Monday is Presidents’ Day. Presidents’ Day reminds us of Abraham Lincoln, who was pretty good at writing things down and reading them in front of people. If you join us at the The Book Cellar (in LINCOLN Square) on Monday, February 16th at 7pm, you’ll be treated to this lineup of humans who are also pretty good at writing things down and reading them in front of people:
Stephanie Douglass is a performer, farmer, writer, and trainer. She co-hosts This much Is True, tells stories and plays on stages all over Chicago, and is a Moth GrandSLAM Champion. She is a co-founder of the New York theatre company The T.E.A.M, was the head writer for OLN’s “Outside Magazine’s Ultimate Top Ten,” and is currently a staff writer for The Paper Machete. This spring, she had the pleasure of co-producing The 25th Annual Chicago’s Biggest Liar Contest. When not onstage, she serves as the Farm Enterprise Director and trains people with barriers to employment for Growing Home, and develops sustainable programming for rural women in Uganda.
Peggy Shinner is the author of You Feel So Mortal / Essays on the Body (University of Chicago Press, April 2014). Her work has appeared in BOMB, Salon, The Southern Review, Colorado Review, TriQuarterly, Bloom, and other publications. Newcity, Chicago’s cultural weekly, named her one of the Lit 50 2014: Who Really Books in Chicago, and she has been awarded two Illinois Arts Council Fellowships and a fellowship at Ausable Press. Currently, she teaches in the MFA program at Northwestern University. As a trained martial artist, she taught Seido karate for seventeen years.
Jamie Black is an actor and writer in Chicago. Sometimes he’s a comedian…(you have to read this next part like Hannibal Lector) but not today. He does lots of stuff in theater, has a solo show, and does some things on YouTube.
Rebecca Stevens is a writer, designer and producer. She is a proud member of the dilettantes, a Chicago-based art and design company. Her games, designs and experiences have been featured at the Illinois Humanities Council, the Chicago Public LIbrary, 500 Clown, Mishkan Chicago, and she is the current artist in residence at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art. She has written a play about Russian spies, several essays on race and representation on stage and is currently at work on a novel about her family’s illustrious gin running business during Prohibition. She’s from Boston and thinks that’s superior to wherever you are from.
Angela Benander wrote her first story titled Little Ed Under the Bed in Kindergarten and has been writing in one form or another ever since. Angela worked for nearly 10 years on Capitol Hill as a policy aide and press secretary for two Democratic senators. In 2007, she retired from politics and moved to Chicago in an attempt to become a normal human being. She is the co-producer of That’s All She Wrote, a monthly Live Lit Series in West Town and is currently working on a novel.
As always, we’ll be collecting donations for 826CHI.
Essay Fiesta 