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 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 a chapter from his novel-in-progress, All the World Before Them, appeared in the last issue of F Magazine. Photo: ryan klos


Julia Borcherts is the Story Week assistant and an adjunct faculty member at Columbia College Chicago. She freelances as the stage listings manager for Metromix.com and is a frequent contributor to TimeOut Chicago, Red Eye, Not For Tourists Chicago, and other publications. Borcherts received her BA from Columbia where she is currently an MFA/MA candidate. She is the recipient of a CSPA first place award for Nonfiction Essay, was a recipient of the Follett Fellowship, two Schultz-Shiflett Awards, and a Getz Alternate Award. She is a co-founder of the Reading Under the Influence monthly performance series and has been a featured reader at the 2nd Story Festival, the Sexy Bald Men reading series, and other literary events. Photo: Jessica Tierney

Nicole Chakalis is the secretary of the Fiction Writing Department and an MFA candidate 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. She has been published in the Chicago Reader, the Chicago Journal, Hair Trigger 27, and Pigeon. PHOTO: NICOLE CHAKALIS

Sheryl Johnston, artistic director and    publicist of the Story Week Festival of Writers, has been involved with the festival for eleven 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, and others. Before attending Columbia, Johnston was an editorial writer at WLS-TV, a vice-president in 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 Writer's Conference 2007. She currently handles publicity and event management for authors and other clients involved with education, the arts, and entertainment.


Monique Lewis, president of the Fiction Writing Department Student Board, is an undergraduate in the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College. Though she has been writing since the third grade, it wasn't until after the birth of her son that she decided to follow her dream and become a writer. Monique is currently working on her novel and is in the process of creating an online literary magazine of short stories and poetry. Photo credit: Jessica Tierney



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 Department's annual student literary magazine, Hair Trigger. She has published articles in The International Dictionary of Historic Places and fiction in Emergence III. She is the former co-creator and co-editor of Pigeon magazine. Photo: Jessica Tierney

Daniel Prazer, assistant artistic director for Story Week, is an MFA candidate in the Columbia College Chicago Fiction Writing Department, where he's at work on his first novel. His creative nonfiction has appeared in Fictionary, Hair Trigger 30, the Story Week Reader (2006), Reservoir, and Bike Shorts. An excerpt of his novel-in-progress will appear in Open to Interpretation. At Columbia, he's been an editor for Hair Trigger and the Story Week Reader, tutored undergrads, launched the Publishing Lab's Web site, and 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 Randy Albers, chair 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 third year, is a regular contributor to the Chicago Tribune's entertainment Web site, Metromix.com and a teaching artist in the city of Chicago’s After School Matters program. Her writing has appeared in No Touching Magazine, Red Eye, Pigeon, Hair Trigger 22, on Chicago's National Public Radio station WBEZ, and elsewhere. She is the co-founder and a regular performer at the monthly reading series, RUI: Reading Under the Influence at Sheffield’s Beer & Wine Garden, and has 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.                 Photo: Kristie Kahns

Jessica Tierney, photographer for Story Week, is a senior BFA Fiction Writing student who will graduate from Columbia College this May. She assists international journalist and AIDS activist Michael McColly in the promotion of his memoir, and was an editorial intern in the summer of 2007 at Conscious Choice magazine. Her writing has been published in the Story Week Reader, NewCity, bookslut.com, Reservoir, and Conscious Choice. She loves photography, and her portraits can be seen throughout Columbia's Fiction Writing publications as well as author Web sites, book jackets, and Conscious Choice magazine. Tierney is vice president and co-founder of Creative Body, a student-run club dedicated to the exploration of creativity through bodywork and journaling, and she is the photo editor for Fictionary Magazine.

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, Punk Planet, and Playboy.com. He has written for the National Public Radio Program All Things Considered and is a contributor to the WBEZ radio program Eight-Forty-Eight. He is a fill-in host for the WBEZ 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 and Tales from the Dim Unknown. 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: Barry Breichesen