Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage Sunday, Sept. 8th at 11am Dr. Gordon Mantler teaches writing and history at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He specializes in 20th-century U.S. social justice movements, multiracial coalitions, and public memorialization. His first book, Power to the Poor: Black-Brown Coalition and the Fight for Economic Justice, was ... Read more
Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage Saturday, Sept. 7th at 10am David Masciotra is the author of six books, including Exurbia Now: The Battleground of American Democracy, and I Am Somebody: Why Jesse Jackson Matters. He has written for Salon, the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and many other publications about politics, music, and literature. ... Read more
Center Stage Sunday, Sept. 8th at 4pm Adrian Matejka is the author of seven books, most recently a mixed media collection inspired by Funkadelic, Standing on the Verge & Maggot Brain (Third Man Books, 2021) and a collection of poems, Somebody Else Sold the World (Penguin, 2021), which was a finalist for 2022 UNT Rilke ... Read more
North Stage Sunday, Sept. 8th at 3pm Christine Maul Rice’s novel, Swarm Theory, was called "a gripping work of Midwest Gothic" by NPR and won numerous awards. Most recently, her short stories, essays, and interviews have appeared in Allium, Make Literary Magazine, The Rumpus, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, The Millions, Roanoke Review, and The Literary Review, ... Read more
Grace Place Stage (1st floor) Saturday, Sept. 7th at 2pm Jared Mayer is a Bigelow Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School. Prior to joining the Law School, Jared was an associate at Ropes & Gray, LLP and a law clerk to Justice Barry T. Albin (ret.) of the ... Read more
North Stage Saturday, Sept. 7th at 1pm Marty McConnell is a poet, educator, and healer based in Chicago. She is the author of the poetry collections when they say you can’t go home again, what they mean is you were never there and wine for a shotgun as well as Gathering Voices: Creating a Community-Based ... Read more
North Stage Sunday, Sept. 8th at 4pm Ann McGlinn is the author of two novels, El Penco (2014) and Ride On, See You (2023), both published by Cuidono Press.
Grace Place Stage (2nd floor) Saturday, Sept. 7th at 2pm Elizabeth McKenzie’s novel The Dog of the North was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist. Her novel The Portable Veblen was longlisted for the National Book Award for fiction, shortlisted for the Women’s Prize, and received the ... Read more
Plymouth Court Stage Saturday, Sept. 7th at 5pm Ethan Michaeli is an award-winning author of two non-fiction books, Twelve Tribes: Promise and Peril in the New Israel, (Custom House, 2021), and The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016). The New York Times praised The Defender as “...a towering achievement ... Read more
Jazz Showcase Stage Saturday, Sept. 7th at 4:30pm Jose-Luis Moctezuma is a Xicano poet, essayist, and researcher. He holds a PhD in English from the University of Chicago. His chapbook, Spring Tlaloc Seance, was published by Projective Industries in January 2016. His first full-length book, Place-Discipline, was published by Omnidawn in October 2018. Place-Discipline was ... Read more
Grace Place Stage (2nd floor) Saturday, Sept. 7th at 3pm Natalie Y. Moore is a senior lecturer at Northwestern University.
North Stage Sunday, Sept. 8th at 5pm Zak Mucha, LCSW, is a psychoanalyst in private practice and president of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis. He is the author of Swimming to the Horizon: Crack, Psychosis, and Street-Corner Social Work and The Ambulatorium.
Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage Sunday, Sept. 8th at 10am Simone Muench is the recipient of an NEA Poetry Fellowship; the 2023 Lewis University Career Scholarship Award; a 2023 Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, and the Meier Foundation for the Arts Award. She is the author of seven full-length books including The Under Hum, cowritten ... Read more
Plymouth Court Stage Saturday, Sept. 7th at 11am Samhita Mukhopadhyay is the former executive editor of Teen Vogue and former executive editor at Feministing. As a writer, her work has appeared in New York Magazine, The Cut, Vanity Fair, Vogue, The Atlantic Monthly, and Jezebel. Born in New York City, Mukhopadhyay lives between Putnam County ... Read more
Center Stage Saturday, Sept. 7th at 4pm Jamie Nesbitt Golden is a reporter for Block Club Chicago where she covers Bronzeville and the Near South Side. The Bronzeville native's work has also appeared in xoJane, Salon and Time. She has won several awards, including the 2023 Journalist of Distinction from the National Association of Black ... Read more
Plymouth Court Stage Saturday, Sept. 7th at 2pm Arionne Nettles is a professor, culture reporter, and audio aficionado who serves as the Garth C. Reeves Eminent Scholar chair and instructor for digital journalism at Florida A&M University. As a journalist, her stories often look into Chicago history, culture, gun violence, policing, and race and class ... Read more
Grace Place Stage (1st floor) Saturday, Sept. 7th at 2pm Martha C. Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, appointed in the Philosophy Department and the Law School of the University of Chicago. She gave the 2016 Jefferson Lecture for the National Endowment for the Humanities and won the 2016 ... Read more
Grace Place Stage (1st floor) Saturday, Sept. 7th at 10am Ugochi Nwaogwugwu is a multidisciplinary creative. Her poems have been published in Storm Between Two Fingers and Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different, both international anthologies released in the UK, Golden Shovel Anthology, honoring Gwendolyn Brooks, The Eternal Year of African People, Wherever I’m At, ... Read more
Center Stage Saturday, Sept. 7th at 4pm Olivia Obineme (she/they) is a content and people strategist, media entrepreneur, and visual journalist based in Chicago. She directs journalism and media engagement at Public Narrative, fostering narrative change through community bridge-building and programming. Olivia also coaches for the 2024 Local News Accelerator program at Northwestern University’s Medill ... Read more
Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage Saturday, Sept. 7th at 2:30pm Uche Okonkwo’s stories have been published in A Public Space, One Story, the Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019, and Lagos Noir, among others. A former Bernard O’Keefe Scholar at Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and resident at Art Omi, she is ... Read more
Grace Place Stage (2nd floor) Saturday, Sept. 7th at 1pm Janika Oza is the author of A History of Burning, winner of the 2024 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, finalist for the 2023 Governor General's Award for Fiction, finalist for the 2024 Carol Shield’s Prize, and New York Times Editor’s Choice. She is the winner ... Read more
Grace Place Stage (2nd floor) Saturday, Sept. 7th at 12pm Raul Palma is the author of A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens (Dutton), and In This World of Ultraviolet Light (Indiana University Press). He is a member of the fiction faculty at Ithaca College, and the Associate Dean of Faculty and New Initiatives in Ithaca College's ... Read more
Center Stage Saturday, Sept. 7th at 1pm Kevin Pang is the author of A Very Chinese Cookbook, named one of the best cookbooks of 2023 by The New York Times, Amazon, and Serious Eats. He is a former food writer at the Chicago Tribune and currently contributes to Esquire and The New York Times.
North Stage Saturday, Sept. 7th at 10am Sara Paretsky revolutionized the mystery world in 1982 when she introduced V.I. Warshawski in Indemnity Only. V.I. challenged a genre in which women historically were vamps or victims instead of active problem-solvers. In 1986 Paretsky created Sisters in Crime, an international advocacy group for women crimewriters. Her awards ... Read more
Center Stage Sunday, Sept. 8th at 1pm Corrbette Pasko is an actor/writer/singer/host/producer and your mom’s favorite, even when she swears. She is the creator of the GenX Update on TikTok and Instagram, where she delivers news, pop culture, and calls to action with a healthy dose of snark. She is the host and producer of ... Read more