The monthly OUTspoken LGBTQ storytelling series at Sidetrack, held the first Tuesday of each month, always features an eclectic mix of voices, and the Oct. 4 program is no different. The event is free, located at 3349 N. Halsted, doors open at 6 p.m., stories at 7 p.m.
This month's featured performers are:
— Karen Genelly, a native Chicagoan who loves to tell stories. Since retiring from the Chicago Public Schools she has been traveling the world, writing personal narrative stories, taking classes and telling stories at such venues as This Much is True, Homewood Stories, Do Not Submit, Tuesday Funk, Is This a Thing, You're Being Ridiculous, The Moth and of open mics throughout the city.
— Ruben Quesada, an editor, critic and scholar, serves as the essays editor for The Rumpus and senior editor for Queen Mob's Teahouse. He has received fellowships and residencies from the Red Lodge Clay Center, Lambda Literary Writers Retreat, Napa Valley Writers' Conference, Vermont Studio Center, Santa Fe Art Institute, Squaw Valley Community of Writers and CantoMundo. He is working on a collection of poetry about Latinos in media and art, and also he is editing an anthology of essays on Latino poetry and poetics.
— Jackie Boyd is the owner of The Care Plan, the country's first LGBTQ-focused healthcare management company. She also is co-founder of Project Fierce Chicago, which creates housing opportunities for LGBTQ young people, and director of music with Broadway United Methodist Church.
— Kate Hawbaker-Krohn is a bespectacled and bow-tied poet, playwright and performer with roots in the Midwest and the Deep South. Exploring the mythology of family and Southern Queer Girlhood through her storytelling, Hawbaker-Krohn brings high-energy, deep-feels and performance to savor slowly.
Bryan McHenry has been a geek from birth. In seventh grade he was forced to stand up in front of the class and explain that he would be unable to attend band camp because he had to stay home and work on his robot. McHenry has a master's in Music from the University of Memphis and a master of fine arts in directing and screenwriting from Columbia College. He is a writer, director, teacher and performer who has worked in film, television, opera, theater and even the occasional standup gig. He is currently writing, directing and editing for a TV start-up in Chicago and trying to figure out how to turn years of expensive therapy into a screenplay that might actually pay for itself.
— Kenneth Corrigan is a lifelong bookseller who works in the rare and vintage department for a major online bookseller. Besides book selling, he has worked on environmental issues and urban gardening, likes yoga and bicycles, and keeps the poetry he writes in the filing cabinet.
