Karin McKie is a Chicago freelance writer, cultural factotum and activism concierge. She jams econo.
Fiction is a “medium that must always allow itself…the possibility of expressing intimate and inconvenient truths,” acclaimed London-born author Zadie Smith once said. She recently stopped by Lincoln Park’s Francis […]
Blue Man Group started as outsider art, railing against the machine of corporate commodification and end-stage capitalism. Now it’s become a perfect performance entrée for kids and their families, which […]
Costume designer Ruth E. Carter spoke at the Music Box Theatre in June during the Chicago Humanities Festival about her rich film career and her historic Academy Award wins for […]
Poet Maya Angelou suffered violence and didn’t speak for years. Tommy Walker witnessed murder and similarly shut down his senses to deal with that trauma. His fictional narrative was created […]
Chicago offers a variety of events to commemorate Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when America “officially freed” enslaved people. For an even deeper dive into the vast nation-building contributions of […]
Illinois is the first state to end book bans, and the Chicago Humanities Festival is the city’s premiere forum for promoting authors on the vanguard and their timely and riveting […]
TTK Harris directed the documentary Just Like Me while a senior art director at ad agency Havas Chicago to chronicle his journey as a designer of color. In his tight, […]
‘Perceptions Theatre and Prop Thtr are staging the rolling world premiere of India Nicole Burton’s Panther Women: An Army for the Liberation, a choreopoem focusing on the female force behind […]
“After a meeting with several Black alumni and current Second City employees, we have come to the conclusion that the erasure, racial discrimination, manipulation, pay inequity, tokenism, monetization of Black […]
Have you ever wanted to witness a Muppet make the beast with two backs? Do a deep dive into getting “felt up”? Learn the history of the monster race? Then Avenue […]
Brave drag queens and cowardly Russian oligarchs dominate the news these days. These fabulous queens are often incorrectly labeled as subversive while the Slavic autocrats aren’t receiving enough comeuppance for […]
Barbershops and beauty salons are important cultural hubs for communities of color. “In my day, a barber was more than just somebody who sit around in a FUBU shirt with […]