Latest news with #BigChief
Winnipeg Free Press
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
On the night table: Conor Kerr
Conor Kerr Author, Prairie Edge I work teaching creative writing at the University of Alberta, and I'm in the middle of wrapping up our workshops for undergraduate short fiction. So I've been reading a lot of undergraduate short stories — some are incredible. I also just finished the judging for the CBC short story contest, so I've been going through the long list of those stories as well — it was really fun to see what was brought forward throughout Canada. So my reading has been pretty short story heavy for the last couple of months. Jordon Hon photo Conor Kerr When I'm in the process of trying to build out a new novel, which I finished up back in January, I tend to not read as much, and to just try to centre myself within the story that I'm creating. I find I can't find my focus to the same extent. Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. But prior to that, one of the cool books I read was Big Chief by Jon Hickey, which just came out, as well as I think my favorite book of poetry ever, which is Xanax Cowboy by Winnipeg's Hannah Green. I try to give everyone that book. I've probably given away eight copies. I also read Kyle Edwards' Small Ceremonies; it was one of my favorite books I've read in the last little bit. Oh, and I really enjoyed Coexistence, Billy-Ray Belcourt's new book of short stories. Buy on
Forbes
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Jazz Fest 2025 For Grown-Ups: Skip The Lines, Grab The VIP Lounge Pass
The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (everyone calls it Jazz Fest) has been an annual celebration of NOLA music and culture since 1970 Every spring, New Orleans distills its essence—music, food, culture, and humidity that could melt your trombone—into two weekends of joyful, full-throttle celebration. For Jazz Fest 2025, from today through April 27 and again from May 1 through 4, the Fair Grounds Race Course becomes a city all its own: 14 performance stages, scores of local food vendors, and tens of thousands of people waiting for Iko Iko to really blow the lid off. You can absolutely do Jazz Fest the old-fashioned way. I've done it several times. You shuffle in with the crowds, stand in line for crawfish Monica, and maybe eat your beignet while trying not to wear it. But with a little foresight (and the proper intel), you can manage to actually hear the music, savor the food, and sit and hang with your Festie besties in true NOLA style. This year's headliners include Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, Lenny Kravitz, and Kacey Musgraves, but a happy VIP experience hinges less on the lineup (or even the performances, frankly) than on your access. The Big Chief VIP pass ($1,899) is the most comprehensive. You get access to raised, covered viewing areas at all three main stages, bleacher seating at the Jazz and Blues Tents, and entré to an air-conditioned hospitality lounge with complimentary snacks, a full-service bar, private restrooms, and express re-entry. Just below that is Grand Marshal VIP ($1,749), which swaps some of the lounging for prime, front-of-stage real estate, plus a shaded hospitality tent and the same VIP perks (including faster entry and bathroom access, which matters more than you'd think). Krewe of Jazz Fest ($929) is a solid middle ground that comes with elevated views at the main stage and access to private bars and restrooms without quite as hefty a price tag. The official poster for Jazz Fest 2025 If you're coming with a big group—or you just want to live the high life—Jazz Fest Cabanas offer private shaded suites for up to 35 guests, complete with concierge service, catering options, and four parking passes. Pricing starts at $25,000 for 12 guests—and goes up and up from there. Celebrating its 25th year, the Ritz-Carlton New Orleans recently unveiled upgraded rooms and a refreshed Club Lounge for the true VIP experience. Jazz Fest can be grueling, even for VIPs, so where you end the day matters. If you want a boutique feel, Hotel St. Vincent in the Lower Garden District or The Chloe uptown both offer style with plenty of Big Easy gentility. Meanwhile, Hotel Monteleone in the French Quarter has kitschy old-school NOLA charm, including—wait, what?