StoryStudio Chicago is blessed with a talented, creative and encouraging faculty of instructors and an ambitious and helpful staff.
Jill Pollack
Jill Pollack is the founder and director of StoryStudio Chicago. Since founding the studio in 2003, Jill has focused her attention on teaching both fiction and creative non-fiction courses, and providing a wide variety of experiences in writing and publishing for StoryStudio writers. Jill leads StoryStudio's Words for Work program, teaching business writing to those who have to write at work.
Prior to founding StoryStudio Chicago, Jill applied her affinity for technology, specializing in Internet/Intranet strategic planning and development. She is co-creator of a training program on user-based multimedia design, editor of a computer-based culture and history course, and has created "virtual tours" using emerging technology. Representative clients include Motorola, McDonald's Corporation, Lands' End, Sears Roebuck and Co., Equity Office Properties, Lyondell Chemical Company, DePaul University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Jill was an award-winning communications consultant, writer and editor. Her work has appeared on the Internet, in newspapers, magazines, trade periodicals and political journals. She has extensive experience developing communications campaigns, large-scale Internet applications, print communications, public relations campaigns, marketing materials, and videos. Jill has authored three books for young adults: Shirley Chisholm, named a Best Book by Science and Film Magazine; Lesbian and Gay Families: Redefining Parenting in America; and Women on the Hill, a history of women in Congress.
Jill began her career in advertising at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Her marketing talents and love for the arts took her to Chicago where she entered the non-profit arena leading development and marketing efforts for a regional theatre.
To further hone her public relations skills, Jill became a senior account executive for a public relations/marketing firm where she planned and executed media campaigns, advertising and promotions for clients in retail, arts and entertainment, business to business, real estate, architecture, and professional services.
Jill is the founder of the Chicago Literary Alliance, a Past President of Women in Communications, Inc. (Chicago chapter), and has been a member of the Association of Multimedia Communications, DigitalEve, ChicWIT, JUF High Tech division, National Writers Union, Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, and a Business Volunteer for the Arts with the Arts & Business Council of Chicago. She is the recipient of a Silver Trumpet Award from the Publicity Club of Chicago, a Silver Quill Award from the International Association of Business Communicators, and a Clarion award from Women in Communications (national).
When she is not running the studio or teaching, she is working on her novel.
M. Molly Backes
M. Molly Backes has taught students of all ages and abilities. As an English teacher in a struggling rural New Mexico school, she designed and taught curricula to a wide spectrum of students, with a close consideration of state and national standards and benchmarks. In honor of National Novel Writing Month, Molly got 150 middle schoolers to write their own novels. As a teacher, she developed classroom writing workshops, pushed for greater emphasis on interdisciplinary writing in core classes, ran trainings for educators in writing workshop implementation, led her school’s Educational Plan for Student Success Goal Team and served as English Department Chair in 2007.
Her YA novel The Princesses of Iowa is forthcoming from Candlewick Press. In addition to novels, Molly blogs at Bittersweet, has been a guest blogger at Puffery, Brood, and This Wasn’t in the Plan, and is a frequent contributor to StoryStudio’s own blog Cooler by the Lake.
After moving from New Mexico, Molly found her way into the Advanced Writers Workshop. These days, she gets her middle schooler fix as a Poet-in-Residence through the Poetry Center of Chicago. Molly is the Assistant Director at StoryStudio, where she’ll be happy to answer all your questions about life, the universe, and all our classes.
Kate Ancell
Kate Ancell is a writer and journalist, who has covered every topic under the sun and lived to tell the tale. While living in London Kate was a managing editor for Conde Nast, wrote an award-winning cookbook and argued for American Thanksgiving and Christmas Present for Britain's Food Illustrated. She also regularly covers Mind Body Soul, travel, home design and everything in between for magazines as disparate as Hallmark, Vogue and Brides. She is very excited to be a part of StoryStudio Chicago.
Ellen Blum Barish
Ellen Blum Barish has a masters degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Her feature articles have appeared in Newsweek, Self and The Chicago Tribune. She is author of a collection of award-winning essays based on her syndicated newspaper columns on women’s issues and family life. Many of her personal essays have aired as radio commentaries on WBEZ-Chicago Public Radio’s Eight-Forty-Eight program. She has taught writing at many Chicago-area universities including Northwestern University.
