Rowan Beaird's first novel, The Divorcées, was named a best book by Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, People, The Independent, and the Chicago Review of Books. Her short fiction has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, and The Common, among others. She is the recipient of the Ploughshares Emerging Writer Award, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart. She has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and StoryStudio, and she currently works at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her second novel, Tenderness, will be published in July 2026.
Marie-Helene Bertinois the author of five works of fiction, most recently Exit Zero, Electric Literature's #1 story collection of 2025. Her novel Beautyland was an American Book Award Winner, a National Book Critics Circle Finalist, a New York Times Notable 100 and Time Magazine Top 10 Book of 2024. A 2025 Guggenheim Fellow in Fiction, she has received the O. Henry Prize, the Pushcart Prize, The Iowa Short Fiction Award, and The Frank O'Connor International Short Story Fellowship in Cork, Ireland. She is currently the Ritvo-Slifka Writer-in-Residence at Yale University.
Eiren Caffall is a writer and musician. Her work on loss, oceans, and extinction has appeared in Orion,Guernica, The LA Review of Books, Al Jazeera, and the anthology Elementals. She has received a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, a Social Justice News Nexus fellowship, and a 3Arts Make a Wave grant. Her books include her memoir The Mourner’s Bestiary and her novel All the Water in the World.
USA Today bestselling author Sonali Dev writes hilarious and heartwarming stories about families without boundaries. Her novels have been named Best Books of the Year by Library Journal, NPR, the Washington Post, and Kirkus. She has won the American Library Association’s award for best in genre, the RT Reviewer Choice Award, multiple RT Seals of Excellence, has been a RITA® finalist, and has been listed for the Dublin Literary Award. She lives in Chicagoland with her husband, two visiting adult children, and the world’s most perfect dog.
Jonathan Eig is the bestselling author of six books, four of them New York Times best sellers. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2024 for his most recent book, King: A Life, which was hailed by The New York Times as the "monumental” and “definitive" biography of Martin Luther King Jr.
Eig’s previous book, Ali: A Life, won a 2018 PEN America Literary Award. His works have been translated into more than twenty languages. He served as a producer on the PBS documentary Muhammad Ali, which was directed by Ken Burns.
Keir Graff writes thrillers, mysteries, and nonfiction for adults, and mystery and adventure novels for younger readers. Recent works include Chicago’s Fine Arts Building: Music, Magic, and Murder, I Did Not Kill My Husband (coauthored with Linda Joffe Hull as Linda Keir), and The Double Trouble Puzzle (coauthored with James Patterson). He is the editor of the anthology A Million Acres and coeditor of the crime-fiction anthology Montana Noir. The former executive editor of Booklist, he lives in Chicago, where he is the cofounder of the much-loved literary gathering Publishing Cocktails and the cohost of The Filmographers Podcast.
Jennifer Haigh is the author of eight books of fiction, including Mrs. Kimble – winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction -- and Mercy Street, winner of the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. Her work has been recognized by the Guggenheim Foundation, the James Michener Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and has been published in eighteen languages. Her latest novel, Rabbit Moon, was published in 2025.
Jane Hamilton has published eight novels: The Book of Ruth, A Map of the World, The Short History of a Prince, Disobedience, When Madeline was Young, Laura Rider’s Masterpiece, The Excellent Lombards, and most recently, The Phoebe Variations. Some have won literary prizes, been made into films, have been international best-sellers, and two of them, The Book of Ruth, and A Map of The World, were selections of Oprah’s Book Club. Her nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Allure, the Oprah Magazine, Elle, and various anthologies.
Sonora Jha is the author of four books, the latest of which is the novel Intemperance, a finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize and hailed as a Best Book of 2025 by Library Journal, the LA Public Library, Book Page, Ms. Magazine, and others. Her 2023 novel The Laughter, won the 2024 Washington Book Award and the AutHer Award, was longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and was named one of the Best Books of 2023 by the New Yorker, NPR, and others. She is also the author of the memoir How to Raise a Feminist Son. Formerly a journalist in India and Singapore, she is now a Loyola Endowed Professor at Seattle University. Her debut novel Foreign, published in India in 2013, is forthcoming from Harper Via in the U.S. in October 2026.
Nancy Johnson, a native of Chicago’s South Side, Nancy Johnson worked for more than a decade as an Emmy-nominated, award-winning television journalist at CBS and ABC affiliates in markets nationwide. Nancy’s second novel, PEOPLE OF MEANS, a story of race, class, and resistance in 1960s Nashville and 1992 Chicago, released last year from William Morrow/HarperCollins. A graduate of Northwestern University and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Nancy lives in downtown Chicago where she’s a director of brand journalism and storytelling for a large health care nonprofit.
Ken Krimstein is a cartoonist, author, and educator whose work appears in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Chicago Tribune. His book, Einstein in Kafkaland: How Albert Fell Down the Rabbit Hole and Came up with the Universe was published by Bloomsbury in 2024, and was an NPR book of the year. His 2021 book, When I Grow Up - The Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers was named a Washington Post Best Book of the Year and Top Ten Graphic Novel of 2021, and a Chicago Tribune Fall “Best Read.” His 2018 book The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt won the Bernard J. Bromel Award for Biography and Memoir and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award.
