Rosamund Lannin reads and writes in Chicago. Her work has appeared in places like Strange Horizons, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Tor.com, and Vice. She's currently querying a novel about live action roleplaying and the nature of fantasy. If you're an...  read

Kelly Swails is a childless cat lady who works in academic publishing. She's published several short stories, novels, and comic books in the speculative fiction space and has also dipped her toes into the world of the personal essay. In...  read

Writer. Poet. Bicyclist. New Englander by Trade. Sondra Morin is an alumna of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and the Juniper Writing Institute. She is published in The Rumpus, vis a tergo, SIMILAR : PEAKS ::, Curbside Splendor, among others, and...  read

Lauren Emily Whalen is the author of I Heart Jennifer Coolidge: A Celebration of Your Favorite Pop Culture Icon, as well as the novels Tomorrow & Tomorrow (a scary-sexy Macbeth retelling co-written with Lillah Lawson), Take Her Down, Two Winters...  read

Edward McClelland is a contributing editor at Chicago magazine and the author of How to Speak Midwestern. He will be reading from his new book Chorus of the Union: How Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas Set Aside Their Rivalry to...  read

C. Russell Price is a Lambda Fellow, Ragdale Fellow, Windy City Times 30 Under 30 honoree, and a two-time Lit City Top 50 Writers of Chicago honoree. They are the author of Tonight, We Fuck the Trailer Park Out of...  read

James Kennedy is the author of the horror thriller Bride of the Tornado, which the Chicago Tribune named as one of their "Top 10 Books of 2023." James's previous books include the sci-fi novel Dare To Know, dubbed by the...  read

Kate Lechler is a queer writer, editor, and educator who recently moved to Chicago from the otherworldly town of Oxford, Mississippi. They have too many hobbies, among them cooking, karaoke, and foraging for mushrooms, and will talk to you at...  read

Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a nonprofit publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, and a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a team of poets and their typewriters who compose commissioned poetry on...  read

Chris Sweet has worked on the overnight cleanup crew at Inland Cold Storage - restacking fallen pallets of canned goods and swabbing up the pasta sauce; sold Fuller Brush door to door; sorted mail; operated an adding machine as an...  read