Sunday, September 7th 1pm CT - North Stage Ruben Quesada is a poet and educator. He edited the award-winning anthology Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry. His poetry and translations appear in the Best American Poetry series, The New York Times Magazine, Essential Queer Voices of U.S. Poetry, and elsewhere. Ruben’s writing has ... Read more
Sunday, September 7th 3pm CT - North Stage Pemon Rami is an accomplished author and international film producer, and a member of the Illinois Arts Council board. He served as a Professor at Loyola University and previously held the position of Director of Educational and Public Programs at the DuSable Museum. Among his notable works, ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 12pm CT - Grace Place Stage Riley Redgate is the author of six YA novels, most recently Come Home to My Heart (Union Square/Hachette). Her books have been published on four continents, optioned for film and TV, and named to best-of-the-year lists by ALA, Kirkus Reviews, and the New York Public Library. ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 11am CT - Grace Place Stage Rachel Robbins received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is a tenured assistant professor at the City Colleges of Chicago. A visual artist and two-time Pushcart Prize-nominated writer, her paintings have materialized on public transit, children’s daycare centers, and Chicago’s ... Read more
Sunday, September 7th 3pm CT - Center Stage Renée Rosen is the USA Today bestselling author of nine novels, including Let’s Call Her Barbie, Fifth Avenue Glamour Girl, The Social Graces, Park Avenue Summer and others. Her novels have been translated into over a dozen different languages and counting. Renée is a native of Akron, ... Read more
Sunday, September 7th 12pm CT - Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage I’m Sky Rune I am a transgender actress and representative of Steppenwolf's Young Adult Council.
Saturday, September 6th 11am CT - Plymouth Court Stage Maya Schenwar is director of the Truthout Center for Grassroots Journalism and board president at Truthout. She is the co-editor of We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition and co-author of Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms, among other books. ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 3pm CT - Plymouth Court Stage Mary Schmich is a former Chicago Tribune columnist who won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. She is part of the team that created Division Street Revisited, a 7-episode podcast dreamed up by Melissa Harris and released in 2025. One of her columns, loosely known as ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 12pm CT - Grace Place Stage Skyler Schrempp writes historical fiction for young people. Her first novel Three Strike Summer received four starred reviews and was listed on several “best of” lists including Bank Street College of Education’s Best Children’s Books of the Year, Chicago Public Library’s Best of the Best, and ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 3pm CT - Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage Sasha-Ann Simons is an award-winning journalist and host of WBEZ’s Reset, a daily talk show from Chicago's NPR station. She's a former national reporter and program host at WAMU in Washington, D.C., regularly behind the mic on newscasts and talk shows. Sasha-Ann's reporting ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 11:30am CT - Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage Ross A Slotten, MD, MPH is a family physician and HIV/AIDS specialist currently affiliated with the Ascension Medical Group, St. Joseph Hospital in Chicago. He has been in practice since 1984. He received a BA in Classics and BS in Biology from Stanford ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 3pm CT - North Stage Megan Stielstra is the author of three collections: Everyone Remain Calm, Once I Was Cool, and The Wrong Way to Save Your Life. Her work appears in Best American Essays, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, The Believer, Poets & Writers, Tin House, and elsewhere. A longtime ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 3pm CT - Grace Place Stage Nina Sudhakar is a writer, poet, and lawyer based in Chicago. She is the author of Where to Carry the Sound (winner of the 2024 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction and a 2024 Foreword INDIES award) and two poetry chapbooks, Matriarchetypes and Embodiments. Her ... Read more
Sunday, September 7th 12pm CT - Plymouth Court Stage Rachel Swearingen is the author of How to Walk on Water and Other Stories. Her work has appeared in Electric Lit, The Missouri Review, Kenyon Review, Off Assignment, Agni, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the Berlin Writing Prize, the New American ... Read more
Sunday, September 7th 10am CT - Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage Matt is a partner at Loevy + Loevy, where he leads the Media/Freedom of Information and Intellectual Property practices. Matt and his team have litigated hundreds of state and federal open records cases, and represent news publishers in copyright cases against OpenAI. Matt ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 12pm CT - North Stage Uxmar Torres is a Spoken Word Poet. He was born on the Southside of Chicago in the 1900s. He started writing poetry at age 10. He earned his bachelor's degree in Poetry from Augustana College in 2018. He officially released his first spoken word album, The Garden, ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 10am CT - Grace Place Stage Tony Trigilio's recent books of poetry and nonfiction include The Punishment Book (BlazeVOX , 2024); Craft: A Memoir (Marsh Hawk Press, 2023); and Proof Something Happened, chosen by Susan Howe as the winner of the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize (2021). A volume of his selected ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 1:30pm CT - Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage Recently named as the 6th Illinois Poet Laureate, Mark Turcotte (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe) has been an active member of Chicago's literary scene since the mid 90s. He is author of the books, The Feathered Heart and Exploding Chippewas, and his work has appeared ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 12pm CT - Center Stage Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. is the author of Chicago-set award-winning story collections Sacred Smokes and Sacred City; Sacred Folks, the final book in the trilogy, was published by the University of New Mexico Press in October 2024. He is the co-editor of the bestselling Never Whistle ... Read more
Sunday, September 7th 12pm CT - Joseph & Bessie Feinberg Foundation Stage Soren Jimmie Williams is excited to start her Steppenwolf journey and thrilled to be a small part of the Printers Row Lit Festival. She has starred in short films including Toad Boy, The Residential, and Mrs. Hunter is Dead. She has also appeared ... Read more
Sunday, September 7th 11am CT - North Stage Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Rita Woods recieved her BS in Microbiology before graduating from Howard School of Medicine. She currently serves as Medical Director at a men's maximum security prison. Her previous novels Remembrance and The Last Dreamwalker have won numerous awards including the AALBC ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 10am CT - Center Stage Nili Yelin is a professional storyteller known as The Storybook Mom™. She has been performing stories for ages 0-100 for twenty years and has won numerous awards. After graduating Northwestern University with a degree in Theatre and Communications, Nili worked at MTV and Saturday Night Live for ... Read more
Saturday, September 6th 12pm CT - Center Stage Mark Wukas is a lifelong Chicagoan who has spenthis life writing and teaching.
Sunday, September 7th 11am CT - Grace Place Stage Pamela Ayo Yetunde, ThD, is a pastoral counselor, educator, and founder of the Theology of Prince project at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. She is the author of Casting Indra’s Net, named one of the best spirituality books in 2023 by Spirituality and Practice, ... Read more
Sunday, September 7th 10am CT - Plymouth Court Stage Michael Zapata is the author of the novel The Lost Book of Adana Moreau, winner of the 2020 Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction, and a Best Book of the Year for NPR, the A.V. Club, Los Angeles Public Library, and BookPage, among others. He ... Read more