On NEWCITY MAGAZINE’s LIT50 list for “Who really books in Chicago, 2025”
Our next reading happens on April 26, 2026, a Zoom event, see details below.
Sunday Salon Chicago
Celebrating 22 years, Sunday Salon Chicago is the city’s premier curated literary reading event series. Our monthly readings are always FREE, and we’re glad to be hosting authors from near and far, both in-person at Roscoe Books and on Zoom alternatively. There are no readings in December.
Thank you so much for your support in these hard times!
Yrs,
Ignatius Valentine Aloysius
Host & Curator
*** Testimonials ***
Gratitude!
I just wanted to express my deep gratitude for creating space for all of us to share words with each other and with such an engaged audience. To my fellow readers: it was truly a pleasure to hear all of you read, and I look forward to meeting up in real life in the not too distant future.
— Daniel Tam-Claiborne, author
So lovely!
Hi Ignatius, hope you’re well! I just wanted to say a huge thank you to you for the wonderful Sunday gathering. It was so lovely to be in brief community with you and my fellow readers.
Wishing you the best.
— Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo, author
Inspiring!
What an inspiring and reassuring night. Thank you so much for including me.
Yours,
— Rachel DeWoskin, author
Our next reading takes place on April 26, 2026 on ZOOM at 6 pm CT and features
Adela Najarro
Dorsia Smith Silva
Alex Wells Shapiro
Jacinda Townsend
Brian L. Jacobs
Adela Najarro
Adela Najarro is a poet with a social consciousness who is working on a novel. She serves on the board of directors for Círculo de poetas and Writers and works with the Latine/x community nationwide, promoting the intersection of creative writing and social justice. Her extended family left Nicaragua and arrived in San Francisco during the 1940s; after the fall of the Somoza regime, the last of the family settled in the Los Angeles area. The Letras Latinas/ Red Hen Collaborative selected Variations in Blue for publication in 2025. She is the author of four additional poetry collections: Split Geography, Twice Told Over, My Childrens, and Volcanic Interruptions, a chapbook that includes Janet Trenchard’s artwork. The 2024 Int’l Latino Book Awards designated Volcanic Interruptions as an Honorable Mention in the Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award category. The California Arts Council has recognized her as an established artist for the Central California Region and appointed her as an Individual Artist Fellow. www.adelanajarro.com | www.circulowriters.com
Facebook: Adela Najarro
Instagram: adelanajarro_
Dorsia Smith Silva
Dorsía Smith Silva is the author of In Inheritance of Drowning (CavanKerry, 2024), which was a finalist for the National Indie Excellence Award, Eric Hoffer Award, Whirling Prize, and Da Vinci Eye Award, reviewed by Publishers Weekly, and recommended by Ms. Magazine. She is a multi-nominated Pushcart Prize nominee, Best of the Net finalist, Best New Poets nominee, Cave Canem Poetry Prize Semifinalist, Obsidian Fellow, Poetry Editor at The Hopper, and Full Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. Literary Hub, Poets.org, Poets & Writers, Split This Rock, Beloit Poetry Journal, and The Los Angeles Review have published her work, and poems are forthcoming in The Cimarron Review and AMPLIFY: An Anthology of Black Poets, Indigenous Poets, and Other Poets of Color. She is the recipient of the Katharine Bakeless Nason Scholarship from Bread Loaf, Voices of Color Fellowship (2nd Place) from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and SWWIM residency. Dorsía has a Ph.D. in Caribbean Literature and Language.
She is on social media @DSmithSilva
Alex Wells Shapiro
Alex Wells Shapiro is a poet and organizer. He co-founded the performance series and artist’s collective Exhibit B. He is the author of a full length collection of poems, Insect Architecture (Unbound Edition 2022), and a chapbook, Gridiron Fables (Bottlecap Features 2022). His work has recently been featured in the Cincinnati Review miCRo Series, The Under Review, like a field, The Spectacle, Vlad Mag, and Tyger Review, among other spaces. He grew up in the Hudson Valley, and has found Chicago as his home for over a decade.
www.alexwellsshapiro.com
Insta: @alexwellsshapiro1
Jacinda Townsend
Jacinda Townsend is the author of Trigger Warning and Mother Country, winner of the 2023 Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. Townsend’s first novel, Saint Monkey, winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for historical fiction, was an Honor Book of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. A former lawyer and elected official, Townsend teaches in the MFA program at Brown University.
