Through his now classic documentary investigations such as The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War, Errol Morris established himself as a filmmaker committed to seeking the truth, whether proving the innocence of a wrongfully committed man or interrogating Robert McNamara, the architect of the Vietnam War. Morris comes to CHF with his new book The Ashtray, inspired by a philosophical debate over the nature of reality, to share his worldview and urge all of us to establish and support the truth, especially at this moment when its very existence appears under siege in so many ways. No Morris fan should miss this event.

Preorder your copy of The Ashtray: (Or the Man Who Denied Reality) through the CHF box office and save 20%.

A book signing will follow this program.

Presenters:

Errol Morris is an award-winning director and author. His films include The Thin Blue Line; Gates of Heaven; Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control; The Fog of War, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for 2003; and most recently Wormwood, a six-part series for Netflix. He is the author of two New York Times best sellers--Believing is Seeing and Wildreness of Error--as well as The Ballad of Abu Ghraib (co-authored with Philip Gourevitch) and Hear, All Ye People; Hearken, O Earth.

Milos Stehlik is founder and artistic director of Facets Multimedia. Since 1975, he's been responsible for Facets' public programs including the Chicago International Children's Film Festival, as well as Facets Video, a pioneering catalog of over 65,000 films in digital formats.

The shortlist welcomes the swearing scientist Benjamin Bergen for an interactive conversation exploring profanity and graphic language-- what it is and what it does to our brains and bodies, and how it changes across cultures and over time. Needless to say, this event will be smart and funny as hell!

This program is made possible by the Sinha Creative Audiences Initative.

This event is free for Shortlist Members and requires an RSVP. The location is a secret and will be emailed to registered guests. We promise it is somewhere cool.

Presenters:

Benjamin K. Bergen is a Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego, where he directs the Language and Cognition Laboratory. His writing has appeared in Wired, Scientific American, Psychology Today, Salon, Time, the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, and the Huffington Post. He lives in San Diego.

Gillian Flynn's debut novel, the psychological thriller Sharp Objects (a forthcoming HBO series starring Amy Adams and Patricia Clarkson) was hailed by Stephen King as “an admirably nasty piece of work. . . the story just stayed there in my head, coiled and hissing, like a snake in a cave.” With her follow up novels, Dark Places, and Gone Girl, the international sensation that became a blockbuster film, Flynn established herself as a master of suspense. CHF's Marilynn Thoma Artistic Director Alison Cuddy joins Flynn for a conversation on her addictive thrillers, the lure of graphic narratives, and the complex and disturbing female protagonists she creates.

Preorder your copy of Sharp Objects through the CHF box office and save 20%.

A book signing will follow this program.

Presenters:

Gillian Flynn is the author of the runaway hit Gone Girl, an international sensation that has spent more than 95 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Her work has been published in 40 languages, and Gone Girl is a major motion picture from Twentieth Century-Fox. Flynn’s previous novels, Dark Places and Dagger Award winner Sharp Objects, were also New York Times bestsellers. A former writer and critic for Entertainment Weekly, she lives in Chicago with her husband and children.

Alison Cuddy is the Marilynn Thoma Artistic Director at CHF. Prior to the Festival, she spent more than 10 years at WBEZ, the NPR affiliate in Chicago. There she helped launch Odyssey, a nationally syndicated talk show of arts and ideas, hosted the newsmagazine Eight Forty-Eight and reported on arts and culture. She holds a Masters of Arts in English from the University of Pittsburgh, and a BA in Cinema Studies from Concordia University. She is on the advisory board of the Chicago Film Archive and The Moth, and hosts Strange Brews, a podcast about craft beer.

The extent of Russian hacking in the 2016 presidential election represents a brazen new threat to American democracy. As the story continues to unfold, we await the full revelations of this unprecedented act of political espionage and its aftermath. Investigative reporters Michael Isikoff and David Corn discuss all the details and more in their latest work, The Russian Roulette. Come for a full account of the controversies, the strange relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the history of Russian intelligence operations in the United States, and a discussion of how to prevent foreign powers from further influencing our democratic political processes.

Ticket purchase includes a copy of Russian Roulette. An option for 1 book + 2 tickets is available through the box office at (312) 605-8444.

A book signing will follow this program.

Presenters:

Michael Isikoff is an investigative journalist who has worked for the Washington Post, Newsweek and NBC News. He is the author of two New York Times bestsellers, Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story and Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War (co-written with David Corn). He is a frequent guest on MSNBC, CNN, and other TV talk shows. Isikoff is currently the chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo News.

David Corn is an American political journalist and author and the chief of the Washington bureau for Mother Jones. He has been Washington editor for The Nation and appeared regularly on FOX News, MSNBC, and NPR. He is the co-author of Hubris and The Russian Connection: The Inside Story of How Vladimir Putin Attacked a U.S. Election and Shaped the Trump Presidency with Michael Isikoff.

