North Stage Sunday, Sept. 8th at 12pm Ben Tanzer's work includes the short story collection Upstate, the science fiction novel Orphans and the essay collections Lost in Space and Be Cool. Ben is a storySouth and Pushcart nominee, a finalist for the Annual National Indie Excellence and Eric Hoffer Book Awards, a winner of the ... Read more

Plymouth Court Stage Sunday, Sept. 8th at 11am USA Today bestselling author Sonali Dev writes stories that explore the experience of being a woman in today's world. Her novels have been named Best Books of the Year by Library Journal, NPR, The Washington Post, Cosmo, Buzzfeed, Popsugar, and Kirkus. Dev has won several awards including ... Read more

Plymouth Court Stage Saturday, Sept. 7th at 2pm Steven Thrasher is the author of the award-winning debut book The Viral Underclass, which won the POZ Award for Best in Literature and was a longlist finalist for the PEN/America John Kenneth Galbraith Award and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Literature. He recently finished writing ... Read more

Jazz Showcase Stage Saturday, Sept. 7th at 4:30pm In 2022 Marisa Tirado published Selena Didn’t Know Spanish Either with Texas Review Press. Though just a chapbook, the collection on Latinx identity and language loss was well-received and featured in The Atlantic, Vogue, HipLatina, and The Poetry Foundation. Marisa studied poetry and literary translation at the ... Read more

Plymouth Court Stage Saturday, Sept. 7th at 2pm Elizabeth Todd-Breland is author of A Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Chicago Since the 1960s and Associate Professor of History and Affiliated Faculty member in Black Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. Her research and teaching focus on U.S. urban history, African American ... Read more

Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage Sunday, Sept. 8th at 1pm Angela (Angie) Trudell Vasquez was the city of Madison Poet Laureate from 2020 to 2024. The first Latina to hold the position, she received her MFA in poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2017. In Light, Always Light, her third collection ... Read more

North Stage Saturday, Sept. 7th at 1pm Billy Tuggle is a parent, educator, mentor, performer, and proud South Side Chicagoan. A poetry slam champion, Billy won the 2006 Rustbelt Poetry Slam; multiple Chicago Grand Slams; was the 2015 National Poetry Slam Haiku Champion; and recognized by The Odyssey Online as one of the top 30 ... Read more

Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage Sunday, Sept. 8th at 3pm Nicol Turner Lee writes at the intersection of technology, race, and social justice. She is a Senior Fellow in tech policy at Brookings and her work has appeared in major media outlets. Her new book, Digitally Invisible: How the Internet is Creating the New ... Read more

Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage Sunday, Sept. 8th at 4pm Luis Alberto Urrea, a Guggenheim Fellow and Pulitzer Prize finalist, is the author of 19 books, winning numerous awards for his poetry, fiction and essays. His latest novel, Good Night Irene, was an instant New York Times bestseller. He is a distinguished professor of ... Read more

North Stage Saturday, Sept. 7th at 3pm Cyn Vargas has garnered acclaim for her short story collection, On The Way, earning praise from Shelf Awareness, Library Journal, and other notable sources. As well as being honored as one of Book Scrolling's Best Short Story Collections of All Time. Her latest book, Nothing's Ever The Same, ... Read more

Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage Sunday, Sept. 8th at 12pm Sammie is a bookselling wizard at Anderson's Bookshop in Naperville, IL, where they also moonlight on the events team. On BookTok, you have probably seen them dancing with books as they are most well known for their dancing book reviews. Sammie lives in the ... Read more

Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage Sunday, Sept. 8th at 11am Laura S. Washington is a Chicago Tribune contributing columnist and political analyst for ABC 7-Chicago. She has been a Fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics and as the Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor at DePaul University, editor and publisher of The ... Read more

North Stage Saturday, Sept. 7th at 12pm Michael M. Weinstein is a poet and essayist whose writing has appeared in venues such as The New Yorker, Boston Review, The Kenyon Review, Conjunctions, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. His debut poetry collection, Saint Consequence, is forthcoming next year from Alice James Books. He teaches ... Read more