Chad Chmielowicz
Chad Chmielowicz is a 2003 graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His work and reviews have appeared in the The Journal, American Book Review, and elsewhere. He has translated poetry from Burmese, Mongolian, and Polish, sadly speaking none of them. He works for a Chicago-based e-learning company creating training for a variety of companies and industries.Pete Coco
Pete Coco's fiction has appeared in The Madison Review, The 2ndhand, This is Grand and has been featured in the "Featherproof Light Reading" series of online mini-books. He received his MFA from The Iowa Writers Workshop, where he served as Fiction Coordinator for the Talk/Art Reading series. His non-fiction appears regularly in Timeout:Chicago and has also been featured in American Book Review and Econoculture.Annette Gendler
Annette Gendler is a creative nonfiction writer. Her work has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Under the Sun, South Loop Review and on flashquake.com and is forthcoming in Natural Bridge and Kaleidoscope. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte. In addition to teaching memoir at StoryStudio, she works as an English instructor at two community colleges, and does PR/advertising work for her children’s school. She lives in Hyde Park with her husband and three children.Mary Hamilton
Mary Hamilton is the co-host and co-founder of the QUICKIES! Reading Series, named by Time Out Chicago as the best reading series in Chicago. Her work has been published by Smokelong, Pindeldyboz, Word Riot, Eclectica, Thieves Jargon, Northeast Performer, The Somerville News, and Featherproof Books, among others. Her work has been anthologized in the mlp press first year Anthology, Listen Up, and Best of the Web. Her chapbook, We Know What We Are, is forthcoming from Rose Metal Press.Jason Hardy
Jason Hardy loves all forms of fiction, but he has a special affection for science fiction and fantasy, which he has been reading since he was ten and writing since he was twelve. He is the author of five published novels, including Drops of Corruption and Principles of Desolation, which were both released in 2006. Just over a dozen of his short stories have been published, and he is a regular contributor to the Battlecorps web site. His work has also been published by Nth Degree and in the compilation Ghost Breakers: Sinister Sleuths.Baird Harper
Baird Harper’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Tin House, Mid-American Review, CutBank, and Best New American Voices and Best New American Voices 2010. His stories have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and received a prize in The Ledge 2008 fiction contest. He holds an M.A. in English from the University of Montana and an M.F.A in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is currently at work on a short story collection and a novel.Jack Helbig
Jack Helbig is a theater critic, arts writer, and essayist for various publications. He regularly writes for the Chicago Reader and the Daily Herald. He is also a playwright; his musical adaptation, Hotel d'Amour, written with Gregg Opelka (and based on Georges Feydeau's farce A Flea in Her Ear), was first produced by the Buffalo Theatre Company in Chicago and has since been done around the U.S. He has written two plays, Thinking of Her Made Him Think of Her, an autobiographical piece first produced by the Talisman Theatre in Elgin, Illinois, and Kitten With a Whip, produced at the Cafe Voltaire, Chicago, and three ten-minute musicals (The Adventures of Princess Snapdragon, Dry Ice and Dinner with Douglas) (New Tuners, Chicago). He and Gregg Opelka also collaborated on My Night at Jacques', a modern translation of two one-act comic operettas by Jacques Offenbach, and a new translation of Franz Lehar's classic, The Merry Widow, which earned rave reviews from both of Chicago's major dailies when it was produced last summer. He has been keeping a journal since he was in Mr. Kramer's ninth grade English class at St. Louis U. High. He now working on his 60th journal.Jen Jones
Jen Jones is a former Chicagoan who reluctantly left its cold confines for sunnier Los Angeles pastures. A full-time writer and certified Diet Coke addict, Jen has authored more than 35 middle-grade non-fiction books. Many of her recent projects have been biographies, including upcoming books on Oprah, Justin Timberlake, Orlando Bloom, and Beyonce Knowles. Her work has also appeared in a number of magazines, including Pilates Style, Ohio Today, JVibe, and Dance Spirit. Though no Joan Rivers, she has also done entertainment and red carpet reporting for E! Online and PBS Kids. In past years, Jen trolled the talk show circuit as Website Producer for "The Jenny Jones Show" and "The Sharon Osbourne Show." Along with teaching at StoryStudio Chicago, Jen also teaches creativity and writing classes in Los Angeles. She is currently in the midst of life coach certification through the Coaches Training Institute.Danny Kravitz