—a carousel bar that actually rotates (in case you enjoy your post-Fest nightcaps with a side of vertigo). But the most reliable and opulent nest is the Ritz-Carlton New Orleans, set in a 1908 Beaux Arts building on Canal Street. It's central but quiet, and with the high-flying service and amenities that make it feel like a true escape. Celebrating its 25th year in 2025, the hotel two years ago refreshed its guest rooms and did a major upgrade to its spectacular Club Lounge, a hotel-within-the-hotel where VIPs enjoy private check-in, a dedicated concierge and all-day food, drink and conversation. During Jazz Fest, the dark and sexy Davenport Lounge hosts intimate sets from its namesake jazz singer and trumpeter Jeremy Davenport, who also performs at the festival itself. Once you experience Jazz Fest at the Ritz, you're pretty much hooked for life. Your mantra as you visit more than 60 local food vendors serving more than 200 NOLA food dishes—"pace yourself!" Like NOLA itself, Jazz Fest is not a place to simply 'grab a bite.' With over 200 menu items from 60+ local vendors, food at the festival is an Olympian-level event, so pace yourself accordingly. I try to avoid using the word 'pilgrimage,' but it does apply to things like the crawfish strudel, trout Baquet, and the aforementioned Monica and beignets. Everything you crave in New Orleans cooking is right there (some vendors make the majority of their annual income during these two weeks). No, it isn't light fare but it's off-the-charts delicious. Choose wisely. Even at venerable places like Brennan's, there are VIP twists to push your experience to the next level. If you're eating off-site, it's fun to explore the full range of what New Orleans does best, and for lots of visitors that means the icons. Venerable establishments like Commander's Palace, Brennan's, Arnaud's and Dooky Chase are mainstays for a reason. And even there, VIPs can add a twist to heighten the experience about that of the typical tourist. Commander's offers a Chef's Table inside the kitchen itself. Emeril's, in the Warehouse District, hosts private dinners in its wine room. Brennan's, birthplace of bananas foster, has a private King's room, Queen's room and Royal room, all done up in lavish New Orleans canopies and tapestries. Or you could skip the white tablecloths entirely and follow the locals to places where the vibe is lower key and the food still blows your mind. Lately, everyone is talking about N7, hidden behind a tall fence in the Bywater. Set in a garden under twinkling lights, the menu is French-Japanese, with a wine list focused on small European producers. Luvi is a tiny Uptown spot where sashimi meets ghost pepper dan dan noodles, and the $60 'Feed Me' tasting menu feels like an invitation to the chef's dreamy test kitchen. At delicious San Lorenzo, inside Hotel St. Vincent, Italian classics get reimagined with Creole ingredients—catfish schnitzel, caviar beignets—under chandeliers and Corinthian columns. If you want to add context to all that sensory (and caloric) overload, there are a few standout ways to go deeper. Bespoke Experiences designs fully tailored itineraries—private jazz shows, behind-the-scenes culinary tours, historic homes. It's not cheap, but you won't forget it. Soul of NOLA offers immersive walking and driving tours through the French Quarter, Tremé, and lesser-traveled neighborhoods. And Michaela's Private Tours, led by a seventh-generation New Orleanian, gives you a more personal lens into the city's stories—from swamps and cemeteries to balconies and back kitchens—from a true local. Call, well, yesterday, to book for Jazz Fest 2025.
Washington Post
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
‘Big Chief' is a sly debut about drama in Native American politics
My digital review copy of 'Big Chief,' Jon Hickey's ambitious debut novel, came with a letter attached. In it, Hickey introduces himself as an enrolled citizen of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Chippewa Indians who grew up away from his ancestral homeland in northern Wisconsin after his grandparents were forcibly relocated to Chicago. The novel emerged from the experience of feeling estranged from his roots, as well as his observations of Indigenous politics. The letter was earnest and direct, neatly unspooling the author's ties to his material.
New York Times
10-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
All Politics Is Local. In This Novel, It's Incestuous.