Mark Larson is the author of Ensemble: An Oral History of Chicago Theater, for which he conducted over 300 interviews with Chicago theater artists, past and present. He is a retired educator with over 30 years of experience including high school English and leadership positions at the Field Museum, Lincoln Park Zoo, and National Louis University. In 1995, he received the Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Teaching and served three terms as the Academy Chair. He holds a doctorate in educational leadership.
Claire Lombardo is the New York Times bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had and Same As It Ever Was. Her novels have been translated into over a dozen languages. A Chicago-area native, she now lives in Minneapolis.
Paula McLain is the author of the New York Times bestselling novels The Paris Wife, Circling the Sun, Love and Ruin, and When the Stars Go Dark. Her latest novel, Skylark, a GMA January 2026 pick, is a mesmerizing tale of Paris above and below, revealing a story of courage and resistance that transcends time.
Naeem Murr is the author of four novels: The Boy, a New York Times Notable Book; The Genius of the Sea; The Perfect Man, which was awarded The Commonwealth Writersʼ Prize for the Best Book of Europe and South Asia, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize; and Every Exit Brings You Home, which was just published by W.W. Norton. A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford, among his awards are a Pushcart Prize, a Lannan Residency Fellowship, a PEN Beyond Margins Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Chicago and teaches at Northwestern University.
Charly Palmer is known for saying “Art should change the temperature in a room” and is a world renowned award-winning fine artist and illustrator known for his compelling artwork that reflects African ancestry and contemporary experiences. Through his paintings, Palmer creates rhythmic visual narratives that challenge viewers' perceptions. His innate ability to capture the nuances of Blackness is expressed through rich depth, intricate patterns, symbols, and textures. Notable achievements include designing the Black Heritage Stamp honoring Judge Constance Baker Motley, creating the album cover for John Legend's Bigger Love, and illustrating the cover for TIME Magazine's America Must Change. He also co-authored the award-winning New Brownies Book: A Love Letter To Black Families.
m.s. RedCherries is a citizen of the Northern Cheyenne Nation. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, her debut mother was a winner of the American Book Award and a Finalist for the National Book Award.
Mary Schmich worked at the Chicago Tribune from 1985 until 2021, where she was a features writer, a national correspondent and, for 29 years, a columnist. From 1985 until 2010, she wrote the “Brenda Starr” comic strip. Her column loosely known as “Wear Sunscreen” was turned into a hit song. She teaches yoga and co-hosts the annual “Songs of Good Cheer” singalong at the Old Town School of Folk Music. She has been a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. She wrote and hosted the 2025 podcast “Division Street Revisited,” which aired on WBEZ 91.5FM (Chicago's NPR station) and is available on the major podcast platforms. She is currently teaching a journalism class at the University of Notre Dame.
Thrity Umrigar is the bestselling author of eleven novels, including The Space Between Us, Honor, which was a Reese Book Club pick, and the recent Missing Sam, which was named a noteworthy book by the Washington Post and featured in the Seattle Times. She has also written a memoir and four children's picture books. Her books have been published in over twenty countries and translated into several languages. A former journalist, she is the recipient of a Nieman Fellowship to Harvard, the Lambda Literary award, and the Cleveland Arts Prize. She has been a contributor to the Boston Globe, The New York Times and The Washington Post, among other publications. She is a Distinguished Professor of English at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
When Shelby Van Pelt isn’t writing, she’s herding cats and wrangling children. Her debut novel, Remarkably Bright Creatures, has sold several million copies worldwide and spent over a year on the NYT Hardcover Bestseller list. In 2023, she was awarded the Heartland Prize for Fiction. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, she’s now missing the mountains in the Chicago area with her family.
Poems While You Wait is a
Chicago-based collective of poets who create customized, on-demand poems on vintage typewriters. Patrons request a poem on any topic.
Katrin Schnabl is an artist, designer, and educator practicing across visual art, sculpture, fashion, dance, performance and installation. Her work was included in New American Painting, experienced on numerous international stages, performance settings and runways, featured in three solo gallery exhibitions, and recently included in the Larnaca Biennale in 2025. She is professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she has also served as chair in the fashion department.
Jumaane Taylor, a Chicago native, has been tap dancing since the age of seven. He is a very accomplished dancer and choreographer. Jumaane is dedicated to the proper advancement of tap dance.
Brent Griffin Jr. is a prominent Chicago-based alto saxophonist, educator, and 2016 Luminarts Fellow in Jazz Improvisation. He has performed with top jazz players in Chicago, and, among others presented his work at Andy’s Jazz Club and the Chicago Jazz Festival.
Liviu Pasare is a Chicago-based new media artist and video designer. His work includes video installations, interactive design, and immersive environments for public spaces and the stage. With a foundation in art and technology and inspired by collaborative storytelling, Liviu works with a wide range of artists and organizations to bring multi-faceted visions to life.
Eve Monzingo, Yves Smierciak, Marc Smierciak and George Lawler (not pictured) all play together as a part of the Yves Francois et Rocambu Jazz ensemble. Brought to you by The Old Town School of Folk Music.
