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Write Club

ABOUT 

  • ABOUT Ian Belknap

    Ian Belknap is a Chicago writer/performer and founder/curator/host of WRITE CLUB, the nation’s premiere competitive philanthropic readings series. His work has been featured in such live lit shows as This Much is True, Tuesday Funk, Stories at the Store, Here’s the Story, Story Club Chicago, 2nd Story, Essay Fiesta, and the Rhino Theater Festival. Ian has been a presenter and panelist at TEDx Greenville, Arts & Business Council of Chicago, League of Chicago Theatres, Printers’ Row Book Fair, and Chicago Writers’ Conference. Profile

  • ABOUT David Issacson

    David Isaacson is a founding member of Theater Oobleck, for which he has written fifteen plays and appeared in over thirty. His play Letter Purloined was just published by Hope and Nonthings in an anthology titled More If You’ve Got It. His work has also been published by The Louisville Review and has been featured on Public Radio International’s This American Life. David has battled in three previous Write Clubs, defending Heart against Head, Dusk against Dawn, and Familiar against Strange.

    Profile

  • ABOUT Samantha Irby

    Samantha Irby is a Chicago writer and comedy juggernaut who makes jokes about marginally-attractive dudes and raging diarrhea on the internets at bitchesgottaeat.com. In addition to co-hosting The Sunday Night Sex Show, a sex-positive live lit show, she has performed at Essay Fiesta, Write Club, This Much is True, Grown Folks Stories, The Paper Machete, and Story Club, among others.

    Profile

  • ABOUT Whit Nelson

    Whit Nelson is a man who fixes things which are broken, and breaks things which work just fine. Someday he may see the futility in that, but not today. Careening head-first down the waterslide of life, he writes and acts, he programs computers to do things they would rather not, and is a kung-fu grandmaster of hyperbole. A scientist and a skeptic, he drew a great deal from his proud hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Recently he opened a homebrew supply store with his partner Jared, and teaches brewing classes weekly. He thinks that the most destructive force in human history is certainty.

    Profile

  • ABOUT Diana Slickman

    Diana Slickman has worked with a number of Chicago theatre companies as a performer, writer, producer, director, and administrator, sometimes all at the same time. She is an ensemble member of Theater Oobleck and has appeared in seven of their productions, most recently in Mickle Maher’s There Is a Happiness That Morning Is.

    Profile

  • ABOUT Megan Stielstra

    Megan Stielstra is the literary director of 2nd Story and co-editor of their forthcoming print anthology. She’s told stories for the Goodman, Steppenwolf, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Poetry Center, Neo-Futurarium, Victory Gardens, Theater on the Lake, and Chicago Public Radio, among others, and is a regular performer with 2nd Story, The Paper Machete, and Write Club.

    Profile

  • ABOUT Dana Norris

    Dana Norris is the founder and host of Story Club.  She once went on a lot of internet dates and she writes about those mistakes for the websites In Our Words and Role Reboot.  She has been published in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Tampa Review, and her stories have been featured on Vocalo.org (89.5 FM).  She performs around Chicago with Mortified, The Paper Machete, The Kates, Essay Fiesta, This Much is True, Write Club, Beast Women, and many others.  Dana is currently pursuing her MFA in creative nonfiction from Northwestern University.

    Profile
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Chicago has one of the most active and prolific “live lit” scenes in the country. Leading that vanguard is WRITE CLUB, the salty and subversive competitive reading series founded by noted monologist, former stand-up comedian, and everybody’s favorite curmudgeon Ian Belknap. Each 90-minute show consists of three “bouts” that pit two opposing writer/performers against each other to advocate on behalf of an assigned idea: think “Guts vs. Glory” or “Liberty vs. Death.” Combatants have seven minutes to make their case and the audience selects the winners. Join us for a special CHF evening of lively dialectics and raucous repartee. The gloves are off! (And stay tuned to CHF social media—Facebook and Twitter—in August for the chance to help choose the topics for the bouts.)

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