Participants

A collection of 740 posts

Participants Reading #167

Meet the Readers: PJ Bauman

Piper June (PJ) Bauman is a trans visual artist, essayist, and avid fan of many soups including a good Butternut Squash, Caldo Verde, Tomato Bisque, or really any sort of Gumbo. A recent Chicago transplant, Piper has spent the last few months sniffing around to find enough money for her

Participants Reading #167

Meet the Readers: Robin Billadeau

Robin Billadeau is a queer poet and cartoonist based in Chicago. She likes knights in shinning armor and mistakes. You can follow her work on Bluesky at MaidandLion. Please join Robin and our other kickass readers on Tuesday, February 3, 2026 in the upstairs bar at Hopleaf. Doors open at

Participants Reading #167

Meet the Readers: Dawn Angelicca Barcelona

Dawn Angelicca Barcelona is a Filipina-American poet from New Jersey. She is a candidate in the Litowitz MFA+MA Program at Northwestern University. Her debut chapbook, Roundtrip, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2025. Her work has appeared in BRINK, Reed Magazine, Tampa Review, Atlanta Review, and elsewhere.

Participants Reading #167

Meet the Readers: Lori Rader-Day

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 nominated for crime fiction’s highest award, the Edgar Award, and has won the Mary Higgins

Loerzel Robert Participants

Meet the Readers: Robert Loerzel

Robert Loerzel is a freelance journalist, copy editor, historian, and photographer. He was born in Alaska. He lives in Uptown. His books include Alchemy of Bones: Chicago’s Luetgert Murder Case of 1897 and The Uptown: Chicago’s Endangered Movie Palace. His reporting has included articles for Chicago magazine, the

Participants Reading #166

Meet the Readers: Kelsey McGrath

Kelsey McGrath (she/they) is a multi-hyphenate creative and has been in the Chicago theater scene since 2015, most recently dipping her toes in live lit and storytelling. As a performer, she's acted with Northwestern University, Northlight Theatre, Steep Theatre, Red Theater, and Lifeline Theater. As a

Participants Reading #166

Meet the Readers: Dmitry Samarov

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. He graduated with a BFA in painting and printmaking

Participants Reading #166

Meet the Readers: Sara Paretsky

Sara Paretsky revolutionized the mystery world in 1982 when she introduced her Chicago detective, V.I. Warshawski, in Indemnity Only. By creating a woman PI with the grit to take on the mean streets, Paretsky challenged a genre in which women historically were vamps or victims. While Paretsky’s fiction

Participants Coviello Peter

Meet the Readers: Peter Coviello

Peter Coviello is the author of six books, including Long Players, a memoir selected as one of ARTFORUM’s Best Books of 2018; Make Yourselves Gods, about the Mormon nineteenth century; and most recently Is There God After Prince?: Dispatches from an Age of Last Things. His writing appears regularly

Carmichael Matt Reading #166

Meet the Readers: Matt Carmichael

Matt Carmichael is a futurist, author, photographer, speaker, dad and softball coach? Matt has been called "an actual photographer" by Dave Barry and an "internet guru" in Rolling Stone. A former Census Bureau director said Matt's work was important for the nation. An Emmy-

Participants Reading #165

Meet the Readers: Daniel Kraus

Daniel Kraus is a New York Times bestselling writer of novels, TV, and film. His latest novel, Angel Down, was a USA Today bestseller and New York Times Notable Book of 2025. His novel Whalefall received a front-cover rave review in the New York Times Book Review, won the

Gucciardi Ben Participants

Meet the Readers: Ben Gucciardi

Ben Gucciardi teaches writing, print and video journalism at Whitney Young where he also coached the school’s state champion Academic Decathlon team from 2019 to 2025. Before teaching, he was a member of the Wisconsin-based indie rock band Sat. Nite Duets, whose work has been featured in GQ,

Participants Reading #165

Meet the Readers: Michal Eskayo

Michal Eskayo, or Mick, is on faculty in the World Languages and ELL Department at Harold Washington College. She has been teaching writing, speech and news literacy to English Language Learners and some native speakers of English for a freaking long time. Getting this job was like winning the lottery,

