Letter from the Chair

This year’s Story Week makes an even dozen—amazing to those of us who, in 1997, were thinking that we would do a “small festival” for that one year. The response from audience members to that mini-festival was so enthusiastic that we were encouraged to try a second. Story Week began to take on a life of its own, and since then, we have been incredibly pleased to find that audiences have become even more diverse, extensive, and enthusiastic over the years. Your presence here today—and, more importantly, your active participation and interaction with our presenters—is essential to the vitality and success of the festival, and I would like to express my profound gratitude, on behalf of the Fiction Writing Department faculty, Artistic Director Sheryl Johnston, Faculty Artistic Director Sam Weller, and everyone else involved in planning and executing these events, for helping to make Story Week a central contributor to the life of literary arts and the humanities on Chicago’s cultural calendar each year.

As we looked forward during last spring’s planning to this year’s election season, we contemplated themes that might appropriately allow us to foreground the fiction writer’s place in promoting reflection about issues crucial to our times. “Stories Without Borders” is meant to capture the ways in which our remarkably diverse Story Week writers use story to represent their own cultures and come into dialogue with the cultures of others, seeing themselves as part of an international community of writers and artists who find commonality in shared concerns while retaining their own distinctive voices, their own most compelling cultural material, and their own multiple approaches to story. Along with an articulate and strong group of editors and publishers, these writers from points local, national, and international help us think about the intersection of the private and public as we all seek answers to the pressing issues of our time—the paths to war and peace, the increasing disparities between rich and poor, the relationships between secular
and religious thought, the wages of ignoring our environment, the kind
of world we will pass down to our children’s generation, and a host of other matters.

As always, Story Week expresses the Columbia College Chicago and Fiction Writing Department missions in seeking not simply to privilege a single literary voice or culture but rather to legitimize and enable the widest possible range of voices, cultures, and approaches to story. Along with authors from Columbia College and Chicago, we have been happy over the years to feature writers from many other parts of the world—among them Irvine Welsh, Nawal El Saadawi, Bharati Mukherjee, Ian Jack, Edwidge Danticat, Junot Diaz, Jamie O’Neill, Aleksander Hemon, Chris Abani, Anchee Min, Geling Yan, and, just last year, the inimitable Salman Rushdie, as well as many others. This year, in addition to our writers from Chicago and both coasts, we extend a special welcome to our “Caribbean Connection,” as well as to those from Great Britain, India, and other points around the world. Together, all of these participants will offer us the global perspective that has become one of the hallmarks of Story Week over the years. We are grateful to all of them for their contributions and, above all, for promoting the depth and range of understanding that allows all of us to see ourselves as part of a world story without borders.

Over the twelve years of Story Week, more and more people have been involved in its running, and the number has become too large to list in a missive such as this. That is both gratifying and frustrating, since each person has his or her role to play in a smooth-running and professional production. I ask that you look at the back of this program for a list of key figures who have offered their support to Story Week. But know that there are many others who volunteer their time, energy, or creativity to our festival and who deserve a great deal of credit.

Particular thanks go to the two lead figures of the festival: Artistic Director Sheryl Johnston who has truly been the driving force behind Story Week nearly since its inception and who has brought her wisdom and experience to every facet of the production, and Faculty Artistic Director Sam Weller who, in his first year in this role, brought his own special creativity and attention to matters large and small. Their efforts to make this year’s festival the best ever have resulted in what can only be called a truly extraordinary festival line-up.

Special thanks also go to Amanda Snyder and Dan Prazer, whose work on numerous fronts and on hydra-headed problem solving has been crucial in every phase of planning and execution. The Fiction Writing Department Student Board, under Mike Williams and Monique Lewis, has displayed the pride that Fiction Writing students have come to take in this festival. The Fiction Writing Department full-time staff—Assistant to the Chair Deborah Roberts, Secretary Nicole Chakalis, and especially Administrative Assistant and Story Week workin’ woman Linda Naslund—once again brought assiduous attention and characteristic good humor to the many tasks associated with Story Week, as have the rest of the dedicated office and computer lab part-time and student staff. Thanks also to Katie Corboy for organizational help, Julia Borcherts for grant writing, and Jessica Tierney for photography and other work. And a particular debt goes to the supportive, innovative, and hard-working faculty of the Fiction Writing Department, especially Associate Chair Patricia McNair, for excellent ideas and participation throughout the process. Thanks to faculty member Alexis Pride for organizing the outreach event. Finally, we all owe a large thank you to professors emeriti John Schultz and Betty Shiflett for their vision in starting the Story Workshop® writing program at Columbia College over forty years ago and for their continued contributions to what today is one of the largest and best programs in the nation.

A particular thank you goes to Booklist Associate Editor Donna Seaman for creative counsel and downright wisdom in advising on all of the authors and books that the rest of us mere mortals do not have time to read. Thanks go to the inspirational leader of the President’s Club and MFA in Creative Writing alum, Marcia Lazar, who first saw the promising connection between Story Week and the Conversations in the Arts series; to Bill Young and Midwest Media, Inc. for his vast knowledge, considerable insights and willingness to escort Ms. Oates; to Barry Benson for his work and his Literacy Chicago partnership; to impresario, alum, and friend Joe Shanahan for advice and for opening up his Metro doors to us; to Sulzer Regional Library Director Mary Jo Godziela for helping to organize alumni workshops; and to Chicago Public Library Commissioner Mary Dempsey, the indefatigable Leah Vaselopulos, Gerri Keane, and Annie Tully at the Harold Washington Library for yet another wonderful Story Week collaboration.

Great thanks go to the Illinois Humanities Council, which had been the first granting agency twelve years ago to see the potential of the festival, for a major grant this year in support of Story Week. Thanks to the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, for their grant, which helps make Story Week possible and which came in a year of budget cuts. (Advocate for arts funding!) And, of course, thanks to our corporate and other sponsors: Coca-Cola, the Follett Higher Education Group, Southwest Airlines, the Chicago Public Library, the Hilton Chicago, Metro, Martyrs’ Restaurant and Pub, Sheffield’s Beer Garden, Caribou Coffee, and TimeOut Chicago Magazine. Their generous support of this festival expresses their commitment to the literary arts and is essential to its health and programming.

Thanks to the Office of Institutional Advancement, especially Vice President Eric Winston, as well as Director of Event Operations Diana Cazares and Corporate Relations Director Joe Green for their work on the Conversation in the Arts collaboration and Story Week. Thanks to Associate Vice President of Marketing & Communications Mark Lloyd and his wonderful staff, especially Micki Leventhal and Brenda Berman, for support in and beyond publicity; to Director of Alumni Relations Josh Culley-Foster for sound advice and unflagging support; and to Mary Forde and Robert Gauldin at Creative and Printing Services for going beyond the call time and again for us.

Finally, sincere thanks go to President Warrick L. Carter, Provost/Senior Vice President Steve Kapelke; Vice President for Academic Affairs Louise Love, and Dean of the School of Fine and Performing Arts Eliza Nichols and Associate Dean Jim MacDonald for their leadership, commitment to the Columbia College Chicago mission, and ongoing encouragement of Story Week and Fiction Writing Department programs.

Most of all, thanks to you for attending and participating in this twelfth Story Week Festival of Writers. Enjoy yourselves, and please come again!

– Randall Albers
    Fiction Writing Department Chair   
    Founding Producer, Story Week Festival of Writers