Mitch Caddo, the narrator of Jon Hickey's debut novel, 'Big Chief,' introduces himself with a summary of his LinkedIn profile: tribal operations director for the Passage Rouge Nation of Lake Superior Anishinaabe, chief operations officer of the reservation casino, legislative liaison, Cornell Law J.D. and all-around whiz kid. In fact, though, Mitch, a 30-year-old 'white-passing' mixed-race Indian, has his hands full propping up the tribal president, Mack Beck, who faces an uphill re-election battle. Voted in two years earlier because he 'looked the part' with his ribbon shirts, thunderbird medallion, long braid and reservation cred — and also because the incumbent failed to obtain enough propane for the tribe as an Upper Midwest winter set in — Mack is an incompetent and vindictive alcoholic. He's also a patronage politician who dips into the general fund to pad distributions to tribal citizens and freely banishes troublemakers and political opponents from the reservation. Part chief of staff, part campaign director and part hatchet man, Mitch operates in the background, ambivalently overseeing 'the quiet, permanent tragedy of Passage Rouge,' a community of 5,000 stricken by poverty, addiction, inadequate housing, corruption and police brutality. Unfolding over the week preceding the election, the novel concerns which of the two opposing camps can secure electoral victory by most cynically leveraging the chronically bad news emanating from Passage Rouge. While Mack is a disaster for the tribe, his rival, Gloria Hawkins — a polished activist and perennial third-party gubernatorial also-ran — scarcely inspires more confidence. Gloria is backed by Joe Beck, the tribe's Boston Brahmin but Indian-fetishizing general counsel, who lives on an opulent lakeside compound within the reservation. He's also Mitch's mentor and benefactor, and the adoptive father of Mack, from whom he is estranged, and Mack's sister, Layla. Additional thickeners to the plot include the fact that Layla, who is divorced from Mack's thuggish police chief, Bobby Lone Eagle, also works for Gloria, and years before had a fling with the Cornell-bound Mitch. If all politics is local, Passage Rouge's politics is positively incestuous. When Joe is implicated in financial misdeeds connected to land deals conducted on the tribe's behalf, Mack seizes upon the news to banish Joe from the reservation, a symbolic patricide also intended to damage Gloria's campaign. Things rapidly go downhill for everyone from there. 'Big Chief' maintains a tight time frame, with each of its sections, apart from a brief postscript, devoted to a single day. This helps keep the book on the rails, given the numerous characters and events that fill its pages. Activists, council members, medicine men, tribal elders, cops, F.B.I. agents, ghosts and others strut and fret their hour upon the stage in a compact saga containing demonstrations, political skulduggery, family rifts, the arrival of federal investigators, betrayals, a fiery plane crash, an old flame rekindled, a police shooting, a narrow escape from death, a riot and multiple flashbacks. Such events drive the narrative forward, but despite the sound and fury, the novel has a strangely vacant center. This is not inadvertent. As a protagonist, Mitch is pretty elusive by design, uncertain of his own motives, desires and objectives. Raised largely off the reservation and long absent while attending college and law school, Mitch is an outsider who experiences alienation wherever he is, but most acutely among 'his' people, who mock him as a 'J. Crew Indian.' Lacking friends, family and a set of clear principles, he's one of Eliot's 'hollow men,' never sure what he's doing in Passage Rouge or why he persists in the dutifully unscrupulous performance of his role as Mack's fixer. Hickey's writing can be workmanlike, even awkward. A character's 'expression looks annoyed at the wind blowing her hair sideways.' An envelope is 'thrumming with an electrical pulse.' A car sits 'idling a lazy curl of thick exhaust that dances.' Mack is described as 'ursine' seven times, by my count. But about two-thirds of the way through, Buzz, the former tribal president, tells Mitch a story about leading a captured deer into the middle of a house party, where it wreaks havoc among the drunken revelers before it is shot. It's a wonderful set piece: unexpected, disturbingly funny, the vernacular stylized with the lightest touch — the sort of work that betokens genuine talent, with the promise of more to come. For the most part, 'Big Chief' cultivates an uneasy atmosphere. Full of cagey, terse, veiled exchanges between people bound together by self-interest who do not seem to like or trust each other much, it creates suspense not from the question of whether open conflict will take place, but when. A new boss, it suggests, will be the same as the old. The message, if the book can be said to offer one, is subtle: Unsparing of them as 'Big Chief' is, its movers and shakers have been 'working with the wrong tools' imposed by a colonizing force uninterested in Anishinaabe culture. It is 'an affliction,' Mitch observes. And 'if there's a medicine for it,' he adds, 'it still eludes me.'
