Digital Realty Stage (On W. Polk St., at Plymouth Ct.) Saturday 9/12 - 4pm Andrew S. Curran is a prize-winning writer who argues the eighteenth century is still with us — its science, its ideas, its blind spots. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, and the ... Read more
Grace Place, 1st Floor (637 S. Dearborn St.) Saturday 9/12 - 2pm Angie Elita Newell is the award winning indigenous author of All I See is Violence, a proud member of the Liidlii Kue First Nations and a trained historian, Angie wanders this earth with her daughters, always looking for the next story, knowing the ... Read more
Grace Place, 2nd Floor (637 S. Dearborn St.) Saturday 9/12 - 11am Ann McGlinn is the author of two novels, El Penco (2014) and Ride On, See You (2023), both published by Cuidono Press.
Center Stage (On S. Dearborn St. in Printers Row Park between Polk and Harrison Streets, West Side of Dearborn.) Sunday 9/13 - 10am Anna-Marie has been an educator for over 30 years and a Broadway Dropout for two years! She loves learning new things and found her way into the troupe with her clever wit ... Read more
Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage (On W. Polk St., just east of Clark St.) Saturday 9/12 - 12:30pm Anne K. Ream is the co-founder of Center for Story & Witness, a global testimonial writing program for survivors of gender based violence and other human rights violations; a co-founder of World Without Exploitation, the national ... Read more
Grace Place, 2nd Floor (637 S. Dearborn St.) Saturday 9/12 - 2pm Aria Aber is the author of the novel Good Girl (Hogarth, 2025), which was shortlisted for the Women's Prize, the Vermont Book Prize, and the Edmund B. White Award. She is the recipient of a Whiting Award and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship. She ... Read more
Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage (On W. Polk St., just east of Clark St.) Saturday 9/12 - 12:30pm Atima Omara is a nationally recognized award-winning political strategist, leader, writer, and advocate. She worked for two decades in electoral politics and the progressive movement. Atima is Founder and Chief Strategist of the Omara Strategy Group, ... Read more
North Stage (On S. Dearborn St., just south of Ida B. Wells Dr.) Sunday 9/13 - 3pm Interdisciplinary artist avery r. young is an American Laureate Fellow and a co-director of The Floating Museum. He is a recipient of the Walder Foundation’s Platform Award, as well as a 3Arts and Meier Foundation awardee. A Cave ... Read more
Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage (On W. Polk St., just east of Clark St.) Sunday 9/13 - 2pm Barbara Egel is a Chicago poet and critic and the co-director of the program in Design Thinking and Communication at Northwestern. Her most recent work appeared in Ploughshares, Spring 2026.
Digital Realty Stage (On W. Polk St., at Plymouth Ct.) Saturday 9/12 - 3pm Barry Pearce is the author of The Plan of Chicago: A City in Stories, a story cycle that received starred reviews in Kirkus and Booklist and prompted Chicago magazine to call him “the modern-day Algren.” He has won the Nelson Algren ... Read more
Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage (On W. Polk St., just east of Clark St.) Saturday 9/12 - 3:30pm Ben Austen is a journalist from Chicago. He is the author of Correction: Parole, Prison, and the Possibility of Change and High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing. A former editor at Harper’s Magazine, ... Read more
Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage (On W. Polk St., just east of Clark St.) Sunday 9/13 - 12pm Emmy-award winner Ben Tanzer's novel The Missing was released in March 2024 by 7.13 Books and was a Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year finalist, his new book After Hours: Scorsese, Grief and the Grammar ... Read more
North Stage (On S. Dearborn St., just south of Ida B. Wells Dr.) Saturday 9/12 - 5pm Beth grew up in a Christian cult, believing that she’d become a drug addicted streetwalker if she ever left. Instead, after her escape at age 31, she forged a seemingly successful life for herself as a teacher, a ... Read more
