On NEWCITY MAGAZINE’s LIT50 list for “Who really books in Chicago, 2025”
Our next reading happens on May 24, 2026 at Roscoe Books, 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 May 24, 2026 reading happens at Roscoe Books at 7 pm CT and features
Cynthia Gallaher
Melanie Faranello
Mary Kay Zuravleff
Rachel León
J.R. Blanes
Cynthia Gallaher
Cynthia is a Chicago-based author of four poetry collections, including Epicurean Ecstasy: More Poems About Food, Drink, Herbs & Spices, and three chapbooks, including Drenched. Her award-winning creativity guide is Frugal Poets’ Guide to Life: How to Live a Poetic Life, Even If You Aren’t a Poet. One of her poems will be sent on NASA’s manned flight to the south pole of the moon later this decade. Gallaher’s hybrid memoir Just Before Montana: My Face-to-Face Debates with Ted Kaczynski (The Unabomber) will be published by Southern Illinois University Press, Spring 2027.
Follow her on X/Twitter at @swimmerpoet;
Instagram and Threads at @frugalpoet
Facebook @swimmerpoet;
http://bit.ly/cynthiagallaher
https://linktr.ee/cynthiagallaher
Melanie Faranello
Melanie is the author of the award-winning story collection, Everybody Needs Something, which received the 2025 Donald L Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence and was just released in March. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Swamp Pink, Electric Literature, Hippocampus, StoryQuarterly, and elsewhere, and have been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize. Her novel-in-progress won an Emerging Writer Award from Key West Literary Seminars. She holds her MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. Originally from Chicago, she lives in W. Hartford, CT and is the founder of the community engagement project, Poetry on the Streets, and a new reading series in Hartford called Sonder. She originally started Sunday Salon Chicago at the Charleston Bar in Bucktown in 2004 and is thrilled to be back to read at it now!
Website: www.melaniefaranello.com
IG @melaniefaranello
FB melanie.pappadisfaranello
Mary Kay Zuravleff
Mary Kay is the award-winning author of American Ending, chosen for Oprah’s Spring Reading List. Earlier novels include Man Alive!, a Washington Post Notable Book, The Bowl Is Already Broken, and The Frequency of Souls, winner of the American Academy’s Rosenthal Award and the James Jones First Novel Award. She lives in Washington, DC.
www.marykayzuravleff.com
www.americanending.net
www.facebook.com/marykay.zuravleff
@mkzur on Instagram
Rachel León
Rachel (she/they) is a writer, editor, and social worker, who has worked in child welfare for nearly two decades. She serves as Managing Director for Chicago Review of Books and Fiction Director for Arcturus. Their work has appeared in Catapult, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, and elsewhere, and has been supported by StoryStudio Chicago, Tin House, Poets & Writers, and the Illinois Arts Council. León is the editor of The Rockford Anthology, and the author of the novel, How We See the Gray.
Website: https://rachelleon.me
https://www.instagram.com/rachellayown/
https://bsky.app/profile/rachellayown.bsky.social
https://www.threads.com/@rachellayown
Photo: Alan León
J.R. Blanes
J.R. is the author of the Southern Gothic Horror Tale, Portraits of Decay, released in 2025 from Ruadán Books, and the upcoming New England Witch Novel, Acascreamia, forthcoming from Crystal Lake Publishing in 2027. His short fiction has appeared in Allegory, Tales to Terrify, The No Sleep Podcast, the Spring in the City Anthology, among others. He lives in Chicago with his wife and their neurotic dog. When he’s not writing, he’s working on new music for various side projects.
https://jrblanes.com/
https://www.facebook.com/jrblanes76/
https://bsky.app/profile/jrblanes.bsky.social
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 April 26, 2026 reading took place on ZOOM at 6 pm CT and featured
Adela Najarro
Dorsía 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_
Dorsía 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
“Whether this earth comes to an end or not, we’ll slog over this endless road.”
— Mahmoud Darwish
Sunday Salon Chicago 