Newspapers and other media outlets have dramatically changed how they present the news, using graphics to drive stories, following a “mobile imperative,” and even developing experiments in augmented reality. Last year the New York Times issued a manifesto of sorts, arguing that the “report needs to become more visual.” So how are news consumers responding to—and benefiting from—these efforts? Join our panel of newsroom insiders, Steve Duenes, the assistant masthead editor at the New York Times, Lazaro Gamio, visuals editor at Axios, and Jonathon Berlin, who leads the data and graphics team at the Chicago Tribune, for an in-depth look at media’s brave new visual age.

Presenters:

Steve Duenes is an Assistant Masthead Editor at The New York Times, focusing on digital storytelling and visualization. He manages the Graphics Department, Interactive News Technology and Digital Design — three units that are responsible for all kinds of visual journalism, from reporting and design to interactive maps, data visualization, motion graphics and multimedia. Steve has been the Graphics Director at the Times since 2004, and he has been a contributor to The New Yorker magazine and a faculty member at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Lazaro Gamio is the Visuals Editor at Axios, where he oversees the production of charts, maps, interactive graphics and editorial illustrations. Before Axios, he worked at the Washington Post as an assignment editor, leading a group of visual journalists through pitching, developing and perfecting data visualization projects for both print and web.

Jonathon Berlin is the leader of the data and graphics team at the Chicago Tribune. The team tells data-centered stories in a visual format. He has been an adjunct at Northwestern and Columbia College where he taught infographics, data visualization and human-centered web design. Jonathon was president of the Society for News Design in 2012. He teaches the data visualization course at the annual Western Kentucky University's Mountain Workshops. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois journalism school and lives in Chicago with his wife and three kids.

Jackie Spinner is an associate professor of journalism at Columbia College Chicago, where she oversees the photojournalism program and advises the student veteran organization. She was a staff writer for The Washington Post for 14 years and covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She has contributed to the Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy magazine, Slate, Glamour and American Journalism Review. Spinner is the author of Tell Them I Didn’t Cry: A young journalist’s story of joy, loss and survival in Iraq and recently spent three months in Morocco producing her first documentary “Don’t Forget Me”.

In her illustrated memoir The Best We Could Do, Thi Bui explores her experience as the child of refugees from Vietnam, her family's harrowing escape after the fall of Saigon, her parents' childhoods during years of war and upheaval, and their efforts to raise a family in the United States. Bui, a former public school teacher who spent 12 years writing her book—including learning how to draw comics—explores how history and tradition, love and sacrifice, are at the center of her ideas about identity and home. Bui is joined by Patricia Nguyen for a conversation about the journey from refugee to citizen in a moment of travel bans and border walls.

Preorder your copy of The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir through the CHF box office and save 20%.

A book signing will follow this program.

Presenters:

Thi Bui was born in Vietnam and immigrated to the United States as a child. She studied art and law and thought about becoming a civil rights lawyer, but became a public school teacher instead. Bui lives in Berkeley, California, with her son, her husband, and her mother. The Best We Could Do is her debut graphic novel, and is a finalist for The National Book Critics Circle Award in the nonfiction category.

Patricia Nguyen is an artist, educator, and scholar born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Performance Studies at Northwestern University. Her research and performance work examines critical refugee studies, oral histories, inherited trauma, and memory in the Vietnamese diaspora. She has published work in Women Studies Quarterly, Harvard Kennedy School's Asian American Policy Review, and Women & Performance. She is also the founder and executive director of Axis Lab, an arts organization that focuses on inclusive and equitable development for the Southeast Asian community.

The century-old test Rorschach Test, a set of ten “inkblots” originally designed to understand the connection between how people see and what they think, has had a much more illustrious—and even controversial—history. It’s been used as a diagnostic tool for schizophrenia, a general personality test, and a cultural touchstone for any event that can elicit an array of responses. In his book The Inkblots, award-winning author Damion Searls sets out to discover the deeper history behind the images and their maker, including a surprising link between the rise of abstract art and psychiatry.
 
Preorder your copy of The Inkblots through the CHF box office and save 20%.  

A book signing will follow this program.

Presenters:

Damion Searls is the author of The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test, and The Power of Seeing, a history of the Rorschach test and the first-ever biography of its artist/psychiatrist creator. He has also written fiction, poetry, and essays for Harper's, The Paris Review, and Lapham's Quarterly, edited the one-volume abridgment of Thoreau's Journal for NYRB Classics, and translated more than thirty books by authors including Nietzsche, Proust, Rilke, and five Nobel Prize winners.

Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professor Steven Levitsky, argues that America is not immune from the authoritarian slide that has caused democracies in Europe and Latin America to collapse. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe and contemporary Venezuela to the American South during Jim Crow, Levitsky reveals the dangers facing our democracy—and how it can survive.