The Guardian
25-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The play that changed my life: Sing Sing's Clarence Maclin on lessons from Sophocles in prison
When I came to the Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) theatre at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in 1995, I'd been sentenced to 17 years for robbery. It was not my intention to watch a play. They were doing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I saw my brother Dino who was playing Big Chief, the Native American guy. I knew Dino from elsewhere in the jail, but not for this. I got involved. I found a fascination for Shakespeare that I really didn't expect. I didn't think I'd understand the language. And I didn't at first. But it fascinated me enough to research and study it: I loved becoming able to translate that so that others could feel the intensity of it. After being restricted to just watching for a year, I went on to play so many roles. I played a nobleman's ghost who comes back to haunt Richard III. That was a fun role; minimal lines, but a ton of expression. Twelve Angry Men was another good one. The most poignant role in my life, though, would be Oedipus Rex. Because Oedipus ran from a prediction and then right into the consequences of that prediction. That was kind of parallel to my life, because I realised that I had been running away from and straight back into the same issues. I learned that about myself while doing Sophocles. There's a freedom that comes with being on stage. As a prisoner locked in a six-by-nine, or a Black man in society, your liberty is limited to certain things. The connection that I got from the stage came from not only playing those characters but also researching how they lived. Those were the times that I realised that I wasn't even in prison any more. I was freer than the guards. I went to Greece in my imagination. I went everywhere. I was freer than most men on the planet because I was able to go anywhere I wanted to, become anyone I wanted. All of these lives that might parallel some things in my own life – or might not. Maybe something completely different, you know? Most nights, it was my peers, my brothers, coming to see me. But on the last night of every production, we invited playwrights, directors, producers from Broadway. Politicians would come, and Harry Belafonte came, which thrilled my mother. Something that related to a current event or issue was always laid down somewhere in the play. So we began working on the messages that we wanted to send to the other side of the wall through art – including our own play Breakin' the Mummy's Code, which provides the structure for the movie Sing Sing and in which I play a version of myself. The RTA company changed as new people came and others went home or got transferred to other prisons. But the core stayed the same and we created a steering committee who were elected by the group and were charged with the day-to-day functions and keeping the integrity of the programme up to standard. Fortunately, I never got transferred. When I came home in 2012, I had six more classes to get my bachelor's. I was working and I was going to school at night to complete my degree in behavioural science. All while I was still on parole. Then I had to either graduate with the guys that I was going to college with on the outside or return to Sing Sing and walk the stage with RTA. I chose to go back. The six classes weren't really the struggle. That's the moral root – we want to keep brothers hopeful on the inside that change is possible. The Oscar stuff [Sing Sing is nominated for three Academy Awards) is hopeful on a personal level, of course, and people inside get to see that we can reach the highest echelons if we so choose. But it's easy to just treat it as this trendy thing, to be the 'ex-offender turned good'. It's not as easy as that. Now after the Oscars I've got another movie I'm going to start shooting in April. But the stage is where you go to get replenished. This is where you go to sharpen your sword as an actor and get the tool right. And get that feeling of an ensemble sharing the pressure of the next scene. You don't get that with the screen, you can't get it. That little camera lens is really not big enough. As told to Lindesay Irvine Sing Sing is in cinemas worldwide and Clarence Maclin is nominated for best adapted screenplay at the 2025 Academy Awards on 3 March.
