Category Archives: Authors

Free Fall | Nathalie Lagerfeld

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I wasn’t supposed to be in California that summer. I’m the kind of person who immediately forgets all plans I don’t write down. By my junior year of college I had come to rely on a day planner to keep track of every important date. Birthdays, travel plans, summer program application deadlines—the little blue booklet organized them all. The scribbles inside it were especially important to me during my spring semester abroad in Paris. I was thousands of miles away […]

Categories: Essay Fiesta, Nathalie Lagerfeld

The Climb | Katie Prout

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Over the last year, the men I’ve dated with anything resembling seriousness have all been twice my age, which makes them older than my father. They are all smart, complicated, and notable in their field. Shortly after this year’s New Years, when I began seeing the most recent man, a woman I hardly knew told him to beware of my vagina. She called me a “climber,” and said I was trying to fuck my way up the artistic and social […]

Categories: Katie Prout, Story Club North Side

Moraine Hills State Park | Gayle Ann Weinstein

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At twenty-three I was a widow with a three-year-old son. When my son was about eight, I got a teaching job in Grayslake and we moved to Libertyville, two towns I had never heard of until then. Acting as both mother and father was no easy task and sometimes I made mistakes. Most of my mistakes were unimportant and are long gone from memory, but the incident I tell here is one that will stay with me as long as […]

Categories: Gayle Ann Weinstein, Story Club North Side

Nice | Megan Stielstra

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“Nice” comes to us from Megan Stielstra’s new book Once I was Cool, published by Curbside Splendor and on sale now on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Powell’s. Picture it: 1998, I’m 23 years old and sitting on the front couch at Tuman’s, which back then was called The Alcohol Abuse Center. Remember the Alcohol Abuse Center? Right?! The most miserable, disgraceful, health-code violating awesome fucking dive bar in Chicago? Seriously. Fireside Bowl, Liar’s Club, the Mutiny on Western where I once saw a […]

Categories: Megan Stielstra, Write Club

It’s Hard to be Black when Everyone Thinks You’re Indian | PJ Andrews

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It’s hard to be black when you’re ethnically ambiguous. But what’s not is to hear the questions “What are you?” or “Where are you from” a lot. For me, the answer’s kind of complicated. It goes a little something like this: So, my dad’s from Cape Verde, that’s a country in Africa. But he grew up in Cape Cod, that’s in Massachusetts. My mom is Jewish, she’s from New Jersey. She didn’t like being a Jew from New Jersey so […]

Categories: PJ Andrews, Speakeasy DC