We're seeking new members for our 2025 Board of Directors, as well as our founding Associate Board for young professionals 35 and under. Details and application at each of the links above.
CHIRP Podcasts
First Time First Lie - Sean Flannery
Contains explicit language
Sean is the creator and host of The Blackout Diaries a show where comics plus 'real' people (cops, priests, teachers, etc) share true drinking stories and answer questions from the audience. He has been featured on Comedy Central and named the best standup comic in Chicago by several publications. He was also named Best Drunk by The Chicago Reader (2014). On stage, he shares wild, hilarious stories, while showing multimedia from the events: photos, videos, voicemails and more. Last year he combined many of these stories into a sold-out, critically-acclaimed one man show, called Never Been to Paris, about the last 10 times he nearly killed himself by accident.
Podcast produced by Dan Epstein
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Story Week Story Week Festival: Turning Issues Into Stories
From March 15-21, the Columbia College Chicago Department of Creative Writing presented its 19th Annual Story Week Festival of Writers. Story Week 2015 offered a schedule jam-packed with readings, conversations with authors, panels, performances, and book signings at venues throughout Chicago—all free and open to the public.
Crime figures prominently in Marlon James' recent book and also in Benice L. McFadden's Gathering of Waters. The authors discuss how those issues became a part of their stories, how their Caribbean heritages factor into their work, read selections from their new novels, and more. The discussion is followed by an audience Q&A.
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Story Week Story Week Festival: Young Adult Fiction
From March 15-21, the Columbia College Chicago Department of Creative Writing presented its 19th Annual Story Week Festival of Writers. Story Week 2015 offered a schedule jam-packed with readings, conversations with authors, panels, performances, and book signings at venues throughout Chicago—all free and open to the public.
For this panel, four award-winning Young Adult authors whose characters have gone on harrowing journeys to confront their own monsters read excerpts from their work and answer audience questions.
Host: Laurie Lawlor, This Tender Place: The Story of a Wetland Year
Jessie Ann Foley, The Carnival at Bray
Stephanie Kuehn, Complicit
Stephanie Kuehnert, Ballads of Suburbia
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Artist Interviews J Fernandez
J Fernandez released his album Many Levels of Laughter on Joyful Noise in 2015. CHIRP's Shawna Kaiser met up with Justin at his home in Humboldt Park where she learned that he has less a penchant for interviews and instead has reserved his fondness for creating bright, psych-pop at home.
Produced by: Brian Heath
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Artist Interviews Shura
London's Shura made her American debut at SXSW 2015 and CHIRP's Dylan Peterson was there to talk with the singer about what it was like to become a YouTube sensation the same week a more popular but similar video went viral, the reason Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush make sentimentality okay, and how there's just something about kissing (aka, snogging) that people seem to really like.
produced by Dylan Peterson
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