Jenn Sodini grew up in Pittsburgh, went to school in Amherst, and then moved to Chicago and never looked back. She passionately hosts and co-produces CHIRP Radio's The First Time, a live-music-and-storytelling series held quarterly at Martyrs', and Psychotic Break,...  read

Keidra Chaney is a writer, editor, blogger and digital strategist, though she's not sure what that actually means these days. She has been published in Chicago Sun-Times, Time Out Chicago, Bitch Media, Paste, and a bunch of publications that no...  read

Deborah Siegel is the author of two books and a pair of boy/girl twins, and the founder of the public voice consultancy, Girl Meets Voice Inc. She's also co-founder of SheWrites.com, Senior Facilitator with The OpEd Project, and creator of...  read

Molia Dumbleton's fiction and poetry have been featured in The Kenyon Review Online, New England Review, Great Jones Street, Witness, Hobart, and others. She has been awarded the Seán Ó Faoláin Story Prize and the Dromineer Literary Festival Flash Fiction...  read

Leonard Zawadski is a poet, and he lives in Rogers Park, IL. He works as a receiving clerk for an independent bookstore in the North Shore of Chicago. Poetry of his appears or is forth-coming in The Literary Nest, Into...  read

James Gordon is an international award winning author and poet from the South Side of Chicago. He is the Reigning Moth Grand Slam Champion and Snubfest Storytelling Champion. James can be found at www.iblowyourmind.net and on Twitter at gr8estpoetalive. Please...  read

Kelly Swails is an author, editor, and all around fun gal. When she isn't wrangling words, she hangs out with her husband and friends, watches geeky TV shows, plays board games, and knits a blanket that she swears will be...  read

Amy Sumpter has been doing comedy in Chicago for 15 years. When she isn't high kicking while doing Stand Up, she is high kicking as MCAmy, in the all female Beastie Boys Tribute band, She's Crafty. Please join Amy and...  read

Dmitry Samarov was born in Moscow, USSR in 1970. He immigrated to the US with his family in 1978. He got in trouble in 1st grade for doodling on his Lenin Red Star pin and hasn't stopped doodling since. After...  read

Cameron McGill is a second-year MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Idaho and the poetry editor of the journal Fugue. He is originally from Champaign, IL, though he spent many years working as a musician in Chicago. He...  read