Preorder your copy of How Democracies Die from the CHF box office and save 20%.

A book signing will follow this program.

This program recognizes the generous support of the Robert R. McCormick Foundation to the Chicago Humanities Festival.

Presenters:

Steven Levitsky is a Professor of Government at Harvard University. Levitsky’s research focuses on Latin America and the developing world. He is the author of Competitive Authoritarianism and is the recipient of numerous teaching awards. Levitsky has written for Vox and The New York Times, among other publications.

For 16 years, the Bachelor franchise has been a mainstay in American TV viewers' lives. Each season the die-hard fans—dubbed "Bachelor Nation"—run fantasy leagues and throw viewing parties organized around the show. Whether producing a picture-perfect scene out of a fairy-tale romance or a close-up of Bachelor Arie Luyendyk Jr.’s graphic make-out sessions, the show's fans have managed to carve out a shared space for conversations about love, marriage, feminism, and more. Los Angeles Times reporter and Hollywood insider Amy Kaufman will speak with famed Bachelor recap writer Ali Barthwell to discuss the show and our collective attraction—love it or hate it—to reality television.

Preorder your copy of Bachelor Nation: Inside the World of America's Favorite Guilty Pleasure through the CHF box office and save 20%.

A book signing will follow this program.

Presenters:

Amy Kaufman is a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, where she has covered film, celebrity, and pop culture since 2009. On the beat, she reports from industry events like the Academy Awards, the Sundance Film Festival and the Grammys. In addition to profiling hundreds of stars -- Lady Gaga, Julia Roberts, Stevie Nicks, Jane Goodall -- she has broken major investigative stories on sexual harassment in Hollywood. Amy currently lives in Los Angeles with her Australian Shepherd, Riggins, and dreams of living in a Laurel Canyon tree house.

Ali Barthwell is a writer, performer, and steak lover from Chicago. Her work has been featured in Vulture, the Chicago Tribune and The A.V. Club. Ali attended Wellesley College, where she founded the Dead Serious ImprovFest. She has been a member of the Second City National Touring Company and the Cards Against Humanity Writers Room. Ali has appeared on Netflix’s Easy and Win It All, as well as Huffington Post’s "Here to Make Friends". Her favorite member of The Avengers is Captain America.

Despite the rise of sleek infographics, the massive quantities of data we generate can seem overwhelming and impenentrable. Stefanie Posavec is a designer and artist on a mission to make data more accessible and especially more human. Posavec has turned open datasets into interactive hopscotch games, converted air quality stats into wearable jewelry, and created a visualization of Jack Kerouac's On The Road. Posavec's approach-- often using analog means-- demonstrates how data is an expressive and tactile tool that can be used to derive meaning from our everyday lives. Come hear her talk about some of her warm and friendly data projects, and then contribute your own data points to an in-program workshop!

Presenters:

Stefanie Posavec is a designer and artist for whom data is her favoured material, with projects ranging from data visualization and information design to commissioned artworks. This work has been exhibited internationally at major galleries including MoMA (New York), the Science Gallery (Dublin), the V&A, and the Design Museum (London).

Odds are that as you read this, some kind of mobile device—and immediate access to a universe of visual content—is within reach. How did a simple tool to make calls on the go become what Steve Jobs called The One Device? Journalist Brian Merchant unlocks the creation and development of the iPhone, from origins in 19th century France and WWII America, to Apple's Cupertino headquarters, to a Foxconn plant in China, and a toxic pit of e-waste in Kenya. Merchant’s "secret history" is a firsthand look at how everything from touch screens, motion trackers, and even AI made its way into our pockets.

Preorder your copy of The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone through the CHF box office and save 20%.

A book signing will follow this program.

Presenters:

Brian Merchant is an editor at Motherboard, Vice’s science and technology outlet, and the founder and editor of Terraform, its online fiction outlet. His work has appeared in the Guardian, Slate, Vice, Salon, Fast Company, Discovery, GOOD, Paste, and elsewhere. To trace the story of the iPhone, he traveled to every inhabited continent, from the Bolivian highlands to the city of Shenzhen, using “the one device” to document the effort.

TV fans, take note. Even as technology threatens to send the television remote control to a seat-cushioned grave of obsolescence, media scholar Caetlin Benson-Allott's history--Remote Control--offers surprising facts from its past and future. Benson-Allott will discuss and explore how the often-misplaced handheld device radically altered viewing habits, family relationships, and the way we interact with visual culture, from the first wired radio remotes of the 1920s to the Apple Remote.

Preorder your copy of Remote Control  from the CHF box office and save 20%.

A book signing will follow this program.

