Every year the Cliff Dwellers (a private arts club in Chicago) invites girls from nearby public high schools and their teachers to join them for a special lunch to celebrate International Women’s Day. Last year the keynote speaker for the event was Toni Preckwinkle, one of the two African American women in the upcoming run-off […]

I posted about the movie “Green Book” awhile back. I liked the movie then, and I like it now. Whatever you think about the movie, I think there is one inarguably good thing about it: A ton of people who knew nothing about the Green Book before the movie now do know about it. I’m […]

A pair of writers from the memoir-writing classes I lead for The Village Chicago appeared on the national NBC Nightly News broadcast last weekend. Bruce and Anne Hunt started taking memoir-writing classes with me years ago, and now they’re taking singing lessons, too. My friend Colleen and I went to their choir’s holiday concert in December, […]

I don’t give the memoir writers in my classes assignments over the break. Many of them write on their own during time off, though, and when they do, I encourage them to bring their new essays to read aloud in class when we reconvene. All five of my classes are back in session after winter […]

I am pleased to introduce Iliana Genkova as a guest blogger today. Born and raised in Bulgaria, Iliana completed a degree in the sciences there and came to America to work with weather satellites. From there she went on to live and work around the world — UK, the Netherlands, Australia— before settling in Chicago, […]