Randall Albers chairs the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago, one of the largest undergraduate and graduate writing programs in the country, and is the founding producer of the Story Week Festival of Writers. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in
Prairie Schooner,
Chicago Review,
Northfield Magazine,
Mendocino Review,
Writing from Start to Finish,
F Magazine,
Writing in Education, and elsewhere. A former winner of the Columbia College Teaching Excellence Award, he is the co-writer and co-producer of the Story Workshop teaching of writing video tapes,
The Living Voice Moves and
Story from First Impulse to Final Draft. His fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and an excerpt from his novel-in-progress,
All the World Before Them, appears in the spring 2009 issue of
TriQuarterly: Strong Medicine.
Photo: Ryan Klos
Andrew Allegretti is the winner of numerous Illinois Arts Council Fellowships and Literary Awards, and is a professor in the graduate and undergraduate programs of the Fiction Writing Department of Columbia College Chicago. His fiction has been published in many magazines, including
TriQuarterly,
Private Arts,
Stand, Bandit-Lit.com, and
F Magazine. "Heat Lightning," the prologue to his novel,
Winter House, was a semifinalist for the James Fellowship for Novels in Progress, sponsored by the Heekin Foundation. An excerpt from his novel-in-progress,
A Fool's Game appeared in
f4. Allegretti has chaired the John Schultz & Betty Shiflett Story Workshop Scholarship Fund gala and is a board member of the Story Workshop Institute, as well as an active member of the Cultural Committee of the Union League Civic & Arts Foundation.
Photo: Elise Tanner
Rick Cleveland was a writer and Executive Producer for HBO’s award-winning
Six Feet Under. In 2000, he won an Emmy Award, a Writers Guild Award, and The Humanitas Prize for his writing on The West Wing. He was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America for his screen adaptation of John Grisham's
Runaway Jury. His play Jerry and Tom was adapted as a screenplay and was an official selection at both the Sundance and Toronto Film Festivals. As a playwright, he has received grants and fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Kennedy Center’s Fund For New American Plays. Rick was a playwright in residence with Victory Gardens Theater, and with the Goodman Theater, and he was a founding member of the American Theater Company. He received an Iowa Arts Fellowship from the University of Iowa, and received his MFA from the Playwrights’ Workshop in 1995. As a monologist, Rick won the Jury Award for Outstanding Performance in a One Person Show at the US Comedy Arts Festival in 2006 for his Mark Twain-inspired monologue,
My Buddy Bill, a meta-tall-tale about his friendship with the 42nd President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton, and the President’s dog, Buddy. He was a writer and consulting producer on the Golden Globe winning second season of Mad Men, and is now a writer and consulting producer on Edie Falco’s new Showtime series,
Nurse Jackie. Most recently he has written a feature film for Will Ferrell, and is penning the sequel to
Bad Santa.
Don De Grazia is a full-time fiction writing professor at Columbia College, where he also earned his BA and MFA. After completing his master's thesis,
American Skin, De Grazia decided to send it off to London's prestigious publisher, Jonathan Cape, who had worked with Irvine Welsh and the Scottish Beats he so admired. Cape offered him a contract, and in January 1998,
American Skin was published in the U.K. Hailed as an American classic, the book was so highly acclaimed by critics that it caught the attention of publishers around the world, and in April 2000,
American Skin was released in the U.S. by Scribner. A flood of positive reviews appeared in the
New York Times Book Review, the
Washington Post, the
Chicago Tribune,
Kirkus Reviews,
Publishers Weekly, and the
San Francisco Examiner. It is now in its fourth printing and was recently anthologized in
The Outlaw Bible of American Fiction. A member of the Screenwriters Guild of America, De Grazia is currently adapting the script for
American Skin. He has written for the
Chicago Tribune,
Chicago Reader, and other publications. He resides in Chicago where he is at work on his second novel, Reel Shadows, a chapter of which appears in the March 2009 issue of
TriQuarterly.
Photo: Kate Paris
Chris DeGuire earned his BA in fiction writing at Columbia College Chicago, where he is now an MFA/MA candidate in fiction writing and the teaching of writing. His work has appeared in
Hair Trigger and
No Touching. In 2007 he won the John Schultz and Betty Shiflett Story Workshop Scholarship. He has taught Story Workshop classes for the Story Workshop Institute, and is currently a part-time faculty member in the Columbia College Fiction Writing Department.
