Gene McCormick

Gene McCormick

Gene launches VIDA clothing line!

VIDA’S STORY IS THAT OF THE RICH, INTERCONNECTED WORLD WE LIVE IN -- THE STORY OF CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND MINDFUL, GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP. WE ARE A GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP OF CO-CREATORS, FROM A DESIGNER IN PARIS, TO A PRODUCER IN KARACHI, AND A CONSUMER IN SAN FRANCISCO.

Gene McCormick is both artist and writer. His loose, figurative art is collected by commercial and private followers and hundreds of his illustrations have been published throughout the United States and Europe. As a writer he has had twenty books published, many of which he illustrated, combining visual images with text to produce thought provoking realisms.

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Book Signing

Gene McCormick will be signing his latest short story and narrative poetry collection, Big City Nighttime Stories (Middle Island Press, 104 pp, $16), on Saturday, May 21, at Townhouse Books, 105 N. 2^nd Avenue, St. Charles, IL, from 11 AM until 2 PM.

Widely published in literary journals throughout the United States and Europe, this is the author’s nineteenth book and first full collection since 2011, focusing on the reality of the daily lives we live through. Some reviews and comments:

“Hand-hewn poems of the America behind the headlines, away from the glitz and glamour, far from the tall buildings and high finance. Mr. McCormick is the anti-Norman Rockwell, painting not the ideal, but the dirty bricks and stone, the flat tires and lives, and the one for the road that goes nowhere. The poet has no agenda but to depict the plain truth of observable reality. The 99% we seldom see outside of crime blotters and obituaries.”—Phil Wagner, Editor, The Iconoclast.

“McCormick’s poetic prose hits no false notes, and he sketches the story out as quickly as we can follow it. Read straight through, the narrative is heady, taking us in just a few minutes from the ‘primordial days’ of childhood to the world as it appears after death.”—Leslie Bary, University of Louisiana.

“Probes the height and/or depth of mankind. That’s the stuff that separates real poets from wannabees. The way McCormick weaves poetic insight and imagery into prose format is a gift.”—David Ross, Rockford Writers Guild.

“Reading Gene McCormick’s writing is like looking at paintings by Edward Hopper, the ones featuring shadows and light, empty rooms at different times of the day, a sunset viewed over railroad tracks and telephone wires, a well-lighted boardinghouse as seen from outside. This is what good narrative poetry is all about and McCormick is a modern master of the form.”—Alan Catlin, author, Books Of The Dead.

McCormick lives in Wayne, Illinois.

For information contact the author at

Genebiz@att.net, or 630-377-7874.

Gene McCormick seldom makes personal appearances (primarily because he is rarely asked).

McCormick is shown at a not so recent book signing. He is shown sitting down; he is actually much taller than it appears. Groupies are always welcome at McCormick literary events.

Book signing

From the interview with Gene by Renee Tomell that appeared in The Republican.

"...A riveting collection of short stories and poems...richly condensed intensity...his stories grab the reader...lingers with readers."

Short stories and poems have appeared in

Pegasus, Ship of Fools, Thorny Locust, Backstreet, Clark Street Review, Chiron Journal,

The Rockford Review, Plainsongs, Ibbetson Street Press, The Iconoclast, Omphalos, The Chaffin Journal,

Taproot Literary Review, Zygote In My Coffee, Tidal Basin

and additional select publications.