Sophie Lucido Johnson Participants

Meet the Readers: Sophie Lucido Johnson

Sophie Lucido Johnson is an award-winning cartoonist and writer in Chicago. She is the author of, most recently, KIN: The Future of Family, and three other books. She is a cartoonist for The New Yorker, and has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She

Aiken Carmen Reading #164

Meet the Readers: Carmen Aiken

Carmen Aiken is a writer living and working in Chicago, IL, who volunteers in local economy and food ecosystems and enjoys riding her bike. Carmen's novel in verse, hotspur, was published this summer by Spuyten Duvil Press, and they've recently had pieces published in Milwaukee Avenger

Participants Reading #164

Meet the Readers: Dan Sinker

Dan Sinker is a writer, maker, podcaster, and professional troublemaker who does work that attempts to make sense of a world that rarely does. At 19 years old he founded the influential underground magazine Punk Planet, which he ran for 13 years. In 2011, he gained notoriety as the creator

Participants Reading #164

Meet the Readers: Bridget Gordon

Bridget Gordon (she/her, fae/faer) is a queer trans woman and emerging poet based in Chicago. A former MFA candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she tried faer hand at sports journalism before settling into short-form writing about queer longing, identity, and liminality. Fae

Participants Reading #164

Meet the Readers: Nicole Adabunu

Nicole Adabunu is an MFA Poetry graduate from The Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is a 2024 Cave Canem Fellow, and her work has been published or is forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, The Academy of American Poets, The Drift, and elsewhere. She'll be reading from her hopefully soon to

Participants Reading #164

Meet the Readers: Tanya Kornilovich

Tanya Kornilovich grew up in Oregon and has been living in Chicago for the past eight years. She used to dabble in stand-up comedy, but now focuses on her true love, writing. She’s written theatre reviews for Scapi Magazine and satirical articles for Chicago Machine. Her essay, “Corona

Participants Jaggi Jitesh

Meet the Readers: Jitesh Jaggi

Jitesh Jaggi is a dancer and poet from India. He ended his career in Finance one day when he lost all his data that he forgot to save on an Excel sheet and realized that he just didn't care. That tipping point led him to becoming a storyteller

Participants Lake Alan

Meet the Readers: Alan Lake

Chef/percussionist/writer/reprobate and lover of all things beautiful & delicious, Chef Alan Lake's culinary career includes East Bank Club in Chicago; Sunset Marquis in W. Hollywood; Izakaya Hiwatta in Ichinomia Japan and legendary nightclub Purpur in Zurich, Switzerland. Working around the world for over four decades,

Participants Palmer J.H.

Meet the Readers: JH Palmer

J.H. Palmer is a Gapers Block alumna. She has performed at numerous storytelling venues in Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis, and New York City, and she produced a nonfiction literary series called That’s All She Wrote from 2012 to 2017. Her work has appeared in Hypertext Review, Chicago Story Press,

Participants Harvey Miles

Meet the Readers: Miles Harvey

Miles Harvey’s collection of short stories, The Registry of Forgotten Objects (Mad Creek Books, 2024) won the Journal Non/Fiction Prize and the Society of Midland Authors award for best work of adult fiction. His nonfiction includes The King of Confidence (Little, Brown & Co., 2020) and The Island

Participants Cowie Esther

Meet the Readers: Esther Cowie

Catherine-Esther Cowie was born in St Lucia to a Tobagonian father and a St Lucian mother. She migrated with her family to Canada and then to the USA. Her poems have been published in PN Review, Prairie Schooner, West Branch Journal, The Common, SWWIM, Rhino Poetry and others. Her

Participants Reading #162

Meet the Readers: Caitlin Brecht

Cate Brecht is a recovering Floridian who’s been calling Chicago home for over a decade. She’s worked plenty of odd jobs to make rent and now finds herself in insurance—which pays the mortgage. She’s shared stories about her wonderfully messy brain across the city at spoken