Photo: Steff Adams 
Drew Ferguson received his MFA in creative writing from Columbia College Chicago. He is author of the acclaimed first novel, T
he Screwed-Up Life of Charlie the Second (Kensington Publishing, September 2008). His work has appeared in
Blithe House Quarterly, the
James White Review, Hair Trigger,
The Great Lawn, and other publications. His short stories have been nominated for the AWP Intro Award, Scribner's
Best of the Writing Workshops, and the
Best Gay Fiction series. Readers can visit him at www.drewferguson.com.
Photo: Scott Ferguson
Susan Hahn is a poet, playwright, and the editor of
TriQuarterly Magazine. Her volumes of poetry include
Harriet Rubin's Mother's Wooden Hand (1991), I
ncontinence (1993),
Confession (1997),
Holiday (2001),
Mother in Summer (2002),
Self/Pity (2005),
The Scarlet Ibis (2007), and
The Note She Left (May, 2008). In 2005, the Circle Theatre in Forest Park presented Hahn's play, Golf ; most recently, her book of poems
The Scarlet Ibis was staged by the 16th Street Theatre in Berwyn as part of its Words in Motion Festival. Hahn is the recipient of numerous awards for poetry including several Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, the George Kent Prize from Poetry magazine, the Society of Midland Authors Award, two Pushcart Prizes, and a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship.
Photo: Jennifer Girard
Ann Hemenway earned her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and has published fiction and creative nonfiction in
Writing from Start to Finish,
Emergence,
Private Arts,
Sport Literate,
The Thing About Hope Is...,
f5, and other magazines. Hemenway is an AWP Intro award winner, and the recipient of a Ragdale residency. Her artwork has been shown at the ARC and Gahlberg galleries. She is a Certified Story Workshop Master Teacher and full-time professor in the graduate and undergraduate programs of the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago.
Photo: Jessica Tierney
Caren Johnson began her literary career at the Peter Rubie Agency in 2002. She worked there for three years, starting as an intern assigned to reading the huge piles of unsolicited queries, and working her way up to agent. Then she joined Nadia Cornier at Firebrand Literary, where she stayed for a year before starting her own agency in early 2007. Caren works closely with each of her authors, not only acting as an agent, but offering career guidance and publicity consultation to help them build long-lasting and lucrative writing careers. She has a BA in English Lit from CCNY. She resides in New York City.
Gary Johnson is a writer/producer of creative nonfiction for Public Radio
on
Morning Edition,
Soundprint,
Living On Earth,
and
Pacifica. Among his awards are the Associated
Press Award for Best Radio Documentary, National Federation
of Community Broadcasters' Silver Reel. He was a Herman Kogan
Media Award finalist and a winner of the Edwin L. Schuman
Award for Fiction, Northwestern University. His fiction appears
in
F2,
F3,
Private Arts,
Hyphen, and his articles
have appeared in the
Chicago Reader. He is a Certified
Story Workshop Master Teacher.
Photo: Jessica Tierney
Rick Kogan was born in Chicago and raised in the city's Old Town neighborhood. At age 16, Kogan launched his newspaper career by writing a story about the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention. Kogan has written for the
Chicago Daily News,
Chicago Sun-Times, and
Chicago Tribune, where he is now a senior writer and columnist for the Sunday magazine. Kogan has been named Chicago's Best Reporter, Chicago's Greatest Living Journalist, and in 2003, he was inducted into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame. He is the author of ten books, including
Yesterday's Chicago (in collaboration with his father, Herman);
Everybody Pays: Two Men, One Murder, and the Price of Truth (in collaboration with Maurice Possley);
America's Mom: The Life, Lessons, and Legacy of Ann Landers; and
A Chicago Tavern: A Goat, a Curse, and the American Dream, the history of the Billy Goat. He is also the creator and host of WGN radio's
Sunday Papers with Rick Kogan.
Alex Kotlowitz is the author of
Never a City So Real,
The Other Side of the River, and
There Are No Children Here. The New York Public Library selected
There Are No Children Here as one of the 150 most important books of the twentieth century.
The Other Side of the River was awarded The Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for Nonfiction. A regular contributor to the
New York Times Magazine and public radio’s
This American Life, his work has also appeared in the New Yorker and the Wall Street Journal, as well as on PBS and NPR. He teaches nonfiction writing at Northwestern University. Mr. Kotlowitz’s journalism honors include the George Foster Peabody Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and the George Polk Award. He is also the recipient of six honorary degrees and the John LaFarge Memorial Award for Interracial Justice given by New York’s Catholic Interracial Council.
