Adam Langer Collection

Biographical Note

Adam Langer, a novelist, journalist and playwright, was born on July 23, 1967, at Michael Reese Hospital and grew up on the north side of Chicago in the neighborhood of West Rogers Park. He is the son of Esther Langer, a onetime administrative assistant at Northwestern University, and the late Dr. Seymour S. Langer, a radiologist who worked in private practice, at the University of Illinois at Chicago and at the city’s Metropolitan Tuberculosis Sanitarium. While growing up, Langer attended grade school at Daniel Boone Grammar School and the Baker Demonstration School in Evanston and Hebrew School at the K.I.N.S. Congregation Synagogue on California Avenue. While still living in Chicago, he attended high school at Evanston Township High School, during which time he began his professional career as a writer and performer. As a teenager, he wrote and performed for WBEZ radio shows, such as Audio Jam and Youth News , published freelance journalism in Lerner Newspapers and Pioneer Press , and also served as an intern at Chicago Magazine .

Langer attended college in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., at Vassar College, where he received his bachelor of arts in political science in 1988, while also serving as books editor and later arts editor of The Miscellany News and news director of WVKR-FM. At Vassar, Langer wrote and directed some of his first plays— Almost Twenty , Coming Attractions , What I Need Is a Good Bonk on the Head and The View from the River Styx . During his summers in Chicago, he worked as an intern for the radio stations WBBM News Radio 78 and WXRT-FM, and also as a stand-up comedian, performing mostly in comedy clubs in Chicago’s suburbs. His brief stand-up career was the subject of an essay that won the College Journalism Award from Rolling Stone magazine and also of his first published article in the Chicago Reader . He continued to write for the Chicago Reader , where he wrote features stories and served as a theater critic until 2000.

Following his graduation from Vassar, Langer returned to Chicago, where he lived until 2000, working as a journalist, playwright, filmmaker, actor and theater producer, living in Lakeview and later in Ravenswood. During this time, more than a dozen of his plays were premiered. Langer founded Radio Theater Chicago, co-founded and served as the artistic director of Shattered Globe Theatre, and later as the founding artistic director of Cave 76 Productions. Cave 76, along with Covert Creative Group, produced Langer’s independent film The Blank Page , based on Langer’s play of the same name. His 1999 play The Critics , which played at Chicago Dramatists Workshop, was adapted for film by director Jim Sikora, who premiered the film at the Gene Siskel Film Center in 2010. In 1991, during the run of the first official Shattered Globe production, Langer’s rock ’n’ roll play Backstage Pass , he met his future wife, Beate Sissenich, a native of Germany who was then working as an intern for the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs under the auspices of Action Reconciliation Service for Peace.

The jobs Langer held in Chicago ranged from teaching test prep classes in the Chicago public schools to leading double-decker bus tours to serving as contributing editor for Inside Chicago magazine. In 1993, he became editor of Chicago’s Subnation Magazine , a position he held until the magazine’s demise in 1995. In 1998, he became a co-founding editor of Book Magazine and served as the magazine’s senior editor until it folded in 2003. During this time, he wrote reference books and travel guides, such as The Madness of Art , The Film Festival Guide and The City Smart Guide to Chicago , and also studied English literature at the University of Illinois at Chicago, receiving his master’s degree in 1999.

A 2000-2001 fellowship from the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University took Langer to New York, where he studied the influence of corporate funding on the arts. After living in Morningside Heights during his fellowship year, Langer settled in New York’s Manhattan Valley neighborhood and began work on what would become his first published novel, Crossing California . While writing his subsequent novels The Washington Story , Ellington Boulevard and The Thieves of Manhattan , as well as the memoir My Father’s Bonus March , Langer also served as columnist for The Book Standard, a freelance book editor, and published freelance journalism and criticism in such publications as The Boston Globe , Chicago Tribune , The Huffington Post , The Los Angeles Times , The New York Times , The San Francisco Chronicle , The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post , among others.

From 2003-2011, Langer divided his time between New York and Bloomington, Ind., where his wife, Dr. Sissenich, has worked as an assistant professor of political science. Sissenich and Langer, who married in 2002, have two daughters, Nora Langer Sissenich and Solveig Langer Sissenich, and a dog named Kazoo.

Written by Adam Langer, 2012

Scope and Content

The collection documents Langer’s career as an author, playwright and journalist.

The collection contains drafts of Langer’s published books, showing the evolution of his work on the novels Crossing California , The Washington Story , Ellington Boulevard and The Thieves of Manhattan as well as his memoir about his father, My Father’s Bonus March . The collection also contains research and publicity files on these books. Similar material exists for his unpublished books.

Langer’s work in Chicago’s Off-Loop theater community, including his time at Shattered Globe Theatre, is documented in the boxes about his plays. These boxes have scripts, research notes, promotional material, photographs and reviews.

Files about his film, The Blank Page , have script drafts, items from the film shoot, a press kit and copies of the film. Other screenplays by Langer are also represented in the collection.

The collection has files about Langer’s career as a journalist, especially his work with the Subnation and the Chicago Reader . A nearly full run of Subnation is housed in the collection. Langer’s articles in the Reader are present and are often accompanied by interviews with the subjects of the articles, including David Crosby, Marjorie Stewart Joyner and August Wilson. As a theater critic for the Reader , Langer regularly reviewed Chicago plays. Copies of his reviews are in the collection.

Arrangement

Original provenance has been preserved. The materials are arranged by type:

Box and Folder Inventory