Essay Fiesta

Put on your Hemingway-shaped party hat and come on out to The Book Cellar at 7:00 pm on Monday, July 21st. Hosts Karen Shimmin and Willy Nast will be joined by a lineup so good, you’ll wish you could sit in a boat with them for days, trying to catch a giant fish.

Scott Smith grew up in the suburbs of Chicago before moving into the city proper in 1998. He’s spent the years since drinking scotch and doing a bunch of things online for magazines and brands. He lives on the South Side with his wife and daughter and can be found on Twitter at @ourmaninchicago where he is probably grumpy about something or other.

Debbi Welch has told her stories at a number of Chicago storytelling venues, including This Much is True, Story Sessions, Story Lab, Here’s The Story, Serving the Sentence and Is This a Thing? and she recently performed at Seattle’s Rain City Slam. An advocate for young writers and performers, she’s currently president of the board of Young Chicago Authors – an organization that transforms the lives of young people by cultivating their voices through writing, publication and performance education.

Sarah Michael Hollenbeck has published personal essays in The CAF Review, TriQuarterly, and the In Our Words blog. She was awarded the Grand Prize in the 2013 Dogwood Literary Contest for an essay that was later nominated for a Pushcart. She is the Senior Editor of Story Club Magazine and has performed at Fillet of Solo, Guts & Glory, Story Sessions, and The Bodies of Work Festival, among other live lit shows. Sarah is currently writing and editing a collection of essays that explores the experiences of women living with invisible and visible disabilities. But she’s been a little distracted from her writing recently, because last week she bought the legendary bookstore Women & Children First. Her first order of business as the new co-owner will be to install a dunk tank for misogynists and customers who pay with Amazon credit cards. Kidding! Maybe.

Born and raised in St. Paul, MN, Ozzie Totten has been running around Chicago for the past eight years. He’s a proud company member at 2nd Story, where he serves as the manager of their acclaimed podcast, and sometimes wears the hat of producer or director or storyteller. A proud graduate of Loyola University Chicago, Ozzie has lived in Rogers Park, Logan Square, Uptown, Wrigleyville, and now, all too stereotypically, in the heart of Boystown. Somebody in the audience should offer him a salary and benefits.

Britt Julious is a journalist and essayist born and bred in Chicago. In 2012, the Chicago Reader named her the “Best Local Writer Who Excels at Social Media.” Since then, she’s written for publications such as WBEZ, The FADER, Vice, and Pitchfork. This summer, she founded Inland, a publication of ideas about post-factory Midwestern culture. She believes tears are underrated.