Before her two children re-choreographed her life, Keesha Beckford was a professional dancer who performed in the U.S. and in Europe. Today she teaches modern and jazz dance in the Chicago area. She is also the human cyclone behind the...  read

Mark Turcotte (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) is author of four poetry collections, including The Feathered Heart and Exploding Chippewas. His poems and stories have appeared in POETRY, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Sentence, Hunger Mountain, The Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner and other literary...  read

Paul McComas is an award-winning author (five critically acclaimed books, plus two in process), actor, educator, filmmaker and musician, and a progressive activist who's been honored by his home state of Wisconsin, the Mental Health Association, and the Rape, Abuse...  read

Originally from Alaska, Noël Jones is a writer and former member of the 2000 National Poetry Slam Champion Team NYC-Urbana, featured in The New York Times and on NPR's "Infinite Mind," as well as at the South by Southwest Music...  read

Lori Rader-Day's debut mystery, The Black Hour (Seventh Street Books, 2014), received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal. Her short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Time Out Chicago, Good Housekeeping, and others. Her next...  read

Dmitry Samarov was born in Moscow, USSR in 1970. He immigrated to the US with his family in 1978. He got in trouble in 1st grade for doodling on his Lenin Red Star pin and hasn't stopped doodling since. After...  read

Anne Holub thoroughly dismayed her parents by majoring in English and then following that degree up with an MA and an MFA in poetry. Her day job is pretty boring, but she has a not-so-secret second life as the music...  read

Scott Smith is a digital strategist and an analog opportunist. A child of the Chicago suburbs, he cites his years attending college in Ohio as his most formative, and his years since, living in Chicago's city proper, as his most...  read

Ryan DiGiorgi makes things for the internet. He spends most of his time trying to convince large companies to approve his robot jokes. He also writes fiction, edits comedy videos, and eats at Chipotle. Please join Ryan and all our...  read

Jasmine Davila is pleased to return to the Hopleaf and Tuesday Funk. She has read in venues small and medium sized for Solo in the 2nd City, 20x2 Chicago, That's All She Wrote Chicago, and Miss Spoken. Please feel free...  read