North Stage (On S. Dearborn St., just south of Ida B. Wells Dr.) Sunday 9/13, 12pm Mary Hawley is a poet, fiction writer, and literary translator (Spanish to English). Her poems, short stories, and translations of poetry and prose have appeared most recently in Hypertext, Pine Row, Atlanta Review, The Common, and Latin American Literature ... Read more
Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage (On W. Polk St., just east of Clark St.) Sunday 9/13, 5pm Mary Schmich is a former Chicago Tribune columnist, winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. One of her columns, known as Wear Sunscreen, was turned into a hit song by moviemaker Baz Luhrmann. That column and ... Read more
Grace Place, 2nd Floor (637 S. Dearborn St.) Saturday 9/12, 12pm Matt is an actor, writer, musician, artist, and poet working in the Milwaukee/Chicago area. He has worked with many local and regional theaters, is writing his second play, was once in a touring rock band, built a sailboat by hand, and believes in Bigfoot.
North Stage (On S. Dearborn St., just south of Ida B. Wells Dr.) Saturday 9/12, 12pm Maud Lavin’s most recent book is her poetry collection Swim Lessons, published by Tulipwood Books in Seattle. One of her nonfiction works, Cut with the Kitchen Knife, was named a New York Times Notable Book. She is a Guggenheim ... Read more
Grace Place, 2nd Floor (637 S. Dearborn St.) Saturday 9/12, 10am Evoto Maureen McKane leans into her past as a psychotherapist while pursuing the truth about being human. Her first book emerges from a lifelong desire to understand Black life in America. She honed her writing skills as a columnist for the Aurora (Illinois) Beacon ... Read more
Center Stage (On S. Dearborn St. in Printers Row Park between Polk and Harrison Streets, West Side of Dearborn.) Saturday 9/12, 12pm An award-winning Afrofuturist, editor, and librarian, Maurice Broaddus has had over a hundred short stories published in such places as Lightspeed Magazine, Black Panther: Tales from Wakanda, Out There Screaming (edited by Jordan ... Read more
Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage (On W. Polk St., just east of Clark St.) Saturday 9/12, 1:30pm Mayda del Valle is a multidisciplinary artist born and raised on Chicago’s South Side. She is the author of The University of Hip Hop and A South Side Girl’s Guide to Love and Sex. She was the ... Read more
North Stage (On S. Dearborn St., just south of Ida B. Wells Dr.) Saturday 9/12, 12pm Meghan Malachi is a poet and writer from The Bronx, New York. She is the first-place winner of the Spoon River Poetry Review 2022 Editor's Prize Contest and runner-up of the 2024 Princemere Poetry Prize. Her poetry collection, No ... Read more
Digital Realty Stage (On W. Polk St., at Plymouth Ct.) Sunday 9/13, 11am Melissa Bell joined Chicago Public Media as CEO in September 2024. Melissa is the former co-founder of Vox.com, which is the leader in explainer journalism, and the former publisher of Vox Media. Under her leadership, Vox Media’s platforms reached millions of people ... Read more
Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage (On W. Polk St., just east of Clark St.) Sunday 9/13, 1pm Mia P. Manansala (she/her) is a writer from Chicago who loves books, baking, and bad-ass women. She is the multi-award-winning author of the Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery series and the YA mystery, Death in the Cards. She ... Read more
Grace Place, 1st Floor (637 S. Dearborn St.) Saturday 9/12, 3pm Michael Copperman is an assistant professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric and Cultures at Michigan State University. His memoir Teacher: Two Years in the Mississippi Delta (University Press of Mississippi 2017) was a finalist for the 2018 Oregon Book Award in CNF. He ... Read more
Grace Place, 2nd Floor (637 S. Dearborn St.) Saturday 9/12, 3pm James Beard Award-winning food writer and video producer Michael Gebert is the author of The Chicago Way: An Oral History of Chicago Dining and has written for Chicago magazine, the Chicago Reader, Grub Street and many other publications. His site is Fooditor.com.