Presenters:

Caetlin Benson-Allott is Provost’s Distinguished Associate Professor of English and Film and Media Studies at Georgetown University. She is a Contributing Editor and regular columnist at Film Quarterly and the Editor of Cinema Journal, a leading scholarly journal of film and media studies. Her latest book, Remote Control, was published in 2015 as part of the Object Lessons series and builds on her expertise in film and television history, home video technologies, and material culture.

In the hands of artist and journalist Molly Crabapple, drawing is a powerful and flexible political tool. She’s used it to document some of the most significant conflicts of the 21st century—the Syrian war, the Greek economic crisis, the Guantanamo Bay prison—and brought her anti-establishment eye and mindset to collaborations for publications ranging from Vice to The Baffler. Beyond conflict zones, Crabapple has sketched scenes from burlesque halls to the Occupy Wall Street encampment. She'll be joined by Runsy for a discussion of her work, including her upcoming book Brothers of the Gun, co-written with Marwan Hisham.

Preorder your copy of Drawing Blood through the CHF box office and save 20%.

A book signing will follow this program.

Presenters:

Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer in New York, whose work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Rubin Museum of Art and the New York Historical Society. Her most recent publications include her memoir Drawing Blood and Brothers of the Gun. She has received the Yale Poynter Fellowship, a Front Page Award, and a Gold Rush Award. She is also a contributing editor for VICE and has written for The New York Times, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, CNN and Newsweek.

Esperanza Rosas, better known as Runsy, is a Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist specializing in illustration. Through the use of different mediums, her work considers intersections of her identity, a Mexican-American woman growing up in the South Side of Chicago. A former University of Illinois at Chicago alumnus, Rosas received her BA in Criminology, Law, and Justice, with a minor in Art in 2016. Collaborations include Red Bull Sound Select and Frank151, with features in publications such as Remezcla, and speaking engagements at TEDx.

Visual communication may seem to require an advanced degree in art or technology. It turns out, though, that your favorite app shares many characteristics with the classic elements of Greek tragedy. Everything it takes to tell a good story—stirring emotion, building empathy, integrating form and language—is also key to good design. No one knows this better than designer and Cooper Hewitt curator Ellen Lupton. For CHF, Lupton will help us understand the psychology of visual perception from a narrative point of view.

Preorder your copy of Design is Storytelling through the CHF box office and save 20%.

A book signing will follow this program.

Presenters:

Ellen Lupton is Senior Curator of Contemporary Design at Cooper Hewitt, a renowned graphic designer, and director of the graphic design MFA program at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. She has authored numerous books on design processes, including the bestselling Thinking With Type, Design is Storytelling, Graphic Design Thinking, and Graphic Design: The New Basics. She received the AIGA gold medal for lifetime achievement in 2007.

Beloved Chicago vocalist Dee Alexander has won over audiences in both her hometown and around the world by combining a golden voice with technical acuity, and a musical range that moves from stunning interpretations of standards to spellbinding original compositions. For this evening with CHF, Alexander brings her magic to the Great American Songbook, celebrating the complex lyrics and enchanting melodies of some of our favorite shared songs. Join Alexander and her band for a musical adventure.

This program is generously underwritten by the Helen B. and Ira E. Graham Family.

Presenters:

Born on Chicago’s west side, Dee Alexander is one of Chicago’s most gifted and respected female vocalist/songwriters. Her talents span every music genre, yet her true heart and soul are experienced in her performance of Jazz music. Ms. Alexander has received numerous awards including the Chicagoan of the Year in Jazz award in 2008 and the 3Arts Award for Music in 2012. She also leads her own Dee Alexander Quartet and the Evolution Ensemble.

Ai Weiwei is one of the world's most celebrated artists. Famous for his work across multiple mediums (sculpture, installation, photography, performance, and architecture), he is equally recognized as one of today's most important activists—a role launched by his persecution at the hands of the Chinese government. Ai uses epically-proportioned works of art and endless selfies to call attention —in bold, graphic terms—to attacks on democracy, free speech, human rights abuses and more recently, the plight of refugees. Ai comes to Chicago (a "sanctuary city") to discuss his work documenting the global refugee crisis as elucidated in his new book Humanity and award-winning documentary Human Flow. New York Review of Books editor Ian Buruma (author of A Tokyo Romance) joins Ai for what's sure to be an unforgettable conversation about the vulnerability of humankind and the role of art in providing a voice and face for the voiceless.

Ticket purchase includes a copy of Humanity. An option for 1 book + 2 tickets is available through the box office at (312) 605-8444.

This event will feature open captions to increase access to program content.

The annual Richard Gray Visual Art Series recognizes a significant gift from founding CHF board member and distinguished art dealer Richard Gray. This program is presented in partnership with The New York Review of Books.

Presenters:

Ai Weiwei is one of the world's most influential and inspiring figures. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Venice Biennale, the Guangzhou Triennial, Tate Modern, and the Smithsonian, among many other major international venues.

