Diana Babineau is a senior editor and writer for Northwestern Magazine at Northwestern University. She studied poetry at Amherst College and went on to become a managing editor for The Common literary journal, Orion magazine and In These Times magazine....  read

Dayna Bateman is a recovering tech worker who received the 2025 American Literary Review Nonfiction Prize for her essay: Deracination, or How to Disappear. A Granta Memoir and Tin House Workshop alum, she was awarded a Storyknife Residency on the...  read

James Stewart III is a Black writer and arts organizer from Chicago. His debut novel, Defiant Acts (Acre Books, 2025), has been named one of Chicago Magazine’s “Summer’s Required Reading” picks and was recently featured in the Chicago Reader. He...  read

Eden Robins is the author of Remember You Will Die, which has been longlisted for the 2024 Massachusetts Book Awards, When Franny Stands Up, which was named a best book of 2022 by the Chicago Reader, and the forthcoming Don't...  read

As the weather warms up, so does Chicago's favorite eclectic monthly reading series! Join us in the upstairs lounge at Hopleaf on June 3 for readings by Diana Babineau, Dayna Bateman, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Eden Robins, and James Stewart III....  read

We had a wonderful turnout for Tuesday Funk on May 6. The upstairs lounge at Hopleaf was filled with folks ready for anything, and that's exactly what your favorite eclectic monthly reading series gave them! J. Rohr got things started...  read

Molly Sackler is a theatre brat. She grew up in a family that moved often for her father’s work as a playwright, director, and screenwriter. After college, she cut her teeth in NYC book publishing. At the Doubleday Crime Club,...  read

Bradley Morgan, a media arts professional in Chicago, is the author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival....  read

J. Rohr is a Chicago native with a taste for history and wandering the city at odd hours. He writes noir, horror, crime fiction, and scifi. His short fiction can be found in anthologies such as Sherlock Holmes: Further Adventures...  read