Photo: Kathy Richland
Jerome Ludwig earned his BA in English Literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After moving to Chicago in 1986, he “furthered his education” by working in bars, restaurants, and used-book stores. Since 1998, he has worked in the editorial department at the Chicago Reader, where he is currently editorial coordinator and also writes about books and authors.
Photo: Julia Thiel
Megan Lynch is Senior Editor at Riverhead, where she has worked since 2003. She has acquired and edited original fiction and nonfiction by authors including Ellis Avery, Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Cristina Henriquez, Dinaw Mengestu, Wendy McClure, and Jennifer Traig. Prior to her arrival at Riverhead, Megan worked in the editorial departments at Little, Brown and Company and Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. A graduate of Brown University, she lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Mickle Maher is a playwright and actor based in Chicago for the last twenty years. He is a producing company member of Theater Oobleck since cofounding the group in 1987. His plays have been presented Off-Broadway at the Barrow Street Theatre, the Public Theater, and The New Victory Theatre; in Chicago at Steppenwolf Theater, Redmoon Theater, The Goodman Theatre (New Stages Series), the Museum of Contemporary Art, The Spertus Institute, and Links Hall; regionally at the St. Louis Museum of Contemporary Art and DiverseWorks in Houston; and at venues in Finland, Germany, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom. His plays are published by Hope and Nonthings (Chicago).
Eric May graduated with a BA in Writing/English from Columbia College Chicago in 1975. He attended American University's MFA in Creative Writing Program in Washington DC, where he was also a reporter for The Washington Post. May is now a professor in the graduate and undergraduate programs of the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the Chicago Tribune and in such literary anthologies as
Fish Stories: Collective I,
Sport Literate,
Angels in My Oven,
f5,
f6, and other publications. May is a Certified Story Workshop Director, an Associate Faculty member at the Stonecoast Writers' Conference in Maine, and a past Board of Judges member for the Columbia University Scholastic Press Association. He is currently at work on a novel and a memoir.
Photo: Jessica Tierney
Joe Meno is a fiction writer and playwright who lives in Chicago. A winner of the Nelson Algren Literary Award and the Society of Midland Authors Fiction Prize, he is the author of four novels,
The Boy Detective Fails (Akashic 2006),
Hairstyles of the Damned (Akashic 2004),
Tender As Hellfire (St. Martin's 1999), and
How the Hula Girl Sings (HarperCollins 2001). His short-story collections are Bluebirds Used to
Croon in the Choir (TriQuarterly 2005) and
Demons in the Spring (Akashic 2008.) His short fiction has been published in the likes of
McSweeney's,
Witness,
TriQuarterly,
Mid-American Review,
Alaska Quarterly Review,
Washington Square,
Other Voices,
Gulf Coast, and broadcast on NPR. His latest novel,
The Great Perhaps, will be published in May 2009 by W.W. Norton.
Photo: Joe Wigdahl
Patricia Ann McNair has had her fiction and creative nonfiction appear in various anthologies, journals, and magazines, including
American Fiction: Best Unpublished Short Stories by Emerging Writers,
Other Voices,
F Magazine,
River Teeth,
Fourth Genre,
Brevity,
Creative Nonfiction, and Air Canada's
en Route magazine. She is also published in
The Truth of the Matter: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction edited by Dinty Moore, and is a regular contributor to Elks Magazine. Her honors include a number of Illinois Arts Council Awards and Pushcart Prize nominations in fiction and creative nonfiction, Columbia College Chicago's Excellence in Teaching Award, and a nomination for the Carnegie Foundation's US Professor of the Year Award. She has served as Writer in Residence at Interlochen Arts Academy and visiting lecturer at Bath Spa University in Bath, UK. McNair is a professor in the graduate and undergraduate programs of the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago.
Photo: David C. Wurtz
Bonnie Metzgar is a playwright, director, dramaturg, and producer who was recently named Artistic Director of About Face Theatre, Chicago's LGBTQ theater dedicated to furthering the national dialogue on sexuality and gender. Metzgar is best known for envisioning a radical new grassroots model for theatrical production with Suzan Lori-Parks's epic 365 Days/365 Plays. With the creation of the 365 International Festival, Metzgar launched an event that marked the largest collaborative effort in American theatrical history with over 600 participating theaters sharing in the world premiere. Metzgar was also a member of an American delegation to the 2007 World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya, and promotes the participation of artists in the social forum movement. Metzgar served for eight years as Associate Producer at the Public Theater under George C. Wolfe and was the Founding Producer of Joe's Pub. From 2004 - 2007, Metzgar was the Associate Artistic Director of the Curious Theatre Company in Denver where she was named "2006 Colorado Theater person of the year" by the Denver Post. She was also the recipient of the 2006 Paul Green Foundation Award. Metzgar taught in the Brown University Graduate Playwriting Program and was Artistic Director of the New Play Festival at the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium from 2005 - 2008. Previously, Metzgar produced performance works at the award-winning BACA Downtown in Brooklyn where she was Artistic Director.
