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 Each Other and Oh, You Thought This Was A Date?!: Apocalypse Poems. They are a poet-in-residence with the Chicago Poetry Center, a core faculty member for Story Studio, and an editor with The Anarchist Review of Books. They’re writing about a ghost cowboy and his ghost blue horse these days. Less honk, more tonk.

Please join Russell and our other amazing readers on Tuesday, July 2, 2024 in the upstairs bar at Hopleaf. Doors open at 7pm, and the show starts at 7:30. It's free, and 21-and-over. Please RSVP on Facebook.

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 Times Saturday Review as the "Best Sci-Fi Book of 2021," and the young adult fantasy The Order of Odd-Fish. James is also the founder of the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival, an annual video contest where kid filmmakers create short movies telling the entire stories of Newbery-winning books in about 90 seconds, screening in 10+ cities around the country for the past 13 years. He also hosts the "Secrets of Story" podcast with Matt Bird.

Please join James and our other amazing readers on Tuesday, July 2, 2024 in the upstairs bar at Hopleaf. Doors open at 7pm, and the show starts at 7:30. It's free, and 21-and-over. Please RSVP on Facebook.

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 length about bad TV or the best ways to deflesh scavenged bones. They write in a variety of genres but find themselves most at home in fantasy, partly because they are a witch who does actual magic. Their work has been published in Fireside, Podcastle, Shimmer, and the Deadlands, and they're currently revising a novella about a 19th century vampire-pirate who loves to fuck. Learn more at katelechler.com.

Please join Kate and our other amazing readers on Tuesday, July 2, 2024 in the upstairs bar at Hopleaf. Doors open at 7pm, and the show starts at 7:30. It's free, and 21-and-over. Please RSVP on Facebook.

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 demand. She is the author of the novels Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk and Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey, and her latest poetry collection Where Are the Snows, winner of the XJ Kennedy Prize, was released in Fall of 2022 by Texas Review Press. Her latest novel, From Dust to Stardust, came out in September 2023. She lives in Chicago and teaches at DePaul.

Please join Kathleen and our other amazing readers on Tuesday, July 2, 2024 in the upstairs bar at Hopleaf. Doors open at 7pm, and the show starts at 7:30. It's free, and 21-and-over. Please RSVP on Facebook.

The Fourth of July is on Thursday, so why not celebrate with live lit on Tuesday? Join us in the upstairs bar at Hopleaf for Tuesday Funk! We'll have readings by James Kennedy, Kate Lechler, Edward McClelland, C. Russell Price and Kathleen Rooney! There will be beer and other drinks! You can order food! It'll be great.

Admission to Tuesday Funk is always free, but you must be 21 to attend. Doors open at 7pm sharp (tables tend to fill up fast, so don't be late!) and the show will start at 7:30pm. Please RSVP on Facebook, and while you're there, go ahead like and follow us so you get our announcements in your news stream.

We had a standing-room-only crowd for the 148th edition of Tuesday Funk on June 4, 2024 — and no wonder, with Eden Robins making her final appearance as cohost. Plus we had a stacked lineup!

Chris Sweet started us off strong with a fun and funny essay about Bob Dylan and looking for love (or not). Next, Ryan P C Trimble told a hilarious tale about the first novel he ever wrote — as a teenager. Then read a cliffhanger of an excerpt from her novel Play the Fool that had us on the edge of our seats.

After the intermission, Eden read one obituary from her forthcoming second novel, Remember You Will Die, which is composed entirely of obituaries. And then she introduced the new cohost of Tuesday Funk, Erin J. Watson, who read the introduction of a zine she's working on about the North Carolina state toast — and then led us in said toast. We all had a great time.

Join us in the upstairs bar at Hopleaf on Tuesday, July 2, when Erin will make her debut as cohost with Andrew, and we'll have readings by Edward McClelland, Kathleen Rooney, James Kennedy, C. Russell Price, and Kate Lechler. Hope to see you there!

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 insurance underwriter; taught high school English and a little college composition; and retired after 34 years. He’s got two Masters degrees but never the Ph.D. - M.A. and M.S.J. He spends his time reading and scribbling and walking up and down on the Earth, advocating for this and that.

Please join Chris and our other amazing readers on Tuesday, June 4, 2024 in the upstairs bar at Hopleaf. Doors open at 7pm, and the show starts at 7:30. It's free, and 21-and-over. Please RSVP on Facebook.

Eden Robins has been a co-host of Tuesday Funk for, holy shit, TEN YEARS (minus a pandemic)?! This will be her last show as co-host. Her bio on the site is very outdated, she has suddenly realized. Her upcoming novel Remember You Will Die will be out on October 22 and has so far been called "poignant and bonkers," not to mention "a joyously enlivening masterpiece." Her first novel When Franny Stands Up, is also pretty good. She was a 2023 Illinois Arts Council Fellow in Literature as well as a 2024 nominee for Crossing Guard of the Year (which she lost). Even after she departs the hallowed halls of Hopleaf's upstairs bar, you can still find her at monkeythumbs.com as well as on Instagram and occasionally elsewhere @edenrobins.

Please join Eden and our other amazing readers on Tuesday, June 4, 2024 in the upstairs bar at Hopleaf. Doors open at 7pm, and the show starts at 7:30. It's free, and 21-and-over. Please RSVP on Facebook.

Ryan P. C. Trimble is a Chicago-based comic and writer. Originally from North Carolina by way of Long Island (or is it the other way around? There's actually no way to know!), he has made his mark in the Chicago comedy scene as part of VOILÀ: THE IMPROVISED MUSICAL and MALARKEY HOUSE TEAMS at iO, as well as FROGPROV, Chicago's only bilingual French-English improv team, at the Bughouse. His solo musical comedy has been seen on stages such as The Lincoln Lodge, the Annoyance, iO, and from the seat of his moped on the way to work. He is 8'10" tall. Find him on social media @Ryntern, but be nice because otherwise he WILL cry.

Please join Ryan and our other amazing readers on Tuesday, June 4, 2024 in the upstairs bar at Hopleaf. Doors open at 7pm, and the show starts at 7:30. It's free, and 21-and-over. Please RSVP on Facebook.

Lina Chern is the author of Play the Fool, winner of the 2024 Mary Higgins Clark Award and nominee for the 2024 Lefty and Anthony Awards. A sequel, Tricks of Fortune, is forthcoming in 2025. Other work has appeared in The Marlboro Review, The Bellingham Review, Rhino, The Collagist, and Black Fox Literary Magazine. Lina has also written trivia questions, word puzzles for a TV game show, paranormal romances, dialogue for your favorite comic book characters, award-winning movie reviews, and poems that have been published and read by up to dozens of people. Find her at www.linachern.com, on Instagram at @linachernwrites, or Twitter at @ChernLina.

Please join Lina and our other amazing readers on Tuesday, June 4, 2024 in the upstairs bar at Hopleaf. Doors open at 7pm, and the show starts at 7:30. It's free, and 21-and-over. Please RSVP on Facebook.