Greetings to all, and welcome to the official web presence for the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, otherwise known as CCLaP. For those who remember, this is in fact the second version of the CCLaP website to exist, the first (now outdated) at the old URL cclap.org; that URL is no longer affiliated with CCLaP, with the correct address now being cclapcenter.com.

My name is Jason Pettus, by the way, founder of CCLaP and its executive director, and the person who will be posting the vast majority of entries to be eventually found at this site. For those who don't know me already, I was a creative writer myself for about ten years professionally, mostly in the 1990s; among other fun experiences, I ended up self-publishing three novels and two travel books, appeared a couple of times on National Public Radio, won a grant from the Illinois Arts Council and more. In 2004, though, I decided to put my creative work into semi-permanent hiatus in order to concentrate more on the administrative end of things, an activity that's become of increasing interest to me as I've gotten older; I combined my experiences in Chicago's literary community with my academic study of photography in college to arrive at CCLaP's particular emphasis.

Here at the CCLaP website, you can expect a variety of output each day: reviews of contemporary movies and books, featured profiles of photographers and other artists, write-ups of random obsessions I happen to be going through, lots of news about Chicago artistic events, and more, along with a weekly podcast featuring original interviews starting later this month. Got something you'd like announced, by the way, or a book you'd like to submit for possible review? By all means, drop me a line at cclapcenter [at] gmail.com, although I can't guarantee that your project will automatically be featured or reviewed here. As 2007 continues, then, CCLaP will also start producing a series of original projects itself, including a virtual photography gallery and physical merchandise (starting July), paper books (September), and a series of live Chicago events (winter 2008); those who are interested can click here for more, or here to learn how to submit their work for consideration.

Anyway, I still have some coding work to finish up today before the CCLaP website is finally complete, plus a dental appointment to deal with in the middle of it all, so I think I'll wrap up my little intro here at this point. I'm glad you had a chance to stop by, and hope you'll do so again throughout the remainder of the year.