A reading from, "The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability"

Laura Kipnis

NU faculty member and author of Scandalous Americans, Against Love: A Polemic, Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America, and Ecstasy Unlimited: On Sex, Capital, Gender & Aesthetics. She'll be reading from her newest book released in Fall 2006 , "The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability."

Reading from non-fiction and other works

Alex Kotlowitz

NU Writer in Residence for Winter Quarter 2007. Award-winning author of There Are No Children Here, The Other Side of the River, and Never a City So Real. Contributor to The New York Times Magazine and public radio's This American Life. Alex is best known for his intimate narratives which illuminate the nation's social and political landscape.

A reading from, "Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity"

Alexander Weheliye

NU faculty member Alexander G. Weheliye teaches African American and Afro-Diasporic Literature and Culture, Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, and Popular Culture. He is the author of Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity. Currently, he is working on two projects about the vexed role of the human in western modernity. The first, Technologies of Humanity , charts different forms of (anti-) humanism in Afro-Diasporic culture over the last 150 years, and the second, AfroGermanic Assemblages , compares the central place of the human in modern Afro-Diasporic and German Philosophy.

"So You Want to Write ... A Memoir?"

Michele Weldon

Weldon's first book, a creative nonfiction memoir, I Closed My Eyes, was translated into six languages. It earned Weldon several awards including the International Women's Peacepower Award in 2000. Her second book, Writing To Save Your Life: How To Honor Your Story Through Journaling received the Chicago Women in Publishing 2002 Excellence Award for nonfiction book. Her Writing to Save Your Life Workshops given quarterly in Chicago and around the country since 1999 are considered important to the field of narrative therapy. Weldon has appeared on several television shows including "Oprah Winfrey," "Later Today," "ABC Sunday Morning," and BBC-TV in London.

Since 1996, Weldon has been teaching undergraduate and graduate students at her alma mater, Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, where she received both undergraduate and graduate degrees.

A Storytelling Battle: Film vs. Print"

An exchange between filmmaker Steve James (director of HOOP DREAMS) and award winning writer Alex Kotlowitz

Alex Kotlowitz

NU Visiting Writer in Residence for Winter Quarter 2007. Award-winning author of There Are No Children Here, The Other Side of the River, and Never a City So Real. Contributor to The New York Times Magazine and public radio's This American Life. Alex is best known for his intimate narratives which illuminate the nation's social and political lands

"A Conversation with Michael McColly and James Tuong Nguyen"

Michael McColly teaches creative writing at Northwestern University in Chicago. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, Salon, The Sun, Ascent, In These Times, and other publications. He is the author of The After-Death Room: Journey into Spiritual Activism (Soft Skull Press), a memoir that chronicles his travels as an HIV+ journalist through parts of Asia, Africa and America reporting on the work and lives of activists, doctors, and clergy working in HIV/AIDS care and prevention. He is a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal (81-83). He also teaches yoga, specializing in workshops for writers and people living with HIV.

James Tuong Nguyen is a graduate in photography, graphic design and political science from Northeastern Illinois, where he also works as a Media Services Specialist. Nguyen's documentary work for the past eight years has concerned the social and economic conditions that affect the poor both in the US and in Southeast Asia. His photo documentary work has chronicled street people in Chicago's Uptown community, sex workers in Cambodia, Vietnamese migrant workers in Korea, and street children, drug users, sex workers and people suffering from HIV in Vietnam. He has collaborated with Michael McColly on several articles on HIV/AIDS in Vietnam. They also have made presentations on the international AIDS pandemic at colleges and universities around the Midwest. Recently, Nguyen's work has been used in educational programs and booklets for UNAIDS. "

"The Biographical Imperative"

Brooke Kroeger

Former Newsday reporter, and author of Passing: When People Can't Be Who They are, Fannie: The Talent for Success of Writer Fannie Hurst and Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist.

"Writing About Science and Society "

Michael Specter

Staff writer at the New Yorker; former contributer to the New York Times Magazine, former New York Times Moscow bureau chief and former Washington Post reporter and bureau chief.