I’ve been a Peter Orner fan for a long time, appreciating how—whether he’s writing short stories, novels or essays—he makes every word count. Stories and chapters are short, sentences lean, zero fat. His justly acclaimed new novel, The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter, springs from the apparent 1963 murder of Karyn “Cookie” Kupcinet, the real-life daughter of Chicago Sun-Times columnist and TV personality Irv “Kup” Kupcinet and his wife, Essie. The narrator is an author whose grandparents had been close to the Kupicinets, as Orner’s grandparents were. The Chicago Tribune’s Christopher Borelli calls The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter “the most Chicago novel I’ve ever read.” What drove Orner to blur fiction with fact in this particular past? How much is he messing with us? Has anyone reacted about the real-life figures portrayed, not always complimentarily? In this lively conversation, Orner still makes every word count. (Photo by Ricardo Siri)