Grace Place, 2nd Floor (637 S. Dearborn St.) Saturday 9/12, 2pm Evoto Laura Sims’s previous novels How Can I Help You and Looker have been featured on Best Books lists in The New York Times Book Review, Vogue, People Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Real Simple, Publishers Weekly, and more. An award-winning poet, Sims has published four ... Read more
North Stage (On S. Dearborn St., just south of Ida B. Wells Dr.) Saturday 9/12, 11am Lauren Hough was born in Germany and raised in seven countries, and West Texas. She's been an Air Force airman, a bartender, a bouncer, a construction laborer, a driver, a green-aproned barista, and a cable guy. She's the author ... Read more
Center Stage (On S. Dearborn St. in Printers Row Park between Polk and Harrison Streets, West Side of Dearborn.) Sunday 9/13, 5pm Layne Fargo has a background in theater, women’s studies, and library science, so it’s only fitting that she now writes deliciously dramatic, unapologetically feminist stories for a living. She’s the bestselling author of ... Read more
North Stage (On S. Dearborn St., just south of Ida B. Wells Dr.) Sunday 9/13, 2pm Leah Eskin writes about food and other pressing matters. Her novel, Like Wafers in Honey, tells the story of Stella, a Jewish girl from Tuscany fleeing Fascist brutality. And it follows Edda, a Westchester housewife trying to save a ... Read more
Center Stage (On S. Dearborn St. in Printers Row Park between Polk and Harrison Streets, West Side of Dearborn.) Sunday 9/13, 4pm Lee Bey is architecture critic for the Chicago Sun-Times. He is also author of the much-praised book Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side (Northwestern University Press, 2019), which showcases his ... Read more
Center Stage (On S. Dearborn St. in Printers Row Park between Polk and Harrison Streets, West Side of Dearborn.) Saturday 9/12, 11:30 Leslé is a Blaxican poet, activist, and author. In her poetry and personal life, she helps people find their voices through the arts and helps marginalized communities stand in the gaps that social, ... Read more
Center Stage (On S. Dearborn St. in Printers Row Park between Polk and Harrison Streets, West Side of Dearborn.) Saturday 9/12, 3pm Lina Chern’s debut novel Play the Fool won the 2024 Mary Higgins Clark Award and was nominated for the Anthony and Lefty Awards. Its follow-up, Tricks of Fortune, has also been nominated for ... Read more
North Stage (On S. Dearborn St., just south of Ida B. Wells Dr.) Saturday 9/12, 12pm Lisa Low is the author of Replica (University of Wisconsin Press, 2026) and the chapbook Crown for the Girl Inside (YesYes Books, 2023). She is the recipient of a 2023 Pushcart Prize and the 2020 Gulf Coast Nonfiction Prize, ... Read more
Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage (On W. Polk St., just east of Clark St.) Saturday 9/12, 11:30am Lisa Lucas was most recently a senior vice president at Knopf Doubleday, serving as publisher of both Pantheon Books and Schocken Books. Previously, she worked as the National Book Foundation’s executive director, and Guernica’s publisher.
Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage (On W. Polk St., just east of Clark St.) Saturday 9/12, 12:30pm Lisa Weinert, LMSW, RYT, is a therapist, book coach, and founder of Narrative Healing™. She is the author of Narrative Healing: Awaken the Power of Your Story. Drawing on more than two decades in publishing and her ... Read more
Center Stage (On S. Dearborn St. in Printers Row Park between Polk and Harrison Streets, West Side of Dearborn.) Saturday 9/12, 3pm Lori Rader-Day is the USA Today bestselling author of eight novels including Wreck Your Heart, The Death of Us, Death at Greenway, The Lucky One, and Under a Dark Sky. She has been ... Read more
North Stage (On S. Dearborn St., just south of Ida B. Wells Dr.) Sunday 9/13, 1pm Maggie Andersen is a Chicago-based writer who has published fiction and nonfiction in Electric Literature, DIAGRAM, and The Los Angeles Review, among others. Her debut memoir, No Stars in Jefferson Park, was published by Northwestern University Press in Fall ... 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 Maggie Su is the author of the novel Blob: A Love Story (Harper, 2025) which was reviewed in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, and Associated Press. Blob was a ... 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 Malissa is a Seattle-based journalist and poet. Her poetry has appeared in Hog River Press, Aphor, Steam Ticket, among others. She is the host of "Writers Who Run," a column and video series ... Read more
Center Stage (On S. Dearborn St. in Printers Row Park between Polk and Harrison Streets, West Side of Dearborn.) Saturday 9/12, 1pm Manasseh is a Chicago South Side–born vocalist, songwriter, and arranger whose psychedelic soul sound pulls from R&B, jazz, and gospel into something entirely his own. His new album R&B is to be released ... Read more
Screenshot Darling is a musician and multi-hyphenated, deeply melanated artist inspired by collaborations and the experiences of self interdependent those before and around them. Born and raised in the Chicago Baptist church, their artistic journey is rooted in the freedom, channeling the essence of performance art through the senses with a distinct interest in ... Read more
Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage (On W. Polk St., just east of Clark St.) Saturday 9/12, 4:30pm Marcy Rae Henry is a multidisciplinary Xicana artist from the Borderlands and author of death is a mariachi, winner of the May Sarton Poetry Prize; when to go to the Taj Mahal; the body is where it ... Read more
North Stage (On S. Dearborn St., just south of Ida B. Wells Dr.) Saturday 9/12, 1pm As Cook County Treasurer, Maria Pappas took an office that was a backwater in 1998 and made it the gold standard for local government offices. Foreign nations have visited to see what Maria does and how she does it. ... Read more
Center Stage (On S. Dearborn St. in Printers Row Park between Polk and Harrison Streets, West Side of Dearborn.) Sunday 9/13, 10am Marianna Kontos is a proud founding member of Broadway Dropouts! Marianna is a Technical Theatre Artist/Choreographer based in the Chicago suburbs who is passionate about building essential life skills through the arts. When ... Read more
Center Stage (On S. Dearborn St. in Printers Row Park between Polk and Harrison Streets, West Side of Dearborn.) Sunday 9/13, 5pm Mario Elías (he/him) is a multidisciplinary artist of Cuban and Syrian descent based in Chicago whose work spans fiction, nonfiction, photography, painting, and printmaking, often exploring themes of identity, memory, and cultural inheritance. ... Read more
North Stage (On S. Dearborn St., just south of Ida B. Wells Dr.) Saturday 9/12, 1pm Mark Eleveld is the editor of the Spoken Word Revolution series and a host of the Thru the Mill podcast.
North Stage (On S. Dearborn St., just south of Ida B. Wells Dr.) Sunday 9/13, 3pm Author of Ensemble: An Oral History of Chicago Theater, which drew from his more than 300 interviews with Chicago theater artists both past and present, and Working in the 21st Century: An Oral History of American Work (2024). The ... Read more
Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage (On W. Polk St., just east of Clark St.) Saturday 9/12, 1:30pm Writer Mark Turcotte (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe) is the current Illinois Poet Laureate and Distinguished- Writer-In-Residence in the English Department at DePaul University.
North Stage (On S. Dearborn St., just south of Ida B. Wells Dr.) Saturday 9/12, 12pm Marty McConnell is the author of Gathering Voices: Creating a Community-Based Poetry Workshop, (YesYes Books, 2018) and when they say you can’t go home again, what they mean is you were never there, which won the Michael Waters Poetry ... Read more
Digital Realty Stage (On W. Polk St., at Plymouth Ct.) Saturday 9/12, 3pm Marvin Tate is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, musician, performer, and cultural worker whose practice explores memory, identity, Black imagination, and the transformative power of storytelling. Blending spoken word, experimental music, visual art, theater, and community engagement, Tate creates immersive works that challenge ... Read more