Cate Brecht is a recovering Floridian who’s been calling Chicago home for over a decade. She’s worked plenty of odd jobs to make rent and now finds herself in insurance—which pays the mortgage. She’s shared stories about her wonderfully messy...  read

Cean Gamalinda is a Rogers Park Swagapino Taurus with suburban characteristics. They write poetry and emails. Please join Cean and our other excellent readers on Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025 in the upstairs bar at Hopleaf. Doors open at 7pm, and...  read

Howard Friedman is a writer living in Chicago. He has had poetry published in Pioneertown, Catch, Cellar Door, Combat!, Roots and Reverence, The Desperate Reader and Dissent: An Anthology To End War And Capitalism. He currently works as a Chicago...  read

Susan Buttenwieser is the author of Junction of Earth and Sky, her debut novel, which was just published, and the short story collection, We Were Lucky With the Rain. Her writing has appeared in literary magazines as well as Women's...  read

eri lucia kapling (it/its) is a transfeminine writer, deer, reluctant bartender, and mother in Chicago. Its poems and short stories have been published in New Session and The Pill, and in the acclaimed zines THIS DISH CANNOT BE FOUND and...  read

Dan Baron is a storyteller and a communications professional who writes about social issues for nonprofits, universities, and other organizations. He has an identical twin, but for some reason insists that there’s nobody like him. He’s also a dad, a...  read

Courtney Justus was born in Houston, Texas, raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina and now lives in Chicago. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she received the Jason Alexander Bradford Award. She...  read

Scott Smith works in local government and lives on the South Side with his wife and daughter. He hosts and produces the live lit show The Frunchroom, featuring stories of, by, and about the many neighborhoods, viewpoints, and people on...  read

Elizabeth Joy Levinson is an accidental high school biology teacher in Chicago. She is supposed to be an English teacher, but if she's being honest, she's just as happy discussing insects as she is poetry. Her work has appeared in...  read

Eiren Caffal is a writer and musician. Her work on loss, oceans, and extinction has appeared in Orion, Guernica, The LA Review of Books, Al Jazeera, and the anthology Elementals. She has received a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, a...  read