Tom Mula is an MFA candidate in the Fiction Writing Department, and teaches at Columbia as an artist in residence. He has been an award-winning playwright, actor, and director for nearly thirty years. In 1991, he received two Joseph Jefferson Awards for his play Golem at the National Jewish Theatre and for his work on Nicole Hollander's hit musical,
Sylvia's Real Good Advice. In 1995, Adams Media published his novel,
Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol, and it became a
Chicago Tribune bestseller; the stage version premiered at the Goodman Theatre and received an After Dark Award and the Cunningham Prize from the Goodman School of Drama at DePaul. Mula's recent work,
W!, a cabaret-style satire on the Bush administration, played in Chicago and Portland, and received a Jeff Nomination for Outstanding New Work. Last fall, Mula and Columbia's Theater Department Chair Sheldon Patinkin, codirected a production of Romeo and Juliet at the Getz Theatre.
Photo: Jennifer Girard
Tanya Palmer is the Literary Manager at the Goodman Theatre, where she coordinates the theatre's new play program, and has served as the production dramaturg on a number of plays including the world premieres of
Ruined by Lynn Nottage,
The Ballad of Emmett Till by Ifa Bayeza, and
Vigils by Noah Haidle, as well as
The Dreams of Sarah Breedlove by Regina Taylor and Passion Play and
The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl. Prior to her arrival in Chicago, she served as the Director of New Play Development at Actors Theatre of Louisville where she led the reading and selection process for the Humana Festival of New American Plays. Additional dramaturgy credits include the world premieres of
Blind Mouth Singing by Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas,
Pure Confidence by Carlyle Brown,
Kid-Simple by Jordan Harrison,
At the Vanishing Point by Naomi Iizuka,
Orange Lemon Egg Canary by Rinne Groff,
Slide Glide the Slippery Slope by Kia Corthron, and
bobrauschenbergamerica by Charles L. Mee. She is the coeditor, with Amy Wegener and Adrien-Alice Hansel, of four collections of Humana Festival plays, published by Smith & Kraus, as well as two collections of ten-minute plays published by Samuel French. Her plays, which include
Body Talk,
Fatherland,
Barbra Live at Canyon Ranch,
Spring, and
Trash, have been workshopped and/or produced at Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Hangar Theatre, Solar Stage and the Montreal Fringe Festival, The Harbourfront Centre, HERE, and The Wilton Project, and published by Smith & Kraus, Samuel French, and Playscripts, Inc. Originally from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, she holds an MFA in Playwriting from York University in Toronto.
Devon Polderman is Academic
Manager for the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago
and the former Executive Director of the Schultz Group, Inc. and its
not-for-profit sister, The Story Workshop Institute, organizations that
administer writing/reading enrichment programs and supplemental
education throughout the Chicago area for adults and children. He has
presented at national conferences for the Associated Writing Programs,
National Council of Teachers of English, the Midwest Modern Language
Association, and others. His writing is published in
f Magazine, Hair Trigger, and other places.
Tom Popp is the Managing Editor of F Magazine, a nationally distributed literary journal with a unique emphasis on publishing excerpts of novels-in-progress. He is the Faculty Coordinator of Fiction Writers at Lunch, a successful program of the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago that hosts readings, visiting writers, and panel discussions on the writing process. He was a featured reader and speaker for the Writing Life series at Binghamton University/SUNY and has hosted and been a featured reader and panelist at various literary events in the U.S. and Canada. He was the Fiction Editor and a columnist for
Velocity Magazine, a nationally distributed publication of "accelerated culture." He was a winner in the Red Sky Books contest, "Writing About the Teaching Experience." His winning story, "A Hasty Conclusion," appeared in the anthology
Pass/Fail. He is an adjunct faculty member at Columbia College Chicago, having taught all levels of the core Fiction Writing Department classes as well as three specialty classes: Dreams and Fiction Writing, Story and Journal, and Small Press Publishing.
