After missing two months due to the pandemic, Tuesday Funk is back! Based on fan feedback, we're going to do a pre-recorded YouTube Live show at our usual time -- Tuesday, June 2 at 7:30pm -- on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/TuesdayFunk
Please join us to hear 7-10 minute readings by Elizabeth Gomez, James Gordon, Kenji Kuramitsu, Sahar Mustafah and Mare Swallow. You'll be able to chat with hosts Eden Robins and Andrew Huff, as well as the readers, during the show. Hope you can join in! RSVP on Facebook.
Kenji Kuramitsu is a writer, chaplain, and clinical social worker living in Chicago. Kenji holds graduate degrees from the University of Chicago and McCormick Theological Seminary. His writing has appeared in
Sojourners,
Slant'd and
Inheritance magazines, and his creative nonfiction was nominated for a 2019 Pushcart Prize by the Asian American Writers' Workshop. He is on social media @afreshmind.
James Gordon is an acclaimed actor, champion storyteller, and international award winning author and poet. He can be seen in several commercials, films, plays, and episodics. James is a member and leader of the Talent Conglomerate known as the Almighty Elite Act Pack. Follow him on Twitter at
gr8estpoetalive,
James Gordon on Facebook, and
Greatest Poet Alive on Instagram.
Mare Swallow is a writer and storyteller whose work has appeared in The Chicago Neighborhood Guide, Hypertext Magazine, and Smith Magazine's "It All Changed in an Instant." She is a public speaking coach by day, and she teaches Business and Professional Speaking at Loyola University. And she misses seeing all of you live at the Hopleaf. Find her at
mariannaswallow.com.
Elizabeth Gomez is a Chicago based comedian, writer, and storyteller. She established the city's first all female roller derby league,
The Windy City Rollers, in 2004. She is the founding writer of a writing collective called
Drinkers with Writing Problems and editor at
Heauxs Magazine (a magazine where smart people talk about dumb things), spends her days working for an Alderman on Chicago's city council, and spends her nights trying to learn all the dance moves from Magic Mike. You can learn more about her ridiculousness at
thatelizabethgomez.com.
Sahar Mustafah is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, an inheritance she explores in her fiction. Her first novel
The Beauty of Your Face is out now from W.W. Norton and was named a
New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice; her short story collection
Code of the West was the winner of the 2016 Willow Books Fiction Award. Her stories have earned a Distinguished Story citation from
Best American Short Stories 2016, First Place in Fiction from the Guild Literary Complex of Chicago, and three Pushcart Prize nominations, among other honors. Mustafah earned her MFA from Columbia College Chicago where she was the recipient of the David Friedman Award for Best Fiction. She writes and teaches outside of Chicago.
