Participants

A collection of 754 posts

Participants Reading #160

Meet the Readers: Victoria Montalbano

Victoria Montalbano is an actress, solo performer, and recovering improvisor. She has made appearances at storytelling shows across the Chicagoland area, and spends part of the year touring her one-person-shows. Her award-winning show, The Princess Strikes Back: One Woman's Search for the Space Cowboy of

Participants Reading #160

Meet the Readers: Chris Corlew

Chris Corlew is a writer and musician living in Chicago. His poems, short stories, and articles have been published in Cotton Xenomorph, Moist Poetry Journal, Whisk(e)y Tit, Kicking Your Ass, Cracked.com, and elsewhere. With Bob Sykora, he co-hosts The Line Break, a podcast about poetry and

Participants Reading #160

Meet the Readers: Martha Bayne

Martha Bayne is a writer and editor in and around Chicago. Currently a senior acquisitions editor at the University of Illinois Press, she has worked in journalism and publishing for 30 years, since she first started publishing a zine in 1995, and recently returned to self-publishing with a Substack

Participants Reading #159

Meet the Readers: Mary Anne Mohanraj

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 into six languages. The Stars Change is a science fiction

Participants Reading #159

Meet the Readers: Diana Babineau

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. She has edited a wide range of work including investigative

Participants Reading #159

Meet the Readers: Dayna Bateman

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 strength and promise of her memoir-in-progress about growing

Participants Reading #159

Meet the Readers: James Stewart III

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 was also named to Newcity’s 2025 Lit

Participants Reading #159

Meet the Readers: Eden Robins

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 Cross Mo Ellery, which she co-wrote with

Participants Reading #158

Meet the Readers: Molly Sackler

Molly Sackler is a theatre brat. She grew up in a family that moved often for her father’s work as a playwright, director, and screenwriter.  After college, she cut her teeth in NYC book publishing. At the Doubleday Crime Club, Molly learned how to write lurid flap copy and

Participants Reading #158

Meet the Readers: Bradley Morgan

Bradley Morgan, a media arts professional in Chicago, is the author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. His forthcoming books are Frank Zappa'

Participants Reading #158

Meet the Readers: J. Rohr

J. Rohr is a Chicago native with a taste for history and wandering the city at odd hours. He writes noir, horror, crime fiction, and scifi. His short fiction can be found in anthologies such as Sherlock Holmes: Further Adventures in the Realms of H.G. Wells Volume Two; Dragon

Participants Reading #158

Meet the Readers: Kate Prior

Kate Prior is a corporate trainer who teaches cybersecurity basics by day, works on her novel by night, and creates art on the weekends. Occasionally, she tells stories at Do Not Submit, Serving the Sentence, and Is This a Thing? If you like what you hear tonight, you can watch

Participants Reading #158

Meet the Readers: Mike Puican

Mike Puican’s debut book of poetry, Central Air (Northwestern Press), was published in 2020. He’s had poems in Poetry, Michigan Quarterly Review, and New England Review among many others and he won the Tia Chucha Press Chapbook Contest for 30 Seconds. He was a member of the Chicago

Participants Reading #157

Meet the Readers: Lily Be

Lily Be is a Chicago West Side born-and-raised, award-winning storyteller. She is the first Latinx winner of a Moth GrandSLAM championship, and creator and producer of Stoop Style Stories, formerly The Stoop. She is a huge advocate for the marginalized and a lot of her storytelling work

Participants Reading #157

Meet the Readers: Marc Fischer

Marc Fischer is the administrator of Public Collectors, an initiative he formed in 2007. Public Collectors’ work brings the periphery to the foreground. Its projects include the Library Excavations publication series and Hardcore Architecture—a blog and publication about the houses where  people in punk bands lived (mostly while still

Participants Reading #157

Meet the Readers: Meredith Nnoka

Meredith Nnoka is a Chicago-based poet, educator, and prison abolitionist. They have a BA from Smith College and an MA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, both in Africana studies. They teach poetry in carceral facilities and have received fellowships from Lambda Literary, Illinois Humanities, and the Prison + Neighborhood

Participants Reading #157

Meet the Readers: Rachel Mennies

Rachel Mennies is the author of three poetry collections: The Wolf, forthcoming from BOA Editions in 2027; The Naomi Letters (also BOA Editions); and The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards (from Texas Tech University Press). Her poems have appeared recently in American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, and

Participants Reading #157

Meet the Readers: Kim Moldofsky

Kim Moldofsky is the Bold Belief Builder at Scrappy Affirmations, where she helps people find meaning, reflect and make art, and navigate transitions right up until the end of life. Known for creative gatherings, she fosters welcoming spaces that invite openness, self-discovery, and the sharing of wisdom. Kim created

Participants Reading #156

Meet the Readers: Lindsay Porter

Lindsay Porter is a standup comedian, storyteller, and teaching artist in Chicago. She’s performed at Zanies and the Laugh Factory, and at bars, parks, cannabis lounges, nursing homes, and in line at Trader Joes. She tours nationally with the Bad Momz of Comedy and Moms Unhinged. She is the

Participants Reading #156

Meet the Readers: Mary Winn Heider

Mary Winn Heider’s novels for children include The Losers at the Center of the Galaxy (Little, Brown, 2021), The Stupendous Switcheroo series (Knopf, 2023-24), and The Mortification of Fovea Munson (Disney-Hyperion, 2018). The latter was long-listed for the Edgar Award; Mary Winn also wrote the book

Participants Reading #156

Meet the Readers: Andrew Cothren

Andrew Cothren grew up in New York's Hudson Valley, though he has spent the last three and a half years living in Chicago, where he works as an editorial assistant for the city government. He holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and his work has

Participants Reading #156

Meet the Readers: Kat Jercich

Kat Jercich is a writer and editor living in Chicago. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Advocate, Bust, Cosmopolitan, and the Sacramento News and Review, along with several other gone-but-not-forgotten outlets. She attended the Cuttyhunk Island Writers' Workshop. Please

Participants Reading #156

Meet the Readers: Keidra Chaney

Keidra Chaney works at a national disability justice nonprofit by day. After work hours, she plays bass, fusses over plants, makes zines about music and fandom, and watches movies from the 1970s and '80s on Tubi. She’s @kdc and @WildRampPublishing on BlueSky or @keidrachaney on Instagram. Please join

Participants Reading #155

Meet the Readers: Eric Shoemaker

Robert Eric Shoemaker is a poet, translator, and interdisciplinary artist. Eric is the author of Magical Poetics (Bloomsbury Academic, forthcoming), Ca'Venezia (2021, Partial Press), We Knew No Mortality (2018, Acta Publications), and 30 Days Dry (2015, Thought Collection Publishing). Eric’s work has been nominated for a Pushcart

Participants Reading #155

Meet the Readers: Amy Eaton

Amy Eaton is a Ragdale alum, the second runner up of the Daisy Pettles Women’s Writing Contest and the second person to receive the Rod Serling Scholarship at her high school in Binghamton NY (because there aren’t a lot of bragging rights to Binghamton besides growing up in