“The Modern-Day Algren”
Praise for
The Plan of Chicago: A City in Stories
“The power of Pearce’s book rises from the foundational sense of Chicago as a city of neighborhoods . . . that elevates the work of writers like Algren, Brooks, Bellow, Terkel, Cisneros, and Kotlowitz , a lineage to which this book belongs.”
—Stuart Dybek, The Coast of Chicago and Paper Lantern: Love Stories
“I savored one story at a time, the way I do the masters of the genre—Trevor or Munro or Gallant. Like them, Pearce creates in each short story a novel’s worth of rich characterization with deft artistic compression and renders contemporary Chicago in loving and brutal complexity from a myriad of vivid voices.”
—Antonya Nelson, Bound and Funny Once
“Like James Joyce’s Dubliners, this collection of stories accumulates a strange cohesive power, and the city itself becomes a character. Barry Pearce is a shrewd, fearless writer, and The Plan of Chicago is the best book I’ve read in a long time.”
—Robert Boswell, Mystery Ride and Tumbledown
“Barry Pearce’s Chicago tales cut across the certainties of seasonal change and static divisions in search of connection upon a sprawling flatland. His city dwellers do find light along the way – achingly, bracingly, sometimes incidentally. Yet it is in the insistence of their paths that Pearce captures their resolute spirits while summoning the soul of their city.”
—Bayo Ojikutu, 47th Street Black and Free Burning
Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Finalist
2026 National Indies Excellence Award Finalist
2026 American Fiction Awards Finalist
2026 William Saroyan International Prize Shortlist
Nelson Algren Award Grand Prize
Storytrade Award for Best Collection, 2026 Winner
“With deep empathy and granular detail, these stories take the measure of a city on the make.”