Ian Buruma is editor of The New York Review of Books and author of A Tokyo Romance. His previous books include Their Promised Land, Year Zero, The China Lover, Murder in Amsterdam, Occidentalism, God's Dust, Behind the Mask, The Wages of Guilt, Bad Elements, and Taming the Gods. He has received numerous awards, including the Shorenstein Journalism Award and the international Erasmus Prize.

The primacy of words over visual images has deep roots in Western culture. What if the two are inextricably linked, equal partners in how humans think? In his graphic novel Unflattening, scholar and cartoonist Nick Sousanis weaves together diverse ways of seeing, drawn from art, literature, movies, and scientific illustrations, to make the case against what he calls 'flatness' or the fixed viewpoint. Using the collage-like capacity of comics, Sousanis demonstrates that perception is always a process of incorporating and reevaluating different vantage points. Join us for a fascinating conversation on the importance of visual thinking in teaching and learning.

Preorder your copy of Unflattening through the CHF box office and save 20%.

A book signing will follow this program.

Poems While You Wait is a group of Chicago poets who periodically set up shop to produce poems on the spot (see what we did there?) at events taking place around the city. We're thrilled to welcome them and their clackety typewriters to CHF's spring festival. Look for their table setup in the SAIC lobby in between your programs and get a personalized poem to take home!

Presenters:

Nick Sousanis is an assistant professor of Humanities & Liberal Studies at San Francisco State University. He received his doctorate in education at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he wrote and drew his dissertation entirely in comic book form. His book Unflattening received the 2016 American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE Award) in Humanities, the Lynd Ward Prize for best Graphic Novel of 2015, and was nominated for an Eisner Award for Best Scholarly/Academic work.

When professional athletes refused to stand during the national anthem to protest racial injustice, it inspired and infuriated people across the nation, from fellow players and coaches to sports fans and even the President. Super Bowl Champion Michael Bennett-- considered "one of the most outspoken and progressive voices in the NFL" by The Root-- is one of the players who participated. In his hard hitting new memoir, Things That Make White People Uncomfortable, Bennett brings his passion for feminism, activism, and organizing to the national discussion of racism and the public role of athletes. Award-winning sportswriter and author Dave Zirin joins Bennett for a conversation that's sure to be the highlight of the off season.

Preorder your copy of Things That Make White People Uncomfortable through the CHF box office and save 20%.

This program is presented in partnership with Leadership Greater Chicago.

Presenters:

Michael Bennett is a three-time Pro Bowler, Pro Bowl MVP, Super Bowl Champion, and two-time NFC Champion. He is the co-founder with Pele Bennett of The Bennett Foundation. In 2017, he was the Seattle Seahawks nominee for the NFL's Walter Payton Man of the Year Award and was honored along with his brother Martellus with a BET Shine a Light award for exceptional service.

Dave Zirin is the sports editor for the Nation and the author of several books, most recently Brazil's Dance with the Devil. Named one of UTNE Reader’s “Fifty Visionaries Who Are Changing Our World,” Zirin is a frequent guest on MSNBC, ESPN, and Democracy Now! He hosts WPFW's "The Collision with Etan Thomas" and has been called "the best sportswriter in the United States," by Robert Lipsyte.

In her stunning debut The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas has given us a novel inspired by the horror of police shootings of black youth and the hope of Black Lives Matter movement. What began as a senior project for a creative writing class became one of the best-received books of 2017. The moving story of a young woman forced to deal with the trauma of violence and racism and the impact of the choices we make, The Hate U Give spent nearly a year on the New York Times young adult best-seller list, and now a movie starring Common and Issa Rae is in the works. In conversation with journalist Britt Julious.

Preorder your copy of The Hate U Give through the CHF box office and save 20%.

A book signing will follow this program.

Poems While You Wait is a group of Chicago poets who periodically set up shop to produce poems on the spot (see what we did there?) at events taking place around the city. We're thrilled to welcome them and their clackety typewriters to CHF's spring festival. Look for their table setup in the CAA lobby in between your programs and get a personalized poem to take home!

Presenters:

Angie Thomas was born, raised, and still resides in Jackson, Mississippi. She is a former teen rapper whose greatest accomplishment was an article about her in Right-On Magazine. She holds a BFA in Creative Writing from Belhaven University and is an inaugural winner of the Walter Dean Myers Grant 2015. Her debut novel, The Hate U Give, is a #1 New York Times best seller.

Britt Julious is a journalist, essayist, and storyteller. She writes a weekly column for the Chicago Tribune and contributes regularly to publications like the New York Times, Vogue, Esquire, ELLE, Vice, and Pitchfork.