Alexis J. Pride is a fiction writer from Chicago. She is a full-time professor of creative writing at Columbia College Chicago, where she also serves as program coordinator for the Fiction Writing Department's extensive outreach programs. Pride earned her PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is a novelist, playwright, producer, and founder of the AJ Ensemble Theatre Company. Her most recent credits include her novel, Where the River Ends. Excerpts from this work were published in editions of f5 and f6, and Ink Stains. She is a contributing writer to Chicago InnerView Magazine, has served as editor for the internationally circulated literary anthologies PragueMalion and Belletrist, and is presently working toward the completion of her second novel, Game Keepers. An excerpt from this novel, entitled "Sex Kills," can be found in the March 2009 issue of TriQuarterly. Pride's new play I AM, sponsored by the Salvation Army, goes into production in the fall.
Photo: Jessica Tierney
Lisa Schlesinger plays include
Wal-martyrs,
Celestial Bodies,
Twenty One Positions (with Naomi Wallace and Abed Fattah Abusrour),
Same Egg,
Manny and Chicken,
Rock Ends Ahead, Bow Echo, The Bones of Danny Winston, Artist of Transparency, as well as Our ( ) Town. She is at work on an opera, Harmonicus Mundi, commissioned by the Ensemble Studio Theatre with Portland Stage Company and funded by the Sloan Foundation, and a new play with Rivendell Theatre. Most recently, her play
Leaner than Light: 12 Frames of Paul Engle, commissioned by the International Writing Program, was read at the University of Iowa. She has also received commissions from the Guthrie Theatre, the BBC, and Upstart Crow Project, and fellowships from the NEA, CEC International, the Iowa Arts Council, and the Ford and the Sloan Foundations. She is recipient of the NEA/TCG Playwrights Residency Award and winner of the BBC International Playwriting Competition. She is an artistic associate with In Parenthesis. Lisa's published essays include "Mediterranean Blues," "Postcards from Gaza and Other Unspeakable Geographies," "There is near and not far," and "Predator/Prey and Other Thoughts on Love." She serves as coordinator of the Playwriting Program and teaches playwriting at Columbia College Chicago.
Photo: Alexi Schlesinger
John Schultz is the originator of the Story Workshop® approach to the teaching of writing and professor emeritus of the Columbia College Chicago Fiction Writing Department. His numerous publications include
The Tongues of Men (stories and novellas),
No One Was Killed,
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial,
Writing from Start to Finish, and the
Teacher’s Manual for Writing From Start to Finish. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in many journals and collections, including
Big Table,
Evergreen Review,
Georgia Review,
Chicago Reader,
College English, and the
UMKC Law Review. He has been featured in several television documentaries, including
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial (A & E, American Justice, Court TV),
Daley: The Last Boss (PBS), and the BBC Radio Drama
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial. He was a featured participant in the showcasing of The Chicago Conspiracy Trial at the national ABA convention in Chicago, August 2001. He is also the founder and president of F Magazine, a literary anthology that publishes excerpts from novels-in-progress, stories, essays, and poetry. Schultz is the coproducer of the instructional videos The Living Voice Moves and Story from First Impulse to Final Draft. The Story Workshop video and written text was presented on Brown University’s Education Alliance Web site, The Knowledge Loom (www.knowledgeloom.org). He is also founder and president of the Story Workshop Institute and SGI, (Schultz Group, Inc.) offering supplementary education programs. He was appointed Fulbright Senior Specialist, fall 2007. Along with Betty Shiflett, Schultz taught master’s creative writing at Fudan University, Shanghai, PRC, fall 2007, helping Fudan set up the first master’s in creative writing program in China. New editions are forthcoming in spring 2009 of No One Was Killed and The Chicago Conspiracy Trial, with forewords by Todd Gitlin and new afterwords by the author.
Photo: Tony Ortega
Donna Seaman is a book critic and an Associate Editor for Booklist. A regular contributor to the
Chicago Tribune, the
Los Angeles Times,
Bookforum, and other literary venues, Seaman has created the fiction anthology
In Our Nature: Stories of Wildness. The recipient of Illinois Arts Council grants, Seaman has received the James Friend Memorial Award for Literary Criticism, the Writer Magazine Writers Who Make a Difference Award, and several Pushcart Prize Special Mentions. Literacy Chicago presented her with the Literacy Hero Award, and she received the Story Week Achievement Award from the Fiction Writing Department, Columbia College Chicago. Seaman is a book contributor to Chicago Public Radio, and her author interviews are collected in
Writers on the Air: Conversations about Books, and available at www.openbooksradio.org.