Danny Kravitz is a writer and screenwriter with more than eight completed screenplays. He was awarded First Place in the 1998 "Fade In" Magazine screenwriting competition and has two screenplays under option. He received his undergraduate film degree from the University of Wisconsin and is currently teaches in the undergraduate division of Columbia College.Barbara Lhota
Barbara Lhota is a published and award-winning playwright. The Studio’s production of her play, Third Person, was selected by the Boston Herald as one of the top ten plays of the 1993-94 season. She was awarded the Harold and Mimi Steinberg for Hanging by a Thread at Brandeis University. Her plays have been produced in New York and Chicago theaters as well as theaters across the country. Barbara’s plays Strangers and Romance are published in Women Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2001. Barbara is also the coauthor of four collections of 10-minute plays that are part of the Smith & Kraus Forensics Series. Barbara has taught playwriting at Brandeis University and more recently at Backstage Theater.Erin O'Neill
Erin O’Neill has published more than 200 pieces in ELLE, The Washington Post, The Chicago Sun Times, The Red Eye, SPACE Magazine and The San Clemente Times. She holds a BA in English and Sociology from Georgetown University and an MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has worked as a staff Editor at SPACE Magazine in California, a trainer with the U.S. Marine Corps in Virginia and as a freelance journalist, writer and researcher all around the nation. She is an editor and proofreader for a number of corporate clients including TBA Global Events and is also a regular contributor to CinCHouse (a subsidiary of Military.com). She currently resides in Oak Park with her husband Sonny and their dog Finley.
Melanie Pappadis
Melanie Pappadis received her MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. Her novel Searching Ana won The New School’s Fiction Chapbook Competition and was a finalist in Sarabande Books’ Mary McCarthy Prize in Fiction. Her fiction was a top 25 winner in Glimmer Train’s Very Short Fiction Contest and was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has published a book of non-fiction based on her field research in Nepal, Limbu Folklore, a collection of translated oral folklore and photographs. She currently lives and teaches in Chicago where she curates the New York based reading series Sunday Salon Chicago. She is working on her second novel.Kriste Peoples
Kriste Peoples brings her love of creative writing, teaching and storytelling all the way from Tempe, Arizona, where she earned her MFA in creative writing. She has extensive experience as a writing instructor and visiting teaching artist in Phoenix public schools. Kriste has been published in Northeast Mesa Lifestyle Magazine, Gilbert Lifestyle Magazine, ASU Student Media Special Publications, “Birds, Bees, Fire and Brimstone,” Focus Literary Journal, and has served as Associate Editor for the Hayden’s Ferry Review literary magazine. She is currently working a collected book of creative non-fiction.Cecilia Pinto
Cecilia Pinto has had her prose and poetry published in a variety of journals, including Diagram, Quarter After Eight, Fence, and Rhino. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for poetry and won the Esquire short fiction contest. Her work is forthcoming in The Seneca Review and Triquarterly and can be found online at Qartsilunini and The Mississippi Review. She is a 2009 CAAP grant recipient. Cecilia has associations with a several fine educational institutions in Chicago, StoryStudio Chicago is one of them.John Rangel
John Rangel is an independent filmmaker working out of Chicago since 2002. His short film, “An Assignment,” won a number of awards and screened on the SiTV and Showtime cable networks. He has two feature film projects in development through his production company Parkside Films. John is an Assistant Professor in the Motion Picture/Television department at the College of DuPage. He has also taught at Columbia College Chicago, Chicago Filmmakers and Facets Multimedia’s Media Bridge Program.Elizabeth Reeder