Questlove—the Grammy Award-winning cofounder of The Roots and musical director for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon—is a creative powerhouse: musician, bandleader, designer, culinary entrepreneur, professor, and all-around cultural omnivore and tastemaker. Now he comes to CHF with a new mission: Creative Quest, an impassioned guide to living your best creative life, from finding a mentor to maintaining a creative network to coping with critics. In a candid and wide-ranging conversation with Ben Greenman (co-author, Mo' Meta Blues), Questlove will share his wisdom on inspiration and originality, and some of his own experiences, including life lessons from musical forefathers (George Clinton), collaborators (D’Angelo), and like-minded artists (Ava DuVernay and Björk).

Ticket purchase includes a copy of Creative Quest. An option for 1 book + 2 tickets is available through the box office at (312) 605-8444.

This event will feature open captions to increase access to program content.

This program recognizes Ariel Investments, recipient of CHF's 2016 Civic Leadership Award.

Presenters:

Questlove is a drummer, DJ, producer, culinary entrepreneur, designer, New York Times bestselling and James Beard Award–nominated author, and cofounder of the Roots. He is the musical director for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where the Roots serve as the house band, and a four-time Grammy Award–winning musician. He is the author of New York Times bestseller Mo’ Meta Blues, Soul Train: The Music, Dance and Style of a Generation, and Creative Quest. He is also an adjunct professor at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

Ben Greenman is a New York Times-bestselling author and former New Yorker editor who has written more than fifteen books of fiction and nonfiction, including the novel The Slippage, the short-story collection What He's Poised To Do , and collaborations with George Clinton and Brian Wilson. His most recent books are a book-length study of Prince, Dig If You Will The Picture, and Don Quixotic, a collection of microfictions about the 45th president of the United States.

The stories of people seeking refuge, shaped by political violence and geographic displacement, are many, and Clemantine Wamariya has her own singular story to tell. She grew up in a close-knit family in Rwanda, eating pineapple cake and playing in her mother’s tropical garden. At just six years old, she and her older sister fled Rwanda's 1994 genocide, and began a six-year, seven country odyssey before they were granted refugee status in the United States. But the past is always present. “The memory makes me want to burn everything, raze the whole galaxy, and my brain won’t hold the plot. But I have to find a way to tell you: This happened. Men came, seeking to destroy my body and demolish my future. But I cannot be ruined.” Choose Chicago Chair Desiree Rogers joins Clemantine for an unforgettable conversation about turning experience into story, survival into living, and memory into action for justice and the prevention of atrocities.

Preorder your copy of The Girl Who Smiled Beads through the CHF box office and save 20%.

A book signing will follow this program.

This program is presented in partnership with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Presenters:

Clemantine Wamariya is a storyteller and human rights advocate. Born in Kigali, Rwanda, displaced by conflict, Clemantine migrated throughout seven African countries as a child. At age twelve, she was granted refugee status in the United States and went on to receive a BA in Comparative Literature from Yale University. She lives in San Francisco.

Desiree Rogers is the Chair of Choose Chicago and former CEO of Johnson Publishing Company.  A graduate of Harvard Business School, Rogers was named the first African-American Social Secretary by President Obama in 2008.  A breast cancer survivor, she serves on the cabinet of the Conquer Cancer Foundation. Rogers is also on the board of numerous organizations including World Business Chicago, Donors Choose, Museum of Science and Industry and the Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

In the age of selfies and Instagram stories, what is the status of traditional autobiography? Novelist Alexander Chee dares to double down on the form. In How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, Chee explores his life and roles: son, gay man, Korean American, artist, activist, lover, and more. Chee's novels (including the acclaimed The Queen of the Night) have been described as “masterful” (Roxane Gay), “incomparable” (Junot Díaz) and “incendiary” (New York Times). Nami Mun joins him to discuss this commanding, heartbreaking, and wry manifesto on how identify is formed in life and art, and the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction.

Preorder your copy of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays through the CHF box office and save 20%.

A book signing will follow this program.

Poems While You Wait is a group of Chicago poets who periodically set up shop to produce poems on the spot (see what we did there?) at events taking place around the city. We're thrilled to welcome them and their clackety typewriters to CHF's spring festival. Look for their table setup in the SAIC lobby in between your programs and get a personalized poem to take home!

Presenters:

Alexander Chee is a novelist, essayist and an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. He is a contributing editor at The New Republic, an editor at large at The Virginia Quarterly Review, and a critic at large at The Los Angeles Times. His books include The Queen of the Night, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel and Edinburgh, which won the Iowa Writers’ Workshop’s Michener Copernicus Prize in Fiction. He is also the recipient of a 2003 Whiting Award.

Nami Mun grew up in South Korea and New York. For her novel Miles from Nowhere, she received a Whiting Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Chicago Public Library’s 21st Century Award, and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers and the Asian American Literary Award. Previously, Nami has worked as an Avon Lady, a street vendor, a photojournalist, an activities coordinator for a nursing home, and a criminal defense investigator. Her work can be found in The New York Times, Granta, Tin House, The Iowa Review, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Tales of Two Americas, and elsewhere.

