Story Week Coordinators

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 cowriter and coproducer 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

 
Nicole Chakalis is the Secretary of the Fiction Writing Department and holds an MFA in creative writing at Columbia College Chicago. She studied at the University of Havana and has received the Sylvia McNair Award for Travel Writing. Chakalis was also the recipient of a fellowship at the Ragdale Artists Residence and the Arts & Media Award for Excellence from Columbia College Chicago. She has been published in the Chicago Reader, the Chicago Journal, Hair Trigger 27, and Pigeon. Photo: Nicole Chakalis


Katie Corboy, Story Week Assistant, received her MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia College Chicago. She is the Event Coordinator for The Keep On Keeping On Foundation. Corboy has previously served as Assistant Artistic Director of the Story Week Festival of Writers, coordinator on Creative Nonfiction Week, managing editor of Fictionary, and editor on the anthologies Hair Trigger 27, and Open to Interpretation. Her writing has appeared in Fictionary, The Story Week Reader, Hair Trigger 27, and on www.writingcompetition.com, for which she received first place. She has worked as a grant writer for Literacy Chicago and as a media aide for Midwest Media. She is represented by the Caren Johnson Literary Agency for her novel-in-progress. Photo: Judy Nowak


Max Glaessner received his BA in fiction writing from Columbia College Chicago. His stories have been featured in Belletrist, Hair Trigger 29 and 30, Reservoir, No Touching Magazine, Ghost Factory, Criminal Class Press, and Thuglit.com.  His interview with musician/spoken word performer Henry Rollins was published in Fictionary. He is also a regular contributor to Doorways: A Journal of Horror and the Paranormal, as well as feoamante.com, where he writes reviews of scary movies. In addition to this, Max is also the founder of the Sexy Bald Men Reading Series and has been a featured reader/performer in many Chicago literary events, including RUI: Reading Under the Influence, The Windy City Story Slam, and 2nd Story.


Geoff Hyatt our Story Week 2009 webmaster, is an adjunct faculty member and new media coordinator for Columbia College Chicago. His fiction has appeared in Tales from the Dim Unknown, the Harrow, ThugLit, Hair Trigger, Whispers of Wickedness, and elsewhere. He is coeditor of the Open to Interpretation fiction anthology, and a former staff writer for Star Farm Productions. He is currently completing his first novel. Photo: Jessica Tierney



Sheryl Johnston, Artistic Director and publicist of the Story Week Festival of Writers, has been involved with the festival for twelve years. Johnston earned her BA in fiction writing from Columbia College Chicago, and her work has appeared in Emergence, Hair Trigger 16 and 17, Bandit-Lit.com, Footlights Magazine, and others. Before attending Columbia, Johnston was an editorial writer at WLS-TV, a vice president of public relations at J. Walter Thompson, and president of her own communications agency. She has served as a judge for the WBEZ-FM Stories on Stage contest, as an editor for Hair Trigger and Bandit-Lit.com, and as a panelist for the Northwestern University Summer Writers' Conference. She is a proud recipient of the 2007 Story Week Achievement Award. She currently handles publicity and event management for authors and other clients involved with education, the arts, and entertainment.


Nicolette Kittinger, Fiction Writing Student Board President, solicits, organizes, and supervises the many student volunteers who contribute their efforts to Story Week.This native Chicagoan will graduate from Columbia College Chicago in May with a BFA in Fiction Writing and a specialization in teaching. In 2008, Nicolette was awarded the John Schultz and Betty Shiflett Story Workshop Scholarship. Her work has appeared in Ugly Accent, in the forthcoming Hair Trigger 31, and others. Since January 2008, Nicolette has served as Assistant Producer of the popular Windy City Story Slam, a monthly series in which storytellers compete before a live audience. A frequent performer, she also won the Slam last fall, and this January, she was one of twelve  storytellers to take the stage at Metro to compete in the all-city Windy City Story Slam Championship event. Recently Nicolette was selected to travel to the U.K. for Columbia College's Bath Spa University student exchange program. She is currently at work on her first novel. Photo: Tim Schreier


Linda Naslund is the Story Week administrative assistant and earned her MFA in creative writing from Columbia College Chicago. Naslund assists with organizing the Story Week Festival of Writers each year, and is also involved in the production of the Fiction Writing Department's annual student literary magazine, Hair Trigger, and is Associate Editor of Fictionary. She has published articles in The International Dictionary of Historic Places and fiction in Emergence III. She is the former cocreator and coeditor of Pigeon magazine. Photo: Jessica Tierney


Dan Prazer is the Assistant Artistic Director for Story Week 2009, his second year at that post. His creative nonfiction
has appeared in Fictionary, Hair Trigger 30, Reservoir, and flashquake.org; an excerpt of his novel in progress appeared in Open to Interpretation. He's the managing editor of the Spring/Summer 2009 issue of Fictionary, was an editor for Hair Trigger and The Story Week Reader, helped to launch the Publishing Lab's Web site at www.colum.edu/publishinglab, and has taught an outreach workshop for seniors. Before Columbia, he was a reporter for Ohio's Chillicothe Gazette, where he wrote about everything from presidential campaign stops to house fires. He lives in Chicago with his wife Ann. Photo: Jessica Tierney


Deborah Roberts is the Assistant to the Chair, Randy Albers, of the Fiction Writing Department of Columbia College Chicago. She received her MA in English literature from the University of Cincinnati in 1980. Roberts began working in Columbia's Fiction Writing Department in 1988 as secretary to John Schultz. She assists in the publication of Hair Trigger and has helped to organize the Story Week Festival of Writers since its inception. Photo: Jessica Tierney




Amanda E. Snyder, Assistant Artistic Director of Story Week for the fourth year, is a regular contributor to the Chicago Tribune's entertainment Web site, Metromix.com, and an adjunct writing teacher in the Columbia College English Department's First Year Writing Program. Her writing has appeared in No Touching Magazine, Red Eye, Pigeon, Hair Trigger 22, WBEZ-FM's Eight Forty-Eight, and elsewhere. She is the cofounder and a regular performer at the monthly reading series, RUI: Reading Under the Influence, and has also performed her writing at the 2nd Story Festival. Snyder holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia College, is a recipient of both the Getz Graduate Award and the Weisman Memorial Scholarship, and has held a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is excited to be spending the spring 2009 semester teaching English in southern Brazil. Photo: Kristie Kahns
 

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 Chicago 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