Cristina Rutter / Courtesy to the Neighborhood Writing Alliance

On November 20, 2013, the board of the Neighborhood Writing Alliance (NWA) announced its immediate closure, rendering defunct the Journal of Ordinary Thought, the quarterly publication of the seventeen-year-old community literary institution. “It was an issue of capacity—a lot of nonprofits were hit by the economic downturn,” recounted Sue Eleuterio, a former board member and interim director of the NWA, as well as a workshop leader of ten years for Ordinary Thought. In spite of the despondency that accompanied the sudden collapse of an institution that shaped literary worlds across the city, the cherished memories—and numerous afterlives—of the Journal of Ordinary Thought still keep it in the hearts and minds of many Chicagoans today.