As Confederate memorials across the United States come down, new monuments are rising, commemorating anti-slavery efforts, women’s suffrage, and even recent events such as the Orlando nightclub massacre. Brothers Andrew Lichtenstein and Alex Lichtenstein offer another avenue to revisit and reimagine America’s past. In Marked, Unmarked, Remembered, photojournalist Andrew and historian Alex combine new images of lesser known, often nearly forgotten historic sites with essays seeking to shed new light on the connection between place and history. The Lichtensteins come to CHF to provide a history lesson through images.

Preorder your copy of Marked, Unmarked, Remembered: A Geography of American Memory from the CHF box office and save 20%.

A book signing will follow this program.

The annual Richard Gray Visual Art Series recognizes a significant gift from founding CHF board member and distinguished art dealer Richard Gray.This program is presented in partnership with the College Arts and Humanities Institute at Indiana University.

Poems While You Wait is a group of Chicago poets who periodically set up shop to produce poems on the spot (see what we did there?) at events taking place around the city. We're thrilled to welcome them and their clackety typewriters to CHF's spring festival. Look for their table setup in the CAA lobby in between your programs and get a personalized poem to take home!

Presenters:

Andrew Lichtenstein is a photographer, journalist, and educator. His first book, on the Iraq war, Never Coming Home, was published by Charta Press in 2007. He teaches at the International Center of Photography and the New School and lives in Brooklyn.

Alex Lichtenstein is Professor of History at Indiana University, Bloomington, and Editor of the American Historical A specialist on the history of labor radicalism, civil rights, and anti-apartheid activism, he has published widely on the history of prison labor, radicalism in the American South, and the South African labor movement. His works on history and photography include Margaret Bourke-White and the Dawn of Apartheid (with Rick Halpern) and, with his brother Andrew, Marked, Unmarked, Remembered: A Geography of American Memory.

If CHF had to pick just one event to sum up the current zeitgeist, it would have to be what we've all come to know as #MeToo. From the stories of sexual abuse and violence relayed by women from all walks of life, to the toppling of many long-standing and powerful entertainment and media figures, to the unprecedented-in-all-its-graphic-detail mode of reporting and witnessing, this movement has left no corner of American society and culture untouched. Join New York Times business reporter Emily Steel, whose reporting exposed the extent of sexual harassment allegations against Former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, Op-Ed columnist Michelle Goldberg, Chicago Bureau Chief Monica Davey and Rutgers University professor Brittney Cooper for a conversation about what's to come to pass - and is still to come - around #MeToo.
Preorder your copy of Eloquent Rage through the CHF box office and save 20%.

A book signing will follow this program.

This program is presented in partnership with the New York Times and Leadership Greater Chicago.

Presenters:

Emily Steel is a business reporter at The New York Times. Her reporting exposed a series of settlements related to sexual harassment allegations against Bill O’Reilly. Previously, Steel worked at The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal, where she contributed several stories to the What They Know and the End of Privacy series about the pervasive practices of tracking Americans online. The work was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting in 2012 and won a Gerald Loeb Award and a Sigma Delta Chi public service award in 2011.

Michelle Goldberg is an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times. She is the author of Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World, and The Goddess Pose: The Audacious Life of Indra Devi, the Woman Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West. Goldberg’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Newsweek, The Nation, The New Republic, The Guardian and many other publications, and she's reported from countries including India, Iraq, Egypt, Uganda, Nicaragua and Argentina.

Monica Davey is the Chicago Bureau Chief of The New York Times. Ms. Davey is currently serving in a dual role as a reporter covering 11 states in the Midwest and as the editor of a team of reporters in the Midwest and New England. She began working at The Times in March 2003. Ms. Davey was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 1998.

Brittney Cooper writes a popular monthly column on race, gender and politics for Cosmopolitan. A professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University, she co-founded the Crunk Feminist Collective. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Salon, Ebony.com, and The Root.com, among many others. She received the Black Feminist Rising Award from Black Women’s Blueprint and the Newswomen’s Club of New York Award for best blogging.

Poet, writer, and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib uses his distinctly ruminative voice and deep investment in popular culture and music to dissect the everyday threats to the lives of black Americans. In They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, inspired by the music of Ice Cube, Abdurraqib ranges over a cross-section of experiences, from attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown’s grave in Ferguson to the first time he was ordered to the ground by police officers—for attempting to enter his own car. Chicago poet and author of Wild Hundreds, Nate Marshall joins Abdurraqib for what's sure to be an dynamic if sobering conversation.

Preorder your copy of They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us from the CHF box office and save 20%.

A book signing will follow this program.

Poems While You Wait is a group of Chicago poets who periodically set up shop to produce poems on the spot (see what we did there?) at events taking place around the city. We're thrilled to welcome them and their clackety typewriters to CHF's spring festival. Look for their table setup in the CAA lobby in between your programs and get a personalized poem to take home!

