Dominican University to Host Literary Hall of Fame Ceremony; Oak Park Author Recognized

Dominican University will host the presentation of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame’s Fuller Award to acclaimed author Harriette Gillem Robinet. 

The ceremony will take place on Tuesday, March 14 in the Performing Arts Center, beginning at 6 p.m. It is free, but tickets are required. They can be reserved here. 

The Fuller Award is the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame’s highest honor. Robinet is the 14th recipient of the award, which recognizes a Chicago writer who has made an outstanding lifetime contribution to literature. 

A resident of Oak Park since 1965, Harriette Gillem Robinet is the author of 12 young adult historical novels. She is the recipient of a Carl Sandburg Award and a Scott O’Dell Award, and was a finalist for an Edgar Award, a William Allen White Award, a Texas Bluebonnet Award, and a Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award. Walking to the Bus Rider Blues was recognized as a Jane Addams Award Honor book in 2001. 

The majority of Robinet’s books are historical fiction centered around significant moments in American history and featuring children of color and children with physical disabilities. Chicago is the setting for some of these novels, including Children of the Fire, in which two children witness the Great Chicago Fire, and Missing from Haymarket Square, which tells the story of 12-year-old Dinah and her friends who try to find Dinah’s father, a union organizer taken prisoner just prior to the Haymarket riot of 1886. 

The granddaughter of enslaved people, Harriette Gillem Robinet, with her husband, McLouis Robinet, has a history of civic involvement and activism in the Oak Park area. As one of the first Black families to purchase a home in Oak Park, the couple participated in fair housing marches in the 1960s and lobbied the village board to pass a fair housing ordinance in 1968, one of the first in the country.  

Just inside the entrance to the Oak Park Public Library’s main branch, set in the terrazzo floor, is a line from Robinet’s book If You Please, President Lincoln: “I believe that any people’s story is every people’s story, and that from stories we can all learn something to enrich our lives.”  

In addition to hosting the ceremony, Dominican will feature displays dedicated to Robinet in Crown Library and outside Martin Recital Hall. 

Jennifer Clemons, curator of the Butler's Children Literature Center, is loaning some of Robinet's books from the Center to University Librarian Estevan Montaño and Learning Commons Librarian Beronica Avila, who will create the displays.

Last year’s Fuller Award recipient was Ana Castillo, former Lund-Gill chair at Dominican University.