We had a packed room for our June 3 show — proving once again that Chicagoans love their live lit! And we had a really great show for them, too. Dayna Bateman started things off with a moving abecedarian essay...  read

Mary Anne Mohanraj is author of Bodies in Motion (HarperCollins), The Stars Change (Circlet Press) and ten other titles. Bodies in Motion was a finalist for the Asian American Book Awards, a USA Today Notable Book, and has been translated...  read

Diana Babineau is a senior editor and writer for Northwestern Magazine at Northwestern University. She studied poetry at Amherst College and went on to become a managing editor for The Common literary journal, Orion magazine and In These Times magazine....  read

Dayna Bateman is a recovering tech worker who received the 2025 American Literary Review Nonfiction Prize for her essay: Deracination, or How to Disappear. A Granta Memoir and Tin House Workshop alum, she was awarded a Storyknife Residency on the...  read

James Stewart III is a Black writer and arts organizer from Chicago. His debut novel, Defiant Acts (Acre Books, 2025), has been named one of Chicago Magazine’s “Summer’s Required Reading” picks and was recently featured in the Chicago Reader. He...  read

Eden Robins is the author of Remember You Will Die, which has been longlisted for the 2024 Massachusetts Book Awards, When Franny Stands Up, which was named a best book of 2022 by the Chicago Reader, and the forthcoming Don't...  read

As the weather warms up, so does Chicago's favorite eclectic monthly reading series! Join us in the upstairs lounge at Hopleaf on June 3 for readings by Diana Babineau, Dayna Bateman, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Eden Robins, and James Stewart III....  read