While the prerecorded shows on YouTube have been fun, they are quite a bit more work than our live show, both for the cohosts and the readers, and they're no replacement for being together with all our friends and fans in the upstairs lounge at Hopleaf. So, sadly, until we can safely do the show in person again, Tuesday Funk is going on hiatus.

Hopefully that day will come soon. In the meantime, please be safe, wear a mask, and vote.

Tuesday Funk on the first of September once again happened on our YouTube page, but that didn't slow down our readers. Maggie Kast started us off with a portion of a novella in her new book, Side By Side But Never Face To Face. Next Veronica Arreola read an essay about what she means when she says she's a "professional feminist." Then Keidra Chaney shared a story about nurturing and hate in gardening.

After a brief intermission, Kathleen Rooney read an excerpt of her new novel, Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey. Rayshauna Gray closed out our evening with an essay about the history of the Roseland neighborhood and her family's history in it. You can watch the whole show below.

Tuesday Funk is going to go on temporary hiatus, so this is the last show for a little while. Keep an eye on this site and follow us on Twitter and Facebook to be alerted as to when your favorite eclectic monthly reading series will return.

Join us tonight at 7:30pm on YouTube Live for readings by Kathleen Rooney, Veronica Arreola, Rayshauna Gray, Keidra Chaney and Maggie Kast!

Rayshauna Gray enjoys reading, writing, and doing fun stuff with her friends. She's jazzed about her work with Harvard, the Cambridge Historical Society, Boston Book Festival, and the National Organization for Women's legislative task force. When she's not chronicling life lessons, she's petting dogs and trying to get birds to come home with her.

Please join Rayshauna and our other amazing readers on Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2020, on the Tuesday Funk YouTube channel. The show starts at 7:30 pm. It's free, and 21-and-over. RSVP on Facebook, and hope to see you there!.

Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a nonprofit publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, as well as a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a collective of poets and their typewriters who compose commissioned poems on demand. Her most recent books include the novel Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk (St. Martin's Press, 2017) and The Listening Room: A Novel of Georgette and Loulou Magritte (Spork Press, 2018). Her reviews and criticism appear in the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Chicago magazine, and her World War I novel Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey has just been released by Penguin and is purchasable here.

Please join Kathleen and our other amazing readers on Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2020, on the Tuesday Funk YouTube channel. The show starts at 7:30. It's free, and 21-and-over. RSVP on Facebook, and hope to see you there!.

Veronica I. Arreola is a professional feminist, writer, and soccer mom. Veronica's writing has been featured in USA Today, New York Times, as well as Bitch Media where she serves on the board of directors. Veronica's pandemic project was to jump into the podcast pool with "The Feminist Agenda" where she talks to other professional feminists about their work and how they stay organized. By day she works on diversity in science issues at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Veronica is the founder of the 50th Ward Action Network, a collective of politically-minded neighbors on the far northside of Chicago where she lives with her husband and their high school senior (!!). You can find her on Twitter & Instagram at @veronicaeye.

Please join Veronica and our other amazing readers on Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2020, on the Tuesday Funk YouTube channel. The show starts at 7:30. It's free, and 21-and-over. RSVP on Facebook, and hope to see you there!.

Maggie Kast is the author of The Crack Between the Worlds: a dancer's memoir of loss, faith and family (Wipf and Stock, 2009) and a novel, A Free, Unsullied Land (Fomite Press, 2015). Side by Side but Never Face to Face, a novella plus stories, was published by Orison Press in June 2020. She has published stories in The Sun, Nimrod, Carve, Rosebud and others, and her essays have appeared in America, Image, Writer's Chronicle, Fiction Writer's Review, The Orison Anthology of Spiritual Writing, and elsewhere. She won a Literary Award from the Illinois Arts Council and a prize in the Hackney Literary Contests. Two pieces were nominated for Pushcarts.

Please join Maggie and our other amazing readers on Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2020, on the Tuesday Funk YouTube channel. The show starts at 7:30. It's free, and 21-and-over. RSVP on Facebook, and hope to see you there!.

Keidra Chaney is a writer, editor, blogger and digital strategist, though she's not sure what that actually means these days. She has been published in Chicago Sun-Times, Time Out Chicago, Bitch Media, Paste, and a bunch of publications that no longer exist. She is the co-founder and publisher of pop culture website The Learned Fangirl and she's also the bass player in a band called Sole Heiress though they haven't done anything in over a year.

Please join Keidra and our other amazing readers on Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2020, on the Tuesday Funk YouTube channel. The show starts at 7:30. It's free, and 21-and-over. RSVP on Facebook, and hope to see you there!.

Your favorite eclectic monthly reading series helps you ease into autumn with its next show on Tuesday, Sept. 1! Join us "live" on the Tuesday Funk YouTube channel: youtube.com/TuesdayFunk for readings by Kathleen Rooney, Veronica Arreola, Rayshauna Gray, Keidra Chaney and Maggie Kast. The show will start at 7:30pm, just like we do at the Hopleaf, but you can bring your under-21 friends!

RSVP on Facebook, and hope to see you there! (In the live chat, anyway.)

The August "Quarantuesday Funk" went very well. Tracy Harford-Porter kicked things off with an excerpt of a novel she's been working on, then Kyle Thiessen read a portion of a fake novelization of a movie that doesn't exist. Next, Erin Watson shared several poems.

We took a moment to collect ourselves, then Jocelyn Geboy read an essay about death, grief and community. Last but not least, Norman Doucet talked about George Floyd, systemic racism and racial identity.

It was a classic Tuesday Funk show, funny, strange, poignant and serious in turns. The only difference being it was on YouTube Live. If you missed it, you can still watch the episode in full below, or hop over to YouTube to peep at the chat.

We hope you'll join us for the next edition of Tuesday Funk on Tuesday, Sept. 1 at 7:30pm, once again on YouTube Live. We'll be featuring readings by Maggie Kast, Kathleen Rooney, Veronica Arreola, Keidra Chaney and Rayshauna Gray. Hope to see you there!