Kathleen Rooney is celebrating the release of her new collection of essays, For you, For you I am Trilling These Songs, this Wednesday at 7:30 at Women and Children First with Erika Mikkalo.

Beyond numerous credits that include founding Rose Metal Press and publishing both prose and poetry (like a creative nonfiction novel on nude art modeling), she was also published recently in an issue of Another Chicago Magazine that I carried throughout Europe last summer.

In the eponymous essay of the collection that appears in ACM she writes, “They say that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. I placed an online order for kazoos while Iraq did. Nero was an emperor. I was a Senate Aide.” (ACM 48, “American Values”)

I laughed and felt glad that I was studying contemporary Russian literature abroad in Prague, the heart of all that is elegant, gothic and literary in Eastern Europe.

Somehow American satire seems so much more fulfilling after leaving the country. Yet, Kathleen Rooney’s voice remains exuberating and intelligent anywhere—whatever strip mall, coffee shop or country you read it in.

Women and Children First is located at 5233 North Clark Street, Chicago, IL 60640.