Click here to register

The crowded room inside an author's head can be a cacophony of voices. Three accomplished and award-winning writers will discuss how they craft narrative voice within a multitude of forms (novella, short story, poem, essay) and what inspires their work. Join us for this conversation in the beautiful Bookends & Beginnings courtyard. This special event will include a book raffle! Alex, Jeremy, and Kate have each selected a favorite title, and three lucky attendees will go home with a new book in hand. We will also have work from all three authors available for sale and signing.

Good things happen in threes!

ALEX POPPE is the author of the novella Duende and three other books: Jinwar and Other Stories, which was an International Book Awards finalist; Moxie, and Girl, World, which was named a 35 over 35 Debut Book Award winner, First Horizon Award finalist, Montaigne Medal finalist, shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Awards Grand Price and received an Honorable Mention in General Fiction. In 2021, she was an artist-in-residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, where she began writing a memoir about her time working in Iraq. Poppe served as an academic writing lecturer at the American University of Iraq in Sulaimani, and as a teacher trainer for Iraq’s Ministry of Higher Education. She now lives in Chicago and is a staff writer for the Preemptive Love Coalition, a non-governmental organization devoted to stopping the spread of violence. 

JEREMY T. WILSON is the author of the short story collection Adult Teeth. He is a former winner of the Chicago Tribune’s Nelson Algren Award for short fiction, and his stories have appeared in literary magazines such as The Carolina Quarterly, The Florida Review, Hobart, The Masters Review, Sonora Review, Third Coast and other publications. He holds an MFA from Northwestern University and teaches creative writing at The Chicago High School for the Arts. He lives in Evanston, Illinois with his wife and daughter.

KATE WISEL is the author of Driving in Cars with Homeless Men, winner of the 2019 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, selected by Min Jin Lee. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in publications that include Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast, Tin House online, Los Angeles Review, New Ohio Review, Adroit Journal, DIAGRAM, The Best Small Fictions 2019, Redivider (as winner of the Beacon Street Prize), W.W. Norton’s Flash Fiction America and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the “Poetry on the T” prize and the Marcia Keach Prize. She was a Carol Houck fiction fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and awarded scholarships at The Wesleyan Writer’s Conference, the Squaw Valley Writer’s Workshop, the Juniper Institute, Writing x Writer’s at Tomales Bay and Methow Valley and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago where she teaches at Columbia College Chicago and Loyola University.