Grace Place, 1st Floor (637 S. Dearborn St.) Saturday 9/12, 10am Michael O'Donnell is the bestselling author of the novels Concert Black and Above the Fire. In 2023, Apple Books named him a debut writer to watch. His work also appears in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist, ... Read more
North Stage (On S. Dearborn St., just south of Ida B. Wells Dr.) Sunday 9/13, 1pm Michele Morano is the author of the essay collections Grammar Lessons: Translating a Life in Spain and Like Love. Her work has appeared in publications such as Best American Essays, The Sun, Fourth Genre, Brevity, Ninth Letter, and many ... Read more
North Stage (On S. Dearborn St., just south of Ida B. Wells Dr.) Saturday 9/12, 4pm Mike Phillips is the editor and publisher of Agita Publishing.
North Stage (On S. Dearborn St., just south of Ida B. Wells Dr.) Sunday 9/13, 12pm Mike Puican’s debut book of poetry, Central Air (Northwestern Press), was published in 2020. He’s had poems in Poetry, Michigan Quarterly Review, and New England Review among many others and he won the 2004 Tia Chucha Press Chapbook Contest ... Read more
Center Stage (On S. Dearborn St. in Printers Row Park between Polk and Harrison Streets, West Side of Dearborn.) Saturday 9/12, 12pm Mikki Kendall is the author of The New York Times Bestselling Hood Feminism and Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists, a graphic novel illustrated by A. D’Amico. Her essays can be found at TIME, The ... Read more
Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage (On W. Polk St., just east of Clark St.) Saturday 9/12, 4:30pm MJ Dean is a Chicago-based writer. Her work has appeared in The Poetry Project News Letter, RHINO Poetry, Sobotka Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. She is an associate editor for RHINO Poetry and earned her MFA in Creative ... Read more
Digital Realty Stage (On W. Polk St., at Plymouth Ct.) Saturday 9/12, 10am Molly Sturdevant’s prose and poetry has appeared in Orion Magazine, The Dark Mountain Project, Crab Creek Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Poetry Northwest and other places. Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Nets, Pushcarts, the Montana Prize in Fiction and ... Read more
Digital Realty Stage (On W. Polk St., at Plymouth Ct.) Sunday 9/13, 3pm Screenshot Morgan Campbell is an award-winning sportswriter, and the author of the acclaimed memoir, My Fighting Family: Borders and Bloodlines and The Battles That Made Us. The book details his experience growing up Black and American, in Canada, in a family whose ... Read more
North Stage (On S. Dearborn St., just south of Ida B. Wells Dr.) Sunday 9/13, 5pm Naeem Murr is the author of four novels: The Boy, a New York Times Notable Book; The Genius of the Sea; The Perfect Man, which was awarded The Commonwealth Writersʼ Prize for the Best Book of Europe and South ... Read more
Grace Place, 1st Floor (637 S. Dearborn St.) Saturday 9/12, 10am Nancy Burke is a poet, fiction writer, psychoanalyst and psychotherapy activist from Evanston IL. Her work has appeared in After Hours, Narrative, Story International, Sky Island, Bicoastal Review, Whitefish Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review among other literary journals. Her first novel, Undergrowth, was published ... Read more
Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage (On W. Polk St., just east of Clark St.) Saturday 9/12, 10am Natalie Y. Moore is a Chicago-based journalist and senior lecturer at Northwestern University.
Grace Place, 2nd Floor (637 S. Dearborn St.) Saturday 9/12, 1pm Nathaniel Rich is the author of Cloudthief; three previous novels, all New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice selections; and two works of nonfiction: Second Nature and Losing Earth, a finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. He won the Emily Clark ... Read more
North Stage (On S. Dearborn St., just south of Ida B. Wells Dr.) Saturday 9/12, 2pm Neal Allen cowrote the 2026 New York Times Bestseller Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences with his wife, Anne Lamott. A former journalist and corporate executive, he wrote Better Days: Tame Your Inner Critic (2023) and Shapes ... Read more