North Stage Saturday, Sept. 7th at 2pm Michele Weldon is an award-winning author, journalist, TEDx speaker and emerita faculty at Northwestern University. A senior leader with The OpEd Project and editorial director at Take The Lead, her work has appeared in The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post, TIME, Newsweek, Guardian, Chicago Tribune, USA ... Read more

Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage Sunday, Sept. 8th at 3pm Cassandra West is an assistant managing editor for news features at Crain’s Chicago Business, where she oversees the monthly Forum and Equity series. She has been an editor at the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune and worked in corporate and nonprofit communications.

Grace Place Stage (2nd floor) Saturday, Sept. 7th at 12pm Theodore Wheeler is the author of four books, including the USA Today bestselling novel The War Begins in Paris (Little Brown, 2023). He has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Nebraska Arts Council, and Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. For fourteen ... Read more

Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage Sunday, Sept. 8th at 10am Jackie K. White, Professor Emerita at Lewis University, is the author of three chapbooks: Bestiary Charming, 2006 Anabiosis Press Award; Petal Tearing & Variations, Finishing Line (2008); and Come Clearing, Dancing Girl Press, 2012. Her poems and translations have appeared in ACM, Bayou, Fifth ... Read more

Plymouth Court Stage Sunday, Sept. 8th at 1pm Phillip B. Williams is from Chicago, Illinois, and is the author of two collections of poetry: Thief in the Interior, which was the winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a Lambda Literary Award, and Mutiny, which was a finalist for the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry ... Read more

North Stage Sunday, Sept. 8th at 4pm Jeremy T. Wilson is the author of the novel The Quail Who Wears the Shirt and the short story collection Adult Teeth. He is a former winner of the Chicago Tribune’s Nelson Algren Award for short fiction and the Hessman Trophy, presented by legendary Principal Durward U. Hessman ... Read more

Plymouth Court Stage Sunday, Sept. 8th at 5pm John K. Wilson was a 2019-20 Fellow at the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement, and is a writer for the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) AcademeBlog.org. He is the author of eight books, including The Myth of Political Correctness: The ... Read more

Plymouth Court Stage Saturday, Sept. 7th at 10am Rachel Wiseman is the co-author, with Anastasia Berg, of the book What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice, out this June with St. Martin's Press. She is also the managing editor of the Chicago-based literary magazine The Point (thepointmag.com). Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, ... Read more

North Stage Saturday, Sept. 7th at 2pm S.L. Wisenberg is the author of The Adventures of Cancer Bitch, newly in paperback, as well as The Wandering Womb: Essays in Search of Home, winner of the Juniper Prize in nonfiction; a short-story collection, The Sweetheart Is In; and an essay collection, Holocaust Girls: History, Memory, & ... Read more

Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage Sunday, Sept. 8th at 5pm Caroline Woods holds an MFA in fiction from Boston University. She is the author of the novels The Mesmerist, The Lunar Housewife and Fräulein M., and she has taught fiction writing at Loyola University Chicago, Boston University, and the Boston Conservatory. Raised in Delaware, ... Read more

North Stage Sunday, Sept. 8th at 2pm Amy Yee is author of Far From the Rooftop of the World: Travels among Tibetan Refugees on Four Continents, with a Foreword by the Dalai Lama. The book is a finalist in Foreword's 2023 book contest. She is an award-winning journalist with the Chicago Sun-Times and previously with ... Read more

North Stage Saturday, Sept. 7th at 12pm Chicago’s inaugural Poet Laureate, interdisciplinary artist avery r. young is an inaugural Walder Foundation Platform awardee, and recipient of the American Poet Laureate Fellowship. A co-director of The Floating Museum, his poetry, performance and composition have been featured and/or commissioned in several journals, exhibitions and operas. He is ... Read more