As with his friend, Studs Terkel, Algren deserves inclusion in the first Hall of Fame as a writer who privileged the streets of Chicago more than the board rooms and trading floors. Winner of the first National Book Award for The Man With the Golden Arm, Algren published poems, essays, and short stories in addition to a number of other wonderful novels, including Walk on the Wild Side and Chicago: The City on the Make. For his career and his influence on subsequent generations of Chicago writers who found voice for their own stories through such works, Algren certainly deserves inclusion.

Like his character, Augie March, Bellow was a Chicagoan and came at life—and writing—head on, with a fervor and brilliance that marked him as one of the greats of his generation. In novels smart, witty, diverse, and challenging, Bellow grappled with the subtleties of culture, history, philosophy, and psychology as few have before or since, works like Herzog, The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson, the Rain King, Humboldt's Gift, and many others. If Algren put Chicago on the literary map with his stories of the streets, Bellow drew upon, and re-drew, that map, in the process bringing Chicago letters to world attention—highlighted, of course, by his winning the Nobel Prize.

As author, reviewer, columnist, and patron, Harriet Monroe helped define and spread the word about Chicago letters for more than a half-century. Already an accomplished critic in the Chicago Tribune, Monroe founded Poetry Magazine in 1912 and made it arguably the most influential poetry publication in the United States. That it still is almost one hundred years later is a tribute to her vision and leadership, as much as to the famous Ruth Lilly grant that ensured its continuance. Without Harriet Monroe, American letters would have been much the worse.

Royko. What more does one need to say besides that word. Over a long career, in unwaveringly honest, incisive, and often very funny columns in Chicago's main newpapers—the Daily News, the Sun-Times, and the Tribune—Royko spared not mayors, not mafia, not even Major League baseball teams in his quest for the truth. His columns, syndicated nationwide and collected in books, stand along with his unauthorized biography of Mayor Daley the First, Boss, as testament to a long and illustrious career. In Chicago, we like to celebrate "usefulness," and Royko's writing—exposing foibles, polspeak, and outright corruption—was useful in helping to keep this city's reputation for honest, straight talk intact.

What do we need to say about Studs? He brought the oral history to a new level and was the quintessential Chicago man of the streets. In addition, he was a walking story machine, and Chicago is defined more by its stories than by its skyscrapers. Studs showed us that the stories of the common person were every bit as interesting as those of the wealthy and powerful. Pulitzer Prize winner, author of many, many books, actor, and broadcaster, he would be terrific as the first inductee into the Hall of Fame.

Although born in the south and an expatriate for the last part of his life, Richard Wright lived in Chicago for ten years and is firmly identified with the city through his powerful and influential novel, Native Son. Winner of a Guggenheim and other awards, Wright was the first African American writer with work chosen for a Book of the Month Club selection. Perhaps no other writer was so important to the development of the African American literary tradition, and Wright's importance to the Chicago literary tradition has been substantial and longstanding.