Center Stage (On S. Dearborn St. in Printers Row Park between Polk and Harrison Streets, West Side of Dearborn.) Saturday 9/12 - 10am Betsy is the author of multiple books for children including Pop! Goes the Nursery Rhyme with Andrea Tsurumi and the upcoming Terrible Terrible Birds with Matthew Cordell. She is a librarian, the ... Read more
Digital Realty Stage (On W. Polk St., at Plymouth Ct.) Sunday 9/13 - 4pm Bill Ayers, formerly Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) has written extensively about social justice and democracy, education and the cultural contexts of schooling, and teaching as an essentially intellectual, ethical, ... Read more
Digital Realty Stage (On W. Polk St., at Plymouth Ct.) Saturday 9/12 - 11am An award-winning podcast producer, Bill Healy co-created "You Didn’t See Nothin", which won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting and a Peabody Award. Healy has worked on stories for NPR, the BBC and This American Life, and spent years editing ... Read more
Grace Place, 1st Floor (637 S. Dearborn St.) Saturday 9/12 - 3pm Bill Hillmann is a writer, author and professor. He is also a bull-runner and a former Chicago Golden Gloves boxing champion. He is the author of two memoirs and two novels, most recently White Flight. Hillmann’s writing has appeared at various outlets including ... Read more
Grace Place, 1st Floor (637 S. Dearborn St.) Saturday 9/12 - 11am Bindu Bansinath is a senior writer at New York Magazine’s The Cut, where she covers everything from crime and class to news, culture and relationships. She previously worked as an assistant editor at Harper’s. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, ... Read more
North Stage (On S. Dearborn St., just south of Ida B. Wells Dr.) Saturday 9/12 - 5pm Blair Glaser is a writer and leadership consultant whose essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Fortune, Longreads, Oldster, Inside Higher Ed, and others, as well as in literary magazines such as Brevity, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, and ... Read more
Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage (On W. Polk St., just east of Clark St.) Saturday 9/12 - 4:30pm Current Wisconsin Poet Laureate and former Milwaukee Poet Laureate Brenda Cárdenas has authored Trace (Red Hen Press), winner of the 2023 Society of Midland Authors Award for Poetry and silver winner of Foreword Review's Indie Poetry ... Read more
North Stage (On S. Dearborn St., just south of Ida B. Wells Dr.) Sunday 9/13 - 10am Brian Bouldrey is an Associate Professor of Instruction at Northwestern University. The recipient of a Lambda Literary Award, among other honors, he is the author of ten books, most recently, The Good Pornographer, as well as Good in ... Read more
Center Stage (On S. Dearborn St. in Printers Row Park between Polk and Harrison Streets, West Side of Dearborn.) Sunday 9/13 - 2pm Brian Hieggelke is the co-founder of Newcity magazine, now celebrating its fortieth anniversary since its founding in Printers Row. The publication is the largest arts and culture magazine in the Midwest. Hieggelke ... Read more
Center Stage (On S. Dearborn St. in Printers Row Park between Polk and Harrison Streets, West Side of Dearborn.) Sunday 9/13 - 12pm Brian Trapp is the author of Range of Motion (2025), out now from Acre Books. He is the director of disability studies at the University of Oregon, where he also teaches creative ... Read more
Digital Realty Stage (On W. Polk St., at Plymouth Ct.) Sunday 9/13 - 2pm The journalist Brooke Nevils Thompson (USA), New York, New York, June 25, 2025. Photograph © Beowulf Sheehan Brooke Nevils is an author, journalist and mom. Her book, Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame and the Stories We Choose to Believe, is a vital ... Read more
Center Stage (On S. Dearborn St. in Printers Row Park between Polk and Harrison Streets, West Side of Dearborn.) Saturday 9/12 - 5pm C. Russell Price is an Appalachian punk poet originally from Glade Spring, Virginia. They are the author of Tonight, We Fuck the Trailer Park Out of Each Other, oh you thought this ... Read more