{SALON CHICAGO}

Salon Chicago offers the Windy City's tastiest prose each month. Drop on by for a sample and hear what's going on.

{ON TAP TO READ}

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{SALON CHICAGO BLOG}

Center Stage

Read this oldie but a goodie review about Sunday Salon Chicago's opening on Center Stage Chicago.

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{SALON CHICAGO RECENT WRITERS}

Sharon Solwitz’s

Sharon Solwitz's story collection Blood and Milk (Sarabande, 1996) received the 1997 Carl Sandberg award and the Midland Author's prize for adult fiction, and was a finalist for the 1997 National Jewish Book Award. Her stories have been published widely; their awards include the Pushcart, the Nelson Algren and the Katherine Ann Porter. Her novel Bloody Mary (Sarabande, Inc.) came out in 2003. She teaches at Purdue University in W. Lafayette, and lives in Chicago, where she and her husband poet Barry Silesky edit Another Chicago Magazine.

Jane Hertenstein

Jane Hertenstein lives in Chicago in the Uptown neighborhood and has been involved in community building for the past twenty-five years. Jane has published three books: A young adult novel titled Beyond Paradise; Home is Where We Live, a picture book about life at a homeless shelter as seen through the eyes of a young girl; and Orphan Girl, the story of a bag lady Jane met at the shelter. Orphan Girl was highly praised in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Book Section as well as in other national review journals.

Mickey Hess

Mickey Hess taught part-time for several universities in Kentucky and Indiana before moving to his current position as Assistant Professor of English at Rider University. His books include Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Music, Movement, and Culture (Greenwood, 2007), and Is Hip Hop Dead? The Past, Present, and Future of America's Most Wanted Music (Praeger, 2007). His writing has appeared in Ninth Letter, Punk Planet, and Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: Best of McSweeney's Humor Category. He lives in Philadelphia.

Allison Amend

Allison Amend was born in Chicago on a day when the Cubs beat the Mets 2-0. She attended Stanford University and holds an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her work has received awards from and appeared in One Story, Black Warrior Review, StoryQuarterly, Bellevue Literary Review, the Atlantic Monthly, Prairie Schooner and Other Voices, among other publications. Her debut short story collection, Things That Pass for Love, was published in October 2008 by OV Books. Visit her on the web at  www.allisonamend.com.

Allyson Walters

Allyson Walters is a Chicagoan and refugee of the research sciences,which she left behind two years ago to focus on the writing she always loved. Her next stop is the School of the Art Institute, where she will begin a graduate program in writing this fall. She is currently working on her first novel, as well as a collection of short stories based on Irish and British folklore.

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{ABOUT SALON CHICAGO}

Melanie Pappadis received her MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. Her fiction was recently nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Prize. Her work has received a variety of mentions including winner of The New School's Fiction Chapbook Competition, finalist in Sarabande Books' Mary McCarthy Prize in Fiction, and one of twenty-five winners in Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction Contest. She has published a book of non-fiction, Limbu Folklore, a collection of translated oral folklore and photographs from her field research in Nepal. She currently lives with her husband and son in Chicago where she teaches creative writing and is working on a collection of stories along with her second novel. Melanie read at the September 2002 New York Salon. She started up the Chicago series in 2006.

Mike Zapata is a writer and educator living in Chicago. He is co-founder, co-publisher, and fiction editor for MAKE: A Chicago Literary Magazine. He is a graduate of the Second City Writer's Training Program, where he was co-founder of the sketch comedy troupe Grandma June's Sewing Circle. He has produced and written for revues at Second City's Donny's Skybox, The Viaduct, The Trap Door Theater, and the Apollo Theater Chicago, and is also co-creator, co-writer of a television pilot entitled Settling Up. He also writes fiction and is currently working on a collection of stories based in Chicago.