Elizabeth Reeder is a fiction writer whose short fiction has appeared in respected journals and anthologies in the UK and the US (e.g. Women’s Press, Polygon, Hanging Loose, Chapman (Edinburgh)). Recently, she had an original drama, stories and an abridgement broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Elizabeth is in her 4th year (part-time) of a Creative Writing PhD. Fiction drives her and she loves the extended love affair of writing novels. She's completed her first novel, The Fremont Inheritance. A U.S. native, Elizabeth has recently returned to Chicago after living in Scotland since 1994.Rebecca Rine-Stone
Rebecca Rine-Stone can't get enough of Story Studio. She used to work the front desk a few moons ago and now she's back! After getting her MFA in creative writing from Roosevelt University, she's now an English instructor at Harper College. Disgruntled with the waiting process in the publishing world, she decided to dig in and self-publish her first book of short, nonfiction stories, Sunbathing in a Body Cast. She has been an on-air contributor to Chicago Public Radio's 848 program and does stand-up comedy around Chicago.Sarah Terez Rosenblum
A freelance writer with an MFA in creative Writing from The School of
the Art Institute of Chicago, Sarah Terez Rosenblum’s select publications include Ignavia Press, Fictionatwork.com, The Sun Times, The Windy City Times, The Shepherd Express and Venus Magazine. She is Theater Listings Manager for centerstage.com, a twice-weekly blogger for The Chicago Sun Times, and a spinning instructor, which means sometimes she forgets where she is and hollers at Creative Writing students to feel the burn. That won’t be a problem, will it?Ranjit Souri
Ranjit Souri is an essayist, comedian, and teacher. His essay "Fireworks and Beethoven" was named a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2007. He teaches at StoryStudio Chicago (creative non-fiction writing), The Second City Training Center (improvisation and comedy writing), Northwestern University's Center for Talent Development (programs for gifted children), and The Academic Approach (GMAT and LSAT prep). Ranjit is a columnist for India Currents magazine and a member of the comedy groups Cupid Players, Stir-Friday Night!, and Siblings of Doctors. A native of Barnesville, Ohio, Ranjit has an MBA from Columbia University and a B.S. in Accounting from Case Western Reserve University.Lee Strickland
Lee Strickland’s fiction has appeared in Gettysburg Review, Sou’wester, Other Voices, StoryQuarterly, and River Oak Review. Her short stories have won an Illinois Arts Council grant and a “100 Distinguished Stories of the Year” notation in Best American Short Stories. Her non-fiction has appeared in academic journals and anthologies. She has an MFA from Warren Wilson College, and is currently at work on a novel.Mariana Swallow
Marianna Swallow is a former journalist-turned-instructor. She's been the head of M. Runge & Associates Training since 1999, teaching business skills such as Effective Business Writing and Powerful Presentations. In addition to her business writing and endless emails, she blogs about modern day etiquette and party planning. When she's not speaking by day, she's the host with the most at night. Marianna writes for www.examiner.com/chicago.Alyson Paige Warren
Alyson Paige Warren holds an MFAW from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She teaches writing at StoryStudio Chicago, Loyola University, Robert Morris University and in the “High Jump” program with the Latin School of Chicago. She has read her work all around the city and beyond, and has edited a book of poetry (Loot: Stolen Memories and Tales Out of School) by SSC alumna Jenene Ravesloot and a book of fiction (A Thousand Beautiful Things) by SSC alumna Vicky Tesmer. Paige is currently writing and editing Sex Sells: Confessions of a Victoria’s Secret Saleswench, a creative non-fiction long piece about working in retail. She is also working on two children’s books (Why Owl Does Not Sleep at Night and this is a chinchilla), which she is both writing and illustrating.
Elizabeth Wetmore
Elizabeth Wetmore is a 2002 graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a 2006-2007 recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as several grants from the Illinois Arts Council. A recent story—“Listening for Grace”—appeared in the journal Salt Flats Annual and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Other stories have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Black Warrior Review, Crab Orchard Review, and other journals. She is currently at work on a novel set in West Texas and a collection of short stories set in Phoenix, Arizona.
StoryStudio Staff
Jill Pollack
Founder and Directorjill@storystudiochicago.com
Molly Backes
Assistant Directormolly@storystudiochicago.com
Lisa Katzenberger
Scheduling & Events Coordinatorlisa@storystudiochicago.com
Allyson Kendall
Managing Editor--Onlineallyson@storystudiochicago.com
Zia the Dog
Official Mascot