This year’s Chicago Humanities Festival kicks off on October 3rd and runs until November 16.  On the literary side of things, here is what’s on the roster this year:

Anne Carson: Cassandra Floatcan

The distinguished poet, translator, MacArthur Fellow, and professor of classics and comparative literature at the University of Michigan will perform her haunted and haunting poem-essay about the problems of prophecy (prescient Cassandra at the threshold of Agamemnon’s home on the eve of his murder) and translation (how to translate her cries of alarm and grief into language that can be understood and acted upon) in a performance flecked with the architectural demolition imagery of Gordon Matta-Clark. Carson’s poetry collections include Decreation, Autobiography of Red, Men in the Off Hours, and The Beauty of the Husband.

Mark Doty, Achy Obejas: Queer Lyrics

Lambda Literary Award–winning authors Doty and Obejas will read from and discuss their latest work. Doty, the celebrated poet and memoirist, has written movingly on love and loss in modern gay life. Obejas, an esteemed Chicago-based journalist, novelist, and translator, writes about the tension between public identity and private experience in the United States and her native Cuba.

Both will address the question: how do writers grapple with questions of social, political, and cultural resonance surrounding the LGBTQ experience? C. C. Carter, Lambda Literary Finalist for Best Lesbian Poetry and director of community and culture for the Center on Halsted, will moderate.

Francine Prose: Goldengrove

A new novel from the perceptive, award-winning author of Blue Angel, A Changed Man, and Hunters and Gatherers, among others, is always cause for celebration. Her latest is a story of the heart—an exploration of tragedy and redemption as seen through the eyes of a 13-year-old girl who, during the course of one haunted summer, gets pitched headlong into adulthood. Prose is the current president of PEN American Center.

Colson Whitehead: How to Write and the Art of Writing

An exclusive treat for readers and writers alike: the brilliant author of such fictional dazzlers as The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, and Apex Hides the Hurt will read from two current works-in-progress—a parodic how-to anthology entitled How to Write and the Art of Writing: Writers Write About Writing and his upcoming (2009) novel, “a love story set on the cusp of the Russian Revolution.”

Check the program schedule for other great events, and don’t forget to get tickets!