Photo: David Siegfried
Betty Shiflett is professor emerita of the
Columbia College Chicago Fiction Writing Department and a winner of the
Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship Award. She was the founding
director of the Fiction Writing Department's Story Workshop Tutoring
and Tutor Training program, Founder and Artistic Director of the
Visiting Writers program, and a founding director of the department's
in-service teacher training program. She is also a distinguished
writer, playwright, and writing consultant. Shiflett is author of the
play We Dream of Tours and the musical drama Phantom Rider. Her
stories, articles, and novel and play excerpts have appeared in
Life Magazine,
Evergreen Review,
Fiction and Poetry by Texas Women,
Emergence: Writings by Women,
Private Arts,
F Magazine,
The Story Workshop Reader,
College English,
Writing from Start to Finish,
and many others. Her award-winning story "The Country Barber" was
published in American Fiction and translated into Mandarin by the
novelist Geling Yan for Sichuan Literature Monthly. She is coproducer
and interviewer for the Story Workshop video Th
e Living Voice Moves,
featuring Randy Albers and his Prose Forms class, and she and her Story
Workshop Advanced Fiction class are featured in the video
Story from First Impulse to Final Draft,
coproduced by John Schultz and Randy Albers. Shiflett has been a
featured writer three times in the Southwest Writers Conference at
Angelo State University, San Angelo, Texas. Along with John Schultz,
she taught master's creative writing at Fudan University, Shanghai,
PRC, fall 2007, helping Fudan set up its first masters in creative
writing program in China. She is Principal Story Workshop Master
Teacher, now at work on a memoir as novel,
Grassfires.
Photo: Tony Ortega
Shawn Shiflett's novel
Hidden Place was included in Library Journal's
"Summer Highs, Fall firsts," a 2004 list of "most successful debuts."
He received an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for his work and was a
three-time Finalist for the James novel-in-progress contest, sponsored
by the Heekin Group Foundation. His short stories and novel excerpts
appeared in a variety of literary journals. He was elected to Newcity's Chicago Lit 50 list, an annual ranking of top figures in the Chicago literary scene.
Photo: Jessica Tierney
JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound was born in the great melting pot of Chicago in early 2007, when vocalist JC Brooks summoned guitarist Bill Bungeroth, drummer Kevin Marks, and bassist Ben Taylor to create a sound that would connect classic sixties R&B to the post-punk days. They are of the war era, making aggressive dance music with lyrics that address more than the standard "baby, baby" fare. This is a soul band with something to say. JC Brooks, the son of a New Jersey soul queen set adrift by the disco era, is renowned for his "take-no-prisoners" stage style, inspiring the audience to get up and move! In the last year, the group has toured, sold out Chicago's legendary Hideout twice, rocked stages with Syl "Is It Because I'm Black?" Johnson and Tortoise drummer Dan Bitney, and won the
Chicago Tribune's Rock'n'Vote "Best Band of 2008" contest before a packed house at the Double Door. With their debut album Beat of Our Own Drum poised for release in early 2009, JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound is a band for the people remaining awake through the great revolution. A band for people who want to move and not just sit tight. A band for soul people.
Photo: Fuzzy Gerdes
Sam Weller, Faculty Artistic Director of the Story Week Festival of Writers, is the author of
The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury, winner of the 2005 Society of Midland Authors Award for Best Biography. Weller is the former Midwest correspondent for
Publishers Weekly magazine. He is a frequent literary critic for the C
hicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, and Playboy.com. He has written for the National Public Radio Program
All Things Considered and is a contributor to the WBEZ-FM radio program
Eight Forty-Eight. He was also a host for the station's program,
Hello Beautiful! As a staff writer for the Chicago alternative weekly Newcity, Weller received the Peter Lisagor Award for arts criticism. His short fiction has appeared in
Spec-Lit, Tales from the Dim Unknown, and the 2008 anthology
Who Can Save Us Now: Brand New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories. He is currently at work on a creative nonfiction historical mystery. Weller is a member of the full-time faculty in the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago.
Photo: Jessica Tierney
Bill Young is the president of Midwest Media, an author services company for the publishing industry. For twenty-one years he has overseen more than 6000 book tours throughout Chicago and other midwestern cities. He met Studs Terkel as a bookseller in the early 70s and later escorted hundreds of authors to Stud's WFMT radio show. For the last fifteen years he helped Studs with his own book tours and other speaking engagements. His unrealized goal was to teach Studs to drive.
Panelists, Presenters and Performers