www.jacindatownsend.com
Insta: jacindatownsendthewriter
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jackie.huddle.90
Brian L. Jacobs
Brian L. Jacobs PhD. is a poet and editor of Tofu Ink Arts Press. His latest books are HOMOCAUST & Rhizomatic Poetics: Toolkit for Heretics. He grew up in Southern California and has been teaching GATE English and Humanities for thirty-five years in both K-12 and college settings. Brian was the assistant to the poets Allen Ginsberg and Julie Patton during his time at Naropa in the mid 90’s. During that time he walked half way around the world while on a peace pilgrimage with Buddhist monks commemorating WWII visiting Europe, the Middle East and India. Brian is also a three time Fulbright Scholar, which has allowed him to study in Brazil, China, and Japan. His poetry has been published in several publications including Dark Moon Lilith Press, Black Tape Press, Genre, Inky Blue/Celery, Red Dancefloor Press, Entelechy, 1844 Pine Street, Pasta Poetics, Trouble, In Parenthesis, Unbound Anthology, DZANC House Blue, Landlocked and Praxis.
tofuinkarts@gmail.com
Insta @tofuinkarts
tofuink.com
Contact us
Welcome to Sunday Salon Chicago! If you’d like to send us a brief query, add your full name, email, and message in the form below and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. And be sure to subscribe to our Mailchimp list above to receive our regular event notifications, thanks! ~Ignatius
Our March 29, 2026 reading took place at Roscoe Books at 7 pm and featured
Elise Paschen
Melissa Fraterrigo
Eileen Favorite
Judith Valente
Tim Hillegonds
Elise Paschen,
enrolled member of the Osage Nation, is the author of Blood Wolf Moon, Tallchief, The Nightlife, Bestiary, Infidelities (winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize), and Houses: Coasts. As an undergraduate at Harvard, she received the Garrison Medal for poetry. She holds M.Phil. and D.Phil. degrees from Oxford University. Her poems have been published widely, including Poetry Magazine, The New Yorker, A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry and The Best American Poetry. She has edited or co-edited numerous anthologies, including The Eloquent Poem and The New York Times best-seller, Poetry Speaks. A co-founder of Poetry in Motion, Dr. Paschen teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
www.elisepaschen.com
Instagram: @epaschen
Twitter: @ElisePaschen
FB: Elise Paschen
Photo by Beowulf
Melissa Fraterrigo
Melissa is the executive director of the Lafayette Writer’s Studio in Lafayette, Indiana, and teaches at Purdue University. She is also the author of the novel Glory Days (University of Nebraska Press) and the short story collection, The Longest Pregnancy (Livingston Press.) She lives with her husband and two daughters in West Lafayette, Indiana.
Photo: Jenny Modesett
www.melissafraterrigo.com
facebook.com/melissa.fraterrigo
Twitter: @melissafraterrigo
Instagram: @melissafraterrigo
Eileen Favorite
Eileen’s first novel, The Heroines (Scribner), has been translated into five languages. Her essays, poems, and stories have appeared in many publications, including The Manifest-Station, The Toast, Triquarterly, The Chicago Tribune, New City, The Rumpus, Chicago Magazine, Essay Daily, Hypertext, Diagram, and others. Her essay, “On Aerial Views,” was a Notable Essay in the Best American Essays 2020, and it won the 2019 Best Essay award from The Midwest Review. She was named a 2021 Illinois Arts Council Awardee for nonfiction. She teaches writing and literature classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her lectures and opinions on the subject, Love the Art, Hate the Artist have been featured in the Chicago Tribune, TEDx Wrigleyville, The Wall Street Journal, WGN Chicago, WBEZ, and The New Yorker.
www.eileenfavorite.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eileen.favorite
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eileenfavorite/
Judith Valente
Judith is a former staff writer for The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post and also worked as an on-air correspondent for national PBS-TV and Chicago Public Radio. She is the author of six non-fiction books, including, most recently, The Italian Soul: How to Savor the Full Joys of Life and two full-length poetry collections, How to Be a Contemplative and Discovering Moons. Her chapbook Inventing An Alphabet was chosen by Mary Oliver for the 2005 Aldrich Poetry Prize. She spent much of her career in Chicago and now splits her time between Normal IL and Abruzzo, Italy. She sees writing poetry as a way of making sense of the world and her place in it.
www.judithvalente.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/judithvalente.10/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/judithvalente_author/
Tim Hillegonds
Tim Hillegonds is the author of And You Will Call It Fate, A Memoir (University of Nebraska Press, March 3, 2026) and The Distance Between: A Memoir (University of Nebraska Press, 2019), a finalist for the 2020 Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Award. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Tim’s work has appeared in The Guardian, the Chicago Tribune, Salon, The Daily Beast, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. He serves as a contributing editor for Slag Glass City, a digital journal of the urban essay arts. Hillegonds lives, works, and writes in Chicago.
www.timhillegonds.com
“Whether this earth comes to an end or not, we’ll slog over this endless road.”
— Mahmoud Darwish
Sunday Salon Chicago 