Saturday, September 6th 3pm CT - Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage Sarah Schulman is a novelist, playwright, nonfiction writer, screenwriter, and AIDS historian. She is a professor at Northwestern in Creative Writing and is on the Advisory Board of Jewish Voice for Peace.
Saturday, September 6th 11pm CT - Grace Place Stage Rachel Jamison Webster has published five books, including Benjamin Banneker and Us: Eleven Generations of an American Family (Holt 2023), which was named a Best Book by The New Yorker and was an Editor's Pick at The New York Times. Her book, Mary is a River, ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 10am CT - Grace Place Stage Alec Nevala-Lee is the author of Collisions: A Physicist’s Journey From Hiroshima to the Death of the Dinosaurs, the first biography of the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Luis W. Alvarez, which was published by W. W. Norton in June. His other books include Inventor of the Future: ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 10am CT - Grace Place Stage Having worked in conflict zones such as Iraq, the West Bank, and Ukraine, Alex Poppe writes about fierce and funny women rebuilding their lives in the wake of violence. She is the award-winning author of four works of literary fiction. Breakfast Wine, her memoir-in-essay of her ... Read more
Betsy Bird is the author of the picture book POP! Goes the Nursery Rhyme, ill. by Andrea Tsurumi, as well as numerous other picture books and novels for kids. In addition to writing, she blogs for School Library Journal, has a podcast with her sister about picture books (Fuse 8 n' Kate), and reviews for ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 10am CT - Plymouth Court Stage Dawn Tripp is the nationally bestselling author of the novel Jackie, and the novel Georgia, which was the finalist for the New England Book Award and winner of the Mary Lynn Kotz Award for Art in Literature. Tripp is also the author of Game of Secrets, ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 10am CT - Plymouth Court Stage Gioia Diliberto is the author of eight books – five nonfiction and three novels – and a play. Her books have been praised for combining rich storytelling with thorough research to bring alive worlds as varied as Belle Epoque France, Civil War Louisiana, Nazi-occupied Paris, nineteenth ... Read more
Heather Augustyn is author of eight books on the history of ska and Jamaican music. She is assistant professor of practice in writing at Purdue University Northwest and is a regular contributor to SPIN, Downbeat, and Wax Poetics.
Saturday, September 6th 10am CT - Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage Jorge Valdivia is the Executive Director of the Chicago Latino Theater Alliance (CLATA), where he produces Destinos: Chicago International Latino Theater Festival, celebrating Latine stories on Chicago stages. With over 25 years in arts and media, he champions equity through cultural advocacy and ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 10am CT - Plymouth Court Stage Laura S. Washington is a Chicago Tribune contributing columnist and political analyst for ABC 7-Chicago. She has served as a Fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics and the Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor at DePaul University, editor and publisher of The Chicago Reporter, ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 10am CT - Center Stage Leslé Honoré is a Blaxican poet and activist, and the author of Brown Girl, Brown Girl. Born and raised in Gardena, California, she remains deeply rooted in the heritage and culture of her father, a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, and her mother, who was born in ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 10am CT - Grace Place Stage Liz Rose Shulman is a writer and a teacher. She is the author of Good Jewish Girl: A Jerusalem Love Story Gone Bad, published by Querencia Press. Her writing has also appeared in HuffPost, Slate, The Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Review, and Tablet ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 11am CT - Grace Place Stage Amanda Uhle writes about culture, politics, and civil rights for The Washington Post, Politico Magazine, The Boston Globe, and Newsweek. Uhle is coeditor of the I, Witness series of first-person stories by youth activists, former director of the 826michigan youth writing and tutoring program, and cofounder, ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 11am CT - Plymouth Court Stage Anya Tanyavutti earned her Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education and Masters degree in Socio-Cultural Studies and Educational Thought, both from Western Michigan University. She has served as President of the Evanston/Skokie D65 Board of Education. Ms. Tanyavutti has served as the Executive Director for a birth ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 11am CT - Grace Place Stage April Gibson is a poet, writer, and professor whose work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Rhino, Prairie Schooner and elsewhere. Her poetry collection The Span of a Small Forever (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2024) was shortlisted for a Chicago Review of Books Award and first ... Read more
Author Avani Chhaya, a Midwest native with roots that span across oceans, is an avid storyteller. She is beaming about publishing her first book, Lakshmi at the Lake. She brings a background filled with teaching, nonprofit work, and educational policy. Avani aspires to tell stories that spotlight the beauty of the South Asian experience.
William Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (retired) has written extensively about social justice and democracy, education and the cultural contexts of schooling, and teaching as an essentially intellectual, ethical, and political enterprise. His books include A Kind and Just Parent; Fugitive Days: A Memoir; ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 11am CT - Grace Place Stage Crystal S. Rudds is an assistant professor of African American literature and culture at the University of Utah, previously tenured at Malcolm X College. She served as assistant editor for the oral history High Rise Stories: Voices from Chicago Public Housing (2013) and is currently writing ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 11am CT - North Stage Jaclyn Youhana Garver is an author and poet from Fort Wayne, Indiana. Her first novel, Then, Again is contemporary fiction and came out in November from Lake Union Publishing. Garver co-edited Requiem for a Siren: Women Poets of the Pulps, a collection of vintage horror and sci-fi ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 11am CT - Plymouth Court Stage Keisa Reynolds is a queer Black feminist writer and community educator from Richmond, CA. They are a contributor to the anthology We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition (Haymarket Books, 2024). Their writing can also be found in print and online at Contra Costa Pulse, ... Read more
Maggie Andersen is an associate professor of English at Dominican University and a founding ensemble member of the Gift Theatre. Her work has appeared in DIAGRAM, The Los Angeles Review, Electric Literature, and Salt Hill, among others. She lives in Chicago with her husband and her son, and her debut memoir, No Stars in Jefferson ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 11:30am CT - Center Stage Karen Su is the author of Asian American Leaders Like Us biographies on Grace Lee Boggs, Philp Vera Cruz, Yuri Kochiyama, and Dalip Singh Saund. She was awarded the Many Voices Prize by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators-IL in 2022 and was a We ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 11:30am CT - Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage Dr. Travis Gayles is an accomplished healthcare leader with extensive experience driving organizational growth and health equity across public health, private sector, and academia. He currently serves as the CEO of Howard Brown Health. Most recently, he served as Chief Health Officer at ... Read more
Tracy Baim is executive director of Press Forward Chicago, a pooled fund for community journalism based at The Chicago Community Trust. Baim is co-founder and owner of Windy City Times. She is former publisher of the Chicago Reader. Baim has received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Chicago Headline Club and the Chicago Journalists Association. She ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 12pm CT - Grace Place Stage Abbott Kahler, formerly writing as Karen Abbott, is the New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City; American Rose; Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy; and The Ghosts of Eden Park. She is also the host of Remus: The Mad Bootleg King, a podcast about ... Read more