Interweaving moments of reckoning and sustaining grace, debut author Toya Wolfe has crafted an era-defining story of finding a home--both in one's history and in one's self.
"Toya Wolfe is a storyteller of the highest order. Last Summer on State Street is a stunning debut."--Rebecca Makkai, New York Times bestselling author of The Great Believers
The Stephen Curry Underrated Literati Book Club Pick!
"[A] powerful novel.... Tragic, hopeful, brimming with love, Wolfe's debut is a remarkable achievement."--New York Times Book Review
Named a Best Book of Summer by Good Housekeeping, Chicago Magazine, The St. Louis Post Dispatch, Chicago Tribune, Veranda, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Publishers Weekly, and more!
For fans of Jacqueline Woodson and Brit Bennett, a striking coming-of-age debut about friendship, community, and resilience, set in the housing projects of Chicago during one life-changing summer.
Even when we lose it all, we find the strength to rebuild.
Felicia "Fe Fe" Stevens is living with her vigilantly loving mother and older teenaged brother, whom she adores, in building 4950 of Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes. It's the summer of 1999, and her high-rise is next in line to be torn down by the Chicago Housing Authority. She, with the devout Precious Brown and Stacia Buchanan, daughter of a Gangster Disciple Queen-Pin, form a tentative trio and, for a brief moment, carve out for themselves a simple life of Double Dutch and innocence. But when Fe Fe welcomes a mysterious new friend, Tonya, into their fold, the dynamics shift, upending the lives of all four girls.
As their beloved neighborhood falls down around them, so too do their friendships and the structures of the four girls' families. Fe Fe must make the painful decision of whom she can trust and whom she must let go. Decades later, as she remembers that fateful summer--just before her home was demolished, her life uprooted, and community forever changed--Fe Fe tries to make sense of the grief and fraught bonds that still haunt her and attempts to reclaim the love that never left.
Profound, reverent, and uplifting, Last Summer on State Street explores the risk of connection against the backdrop of racist institutions, the restorative power of knowing and claiming one's own past, and those defining relationships which form the heartbeat of our lives. Interweaving moments of reckoning and sustaining grace, debut author Toya Wolfe has crafted an era-defining story of finding a home--both in one's history and in one's self.
"Toya Wolfe is a storyteller of the highest order. Last Summer on State Street is a stunning debut."--Rebecca Makkai, New York Times bestselling author of The Great Believers
A riveting, blow-by-blow account of how the network broadcasts of the 1968 Democratic convention shattered faith in American media. "The whole world is watching!" cried protestors at the 1968 Democratic convention as Chicago police beat them in the streets. When some of that violence was then aired on network television, another kind of hell broke loose. Some viewers were stunned and outraged; others thought the protestors deserved what they got. No one--least of all Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley--was happy with how the networks handled it. In When the News Broke, Heather Hendershot revisits TV coverage of those four chaotic days in 1968--not only the violence in the streets but also the tumultuous convention itself, where Black citizens and others forcefully challenged southern delegations that had excluded them, anti-Vietnam delegates sought to change the party's policy on the war, and journalists and delegates alike were bullied by both Daley's security forces and party leaders. Ultimately, Hendershot reveals the convention as a pivotal moment in American political history, when a distorted notion of "liberal media bias" became mainstreamed and nationalized. At the same time, she celebrates the values of the network news professionals who strived for fairness and accuracy. Despite their efforts, however, Chicago proved to be a turning point in the public's trust in national news sources. Since those critical days, the political Right in the United States has amplified distrust of TV news, to the point where even the truest and most clearly documented stories can be deemed "fake." As Hendershot demonstrates, it doesn't matter whether the "whole world is watching" if people don't believe what they see.