Saturday, September 6th 5pm CT - Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage Alfred L. Martin, Jr., PhD, is Associate Professor of Media Studies and Chair of the Department of Cinematic Arts at the University of Miami. He is author of Fandom for Us, by Us: The Pleasures and Practices of Black Audiences and The Generic ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 5pm CT - Plymouth Court Stage Andrea Freeman is the author of Ruin Their Crops on the Ground, winner of the L.A. Times Book Prize and James Beard Media Award, and Skimmed: Breastfeeding, Race, and Injustice. She is a Fulbright scholar and Second Century Chair Professor of Law at Southwestern Law School, ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 5pm CT - Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage Aymar Jean Escoffery is the Margaret Walker Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University and 2024-25 Visiting Scholar at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center. He is the author of Open TV: Innovation Beyond Hollywood and the Rise of Web Television (NYU Press, 2018) ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 5pm CT - Center Stage Azziza Robinson is a Chicago based writer, storyteller, and avid exaggerator. She is most known for mining her youth within an inch of its life and attempting to balance her passion for radical social change with her goal of becoming one of the nation’s topmost knuckleheads. Azziza ... Read more
Bear is an actor, writer, performer, and socio-political loudmouth. He has performed with Teatro Vista, The Goodman, Court, The Fly Honeys, and Timeline, among others. His writing has been featured in Windy City Times, Vox, Stage & Candor, and Rescripted. A proud union member of AEA and WBNG, find him working toward a more inclusive, ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 5pm CT - Plymouth Court Stage Colin McMahon is a seasoned journalist and visionary news media executive. A former editor-in-chief of Chicago Tribune and longtime foreign correspondent, Colin now serves as a coach and consultant for media startups and publishers across the world. He specializes in helping nonprofit news organizations expand their ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 5pm CT - Center Stage Em Modaff is an actor, musician, and tarot reader based in Chicago. You can see them on both screen and stage as well as listen to their band Mozey’s angsty music wherever you stream your tunes. Em is a 2-time Write Club champion and is terrified to ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 5pm CT - Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage Gerald Butters is Professor of History at Aurora University and he teaches in the Masters of Liberal Studies program at Northwestern University. The author of four books, in 2026 he will publish Censoring the City: Chicago, Morality and the Politics of Cinema.
Saturday, September 6th 5pm CT - North Stage Born and raised in Montana, Giano Cromley is the author of the novel American Mythology. He has also written two young adult novels, The Last Good Halloween and The Prince of Infinite Space, and a collection of short stories, What We Build Upon the Ruins. He is ... Read more
Sydney Charles is a South Side–born multidisciplinary artist, director, and performer, and a 2025 Newcity Hall of Fame inductee. She has performed with Steppenwolf, Goodman, Drury Lane, Victory Gardens, Northlight, Lookingglass, and Court Theatre. Her directing work spans Jackalope, Steppenwolf, WildClaw, and OTV/Honey Pot. She associate directed Hamlet (Make-Believe Association) and starred in Lake Song ... Read more
For over a decade and a half, Write Club has followed its mission to entertain the thundering masses with our unique brand of unrelenting bloodsport for the brain. We’ve summoned all kinds of contenders to our arena, including nationally acclaimed authors, rising-star comedians, and an ever-growing cavalcade of wild-card performance artists, playwrights, poets, journalists, activists, ... Read more
Sunday, September 7th 10am CT - Center Stage Alex Willan grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, where he was seldom seen without his sketchbook in hand. His love of drawing led him to earn a BFA in illustration from Savannah College of Art and Design. Alex has exhibited in art galleries and has painted murals, theater ... Read more
Sunday, September 7th 10am CT - North Stage Allison Epstein earned her MFA in fiction from Northwestern University and a BA in creative writing from the University of Michigan. A Michigan native, she now lives in Chicago, where she enjoys good theater, bad puns, and fancy jackets. She is the author of historical novels including ... Read more
Sunday, September 7th 10am CT - Plymouth Court Stage Annell López is the winner of the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize and the author of I'll Give You a Reason, a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for best debut short story collection. Named a best collection of 2024 by Electric Literature, I'll Give ... Read more
Sunday, September 7th 10am CT - North Stage Joseph Worthen is a writer from South Carolina. His debut novel, All Trap No Bait, came out with Chicago's Tortoise Books this summer. All Trap No Bait, follows Beverly Ornett as she is blackmailed during Coronavirus summer by a member of her degenerate online poetry group.
Sunday, September 7th 10am CT - Plymouth Court Stage Juan Carlos Reyes’s debut fiction collection Three Alarm Fire (Hinton Publishing, 2024) was selected for the KUOW/NPR January Book Club and was featured in PEN America’s PEN Ten series. Reyes has been the recipient of the WA State Artist Trust Award, a PEN USA Emerging Voices ... Read more
Melissa Bell joined Chicago Public Media as CEO in September 2024. Melissa is the former co-founder of Vox.com, the leader in explainer journalism. She also served as the publisher of Vox Media, which includes such publications as Eater, The Verge, SB Nation. Melissa played a critical role in shepherding Vox Media’s merger with New York ... Read more
Tim Chapman is a former forensic scientist for the Chicago Police Department and writing instructor at Malcolm X College. He holds a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from Northwestern University. His fiction has been published in The Southeast Review, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and the anthologies, The Rich and the Dead and Tales of the ... Read more
Sunday, September 7th 10:30am CT - Center Stage Jen Cullerton Johnson is a Chicago-based children’s author, educator, and environmental advocate. She wrote Seeds of Change, a Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award–winning biography of Wangari Maathai, and co-authored The Green Literacy Handbook, a K–5 resource that integrates environmental education with literacy and SEL. Jen holds an ... Read more
Sunday, September 7th 11am CT - Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage Danielle Moore is a Chicago-based bookseller, curator, and creative entrepreneur turning pages into power. She’s the founder of Semicolon Bookstore and a champion of Black stories, beautiful spaces, and bold ideas—from book cafés to whiskey brands. Wherever art and impact meet, Danielle is ... Read more
Eiren Caffall is an author and musician. Her writing, music, and film on loss and nature has appeared in many places and received awards, including a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant and a Social Justice News Nexus fellowship. Her books include her memoir The Mourner’s Bestiary and her novel All the Water in the World.
Sunday, September 7th 11am CT - North Stage J.R. Dawson (she/they) is the Golden Crown award-winning author of The First Bright Thing. They have had shorter works in places such as Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lightspeed, and Uncanny. Dawson currently lives on Dakota land in Minnesota with her loving wife. She teaches at Drexel University’s ... Read more
Sunday, September 7th 11pm CT - Center Stage Jacob Grant is an author, illustrator, and Dad who makes picture books. He is a winner of the prestigious Bologna Children's Book Fair Illustration Exhibition, and he's also an ok kids soccer coach. Jacob lives with his family in Oak Park, Illinois, where he can be found ... Read more
Sunday, September 7th 11am CT - Plymouth Court Stage Juan Martinez is the author of the novel Extended Stay (Camino del Sol/University of Arizona Press, 2023) and the story collection Best Worst American (Small Beer Press, 2017). He lives near Chicago and is an associate professor at Northwestern University. His work has appeared most recently ... Read more
Sunday, September 7th 11am CT - North Stage LaTanya Lane (she/her) is a writer and performer. She is a company member with 2nd Story, a two-time alum of the Voices of Our Nations Arts writers' workshop, and winner of the 2018 Diverse Worlds Grant from the Speculative Literature Foundation. You can learn more about LaTanya ... Read more