Presenters:

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His first collection of poems, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much was nominated for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book prize. His first collection of essays, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us was named a book of the year by Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, The Los Angeles Review, The Chicago Tribune, among others. His next books are Go Ahead in the Rain and They Don’t Dance No’ Mo’.

Nate Marshall is from the South Side of Chicago. He is an editor of The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop and the Director of National Programs for Louder Than A Bomb Youth Poetry Festival. His book Wild Hundreds has won the Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s award for Poetry Book of the Year and The Great Lakes College Association’s New Writer Award, among others. His last rap album, Grown, came out in 2015 with his group Daily Lyrical Product.

Two-time National Book Award-winner Jesmyn Ward joins us for a discussion of her most recent novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, a profound Southern odyssey and searing chronicle of twenty-first- century America. Drawing on Morrison and Faulkner, The Odyssey and the Old Testament, Ward shows us life on the gulf coast of Mississippi for one American family, as they travel through the South. Ward is the author of the critically acclaimed titles Salvage the Bones and Men We Reaped, and editor of The Fire This Time. She will be joined in conversation with Lisa Lucas, President of the National Book Foundation.

Presented in Partnership with the National Book Foundation

“A narrative so beautifully taut and heartbreakingly eloquent that it stops the breath. . . . From the elderly, loving Pops, to the clairvoyant toddler, Michaela, the living and the dead confront racism, hope, and the everlasting handprint of history”—Judges’ Citation for Sing, Unburied, Sing, Winner of the 2017 National Book Award

Presenters:

Jesmyn Ward is the author of the novels Where the Line Bleeds, Salvage the Bones, which won the National Book Award, and Sing, Unburied, Sing, which won the National Book Award, as well as the memoir Men We Reaped, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She also edited the anthology The Fire This Time. In 2016, she received the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was named a MacArthur Fellow. She is an associate professor of creative writing at Tulane University.

Lisa Lucas is the Executive Director of the National Book Foundation. Prior to joining the Foundation, she served as the Publisher of Guernica, a non-profit online magazine focusing on writing that explores the intersection of art and politics with an international and diverse focus and as Director of Education at the Tribeca Film Institute. Lucas also serves on the literary council of the Brooklyn Book Festival.

Since becoming Top Chef’s first female winner, Stephanie Izard opened three iconic restaurants in Chicago, traveled around China, and became an Iron Chef. And now she’s here to share her next adventure: a cookbook with recipes that hit all of the right salty, savory, tangy, and sweet notes. Her craveable, knockout food pairings will surprise and delight any home cook: Banh Mi Burgers, Duck Breast with Brown Butter Kimichi, and Sticky Sweet Potato Cake with Blueberry-Tomatillo Jam. Join us for an evening devoted to spectacular eating and entertaining with one of the most celebrated chefs working today.

“What I have always adored about Stephanie is that somehow her energy and positive spirit are just as compelling as her over-the- top delicious food. . . . I dare you to open this book and not want to cook everything!”—Gail Simmons, food expert, judge, Top Chef

Presenters:

Stephanie Izard is the Executive Chef/Partner of three of Chicago’s most-celebrated restaurants: Girl & the Goat, Little Goat Dinner, and Duck Duck Goat. She is the recipient of the James Beard “Best Chef: Great Lakes” Award and was one of Food & Wine Magazine's “Best New Chefs” in 2010. Most recently, she claimed the Iron Chef title after competing on the Food Network’s show, “Iron Chef.”

Grilled burgers and steaks may be the stuff of summer cooking dreams, but fruit, vegetables, and even bread, taste way better when grilled. Mark Bittman, cooking’s most trusted authority, joins Doug Sohn (Hot Doug) for a conversation devoted to How to Grill Everything, the definitive all-encompassing guide for new and seasoned grillers alike and the latest volume in the award-winning How to Cook Everything series. From the perfect steak to cedar-plank salmon to fig and sweetened orange ricotta pizza, join us for practical advice on all the grilling basics and innovative surprises to get the most out of every fire.

Presenters:

Mark Bittman is the author of 20 books, including the How to Cook Everything series, the award-winning Food Matters, and the New York Times #1 bestseller VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00. Formerly a New York Times columnist and writer, he now devotes his time to cookbooks, teaching, and food-related advocacy.

A graduate of the culinary program at Kendall College, Doug Sohn has held five jobs in the food industry, including a vendor at both Wrigley Field and Comiskey Park in the 1980s. He cooked in restaurants, catering companies and corporate dining facilities before becoming a cookbook editor. One day a friend of his ate a bad hot dog, resulting in the opening of Hot Doug’s, the Sausage Superstore. He now oversees the Hot Doug’s concession stand in the bleachers at Wrigley Field and feels personally responsible for the Cubs’ recent success.