Sideshow Theatre's WHY STORY MATTERS NOW: Fiction in a Time of Political Chaos

In a political climate in which truth - and even fact - are disputed, what is the storyteller's role in the social conversation? Sideshow Theatre Company explores that pressing and timely question at WHY STORY MATTERS NOW: Fiction in a Time of Political Chaos on Sunday, February 11, 2018 at 4 pm at 2664 N. Greenview Ave. in Chicago.

Join renowned authors Rosellen Brown, Janet Burroway and Stuart Dybek for an evening of live readings and discussion moderated by celebrated playwright Philip Dawkins. The literary salon will include wine and light refreshments provided by Chef on the Roof, followed by a reception with the panelists. Tickets, priced at $150 ($100 tax-deductible), are currently available at www.sideshowtheatre.org/story. All proceeds will benefit Sideshow Theatre Company.

Rosellen Brown, chosen the 2016 Fuller Award Lifetime Achievement winner by The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, has published widely, and her stories have appeared frequently in O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Prizes. One is included in the best-seller Best Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike. She has been the recipient of an award in literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Bunting Institute, the Howard Foundation and twice from the National Endowment for the Arts, and was selected one of Ms. Magazine's 12 "Women of the Year" in 1984. Some Deaths in the Delta was a National Council on the Arts prize selection and Civil Wars won the Janet Kafka Prize for the best novel by an American woman in 1984. She has published ten books - novels, short stories, poetry, essays - and has lived in almost as many places - New York, Boston, San Francisco, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Texas and, currently, Chicago. After many years on the faculty of the University of Houston and more than a dozen summers leading the Spoleto (Italy) Writers' Workshop, she now teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Janet Burroway, awarded the 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award in Writing by the Florida Humanities Council, is the author of essays, children's books and eight novels including The Buzzards (Little, Brown), Raw Silk (Little, Brown; now re-released by Open Road Media), Cutting Stone and Bridge of Sand (both Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Her textbook Writing Fiction is the most widely used creative writing textbook in America; Imaginative Writing is in its 4th edition. Her stories, essays and reviews have appeared in Harper's, The New York Times Book Review, The Chicago Tribune, New Letters, MS., Prairie Schooner and The Pushcart Prizes, among others. A collection of essays by older women writers, A Story Larger Than My Own, was published in 2014 by University of Chicago Press; her memoir Losing Tim also appeared in 2014, and a play loosely based on that memoir, Headshots, has had readings in Chicago and New York. Other plays include Sweepstakes, Division of Property, Medea With Child (Reva Shiner award, Bloomington Playwrights Project, 1996; Sideshow, 2009) and Division of Property (Arts and Letters prize 2001). Parts of Speech was winner of the 2015 Brink! Development prize of Renaissance Theaterworks; and Boomerang won Sideshow Theatre Company's Freshness award in 2015. She is Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor Emerita at the Florida State University, and a Network Playwright at Chicago Dramatists. She is on the Board of Sideshow.

Stuart Dybek's The Start of Something: Selected Stories by Stuart Dybek was published by Jonathan Cape/Vintage in 2016, and two new collections of fiction, Ecstatic Cahoots and Paper Lantern, were published simultaneously by FSG in June 2014. Dybek's previous books of fiction are Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, The Coast of Chicago and I Sailed with Magellan. He has also published two volumes of poetry, Brass Knuckles and Streets In Their Own Ink. His work is widely anthologized and appears in publications such as The New Yorker, Harpers, The Atlantic, Tin House, Granta, Zoetrope, Ploughshares and Poetry. Dybek is the recipient of many literary awards including the PEN/Bernard Malamud Prize for "distinguished achievement in the short story," a Lannan Award, the Academy Institute Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writer's Award, the Harold Washington Literary Award, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and four O'Henry Prizes. His work has appeared in Best American Poetry and in Best American Fiction. In 2007, he was awarded both a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and the Rea Award for the Short Story. He is the Distinguished Writer in Residence at Northwestern University.

Philip Dawkins (Playwright) is a Chicago playwright whose plays have been produced throughout the country and the world. His works Miss Marx: or The Involuntary Side Effect of Living (Strawdog Theatre) and Charm (Northlight Theatre at the Steppenwolf Garage) both won the Joseph Jefferson (Jeff) Award for Best New Work. His critically-acclaimed plays The Homosexuals, Le Switch (both produced by About Face Theatre) and Failure: A Love Story (Victory Gardens Theater), all received Jeff nominations for New Work, and he is the recipient of a Jeff Award for Best Solo Performance for his play, The Happiest Place On Earth (Sideshow Theatre). His play, Charm, received its extended New York premiere with MCC this last year. Philip is an artistic associate at About Face Theatre, Sideshow Theatre and MC-10 as well as an ensemble playwright at Victory Gardens Theater. He teaches playwriting at Northwestern University as well as at his alma mater, Loyola University Chicago.

Sideshow Theatre Company: Theatre for the Curious. It is the mission of Sideshow Theatre Company to mine The Collective Unconscious of the world we live in with limitless curiosity, drawing inspiration from the familiar stories, memories and images we all share to spark new conversation and bring our audiences together as adventurers in a communal experience of exploration.

Over its 10+ year history, Sideshow is proud to have distinguished itself as a vital member of the Chicago theatre community. Sideshow was awarded the 2016 Broadway In Chicago Emerging Theatre Award by the League of Chicago Theatres. Sideshow is a multiple Jeff Award-winning theatre and has been listed on the "Best of" lists in 2012, 2013 and 2014 by Time Out Chicago and the Chicago Sun-Times. Sideshow continues its multi-year residency at Victory Gardens in the historic Biograph Theater in the 2017/18 season.

Sideshow is also the producer of Chicago League of Lady Arm Wrestlers (CLLAW), a wildly popular fundraiser held in benefit of Sideshow Theatre Company and other local community organizations. CLLAW has been featured in local and national press, including The Washington Post, Reuters and the Chicago Sun-Times and on WGN Morning News, ABC 7's Windy City Live and CBS 2. The next CLLAW will be held Saturday, February 3, 2018 at Logan Square Auditorium. For more information about CLLAW, visit cllaw.org.

For additional information on Sideshow Theatre Company, visit sideshowtheatre.org.

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