Harold Washington Library Center
Celebrate Short Story Month at Chicago Public Library with a panel discussion with authors Yasmina Din Madden, Abby Geni, Barry Pearce and Cynthia Pelayo, moderated by Michele Morano. Yasmina Din Madden is a Vietnamese American writer whose short story collection You Know Nothing: Stories was published by Northwestern University Press in February 2026. Her fiction and nonfiction have been published in Electric Literature, The Idaho Review, The Fairy Tale Review, and other journals. She is the winner of the 2022 Oxford Flash Prize, and she teaches creative writing and literature at Drake University. Abby Geni is the author of the novels The Wildlands, The Lightkeepers, and Children of the Wolf, as well as the short story collections The Last Animal and The Body Farm. Her books have been translated into seven languages and have won the Barnes & Noble Discover Award and the Chicago Review of Books Awards, among other honors. Her short stories and essays have appeared in dozens of literary publications, including Best American Mystery and Suspense, The Missouri Review, Epoch, Ninth Letter, and New Stories from the Midwest. Geni is a faculty member at StoryStudio Chicago and a recipient of the Iowa Fellowship. Barry Pearce is the author of the new book The Plan of Chicago. Barry Pearce’s parents immigrated to the U.S. and settled on the South Side of Chicago, where he grew up with six siblings. He graduated from Northwestern University – the first in his family to attend college – and earned an MFA in creative writing in New Mexico. He has won the Nelson Algren Award Grand Prize, an Illinois Arts Council Award, and The Mercedes Delos Jacobs Book Prize. Pearce lives in Chicago, where he ghostwrites nonfiction books and occasionally teaches. The Plan of Chicago has an unusual structure – nine linked stories set in nine Chicago neighborhoods – and unusual range, with characters of different genders, ethnic groups, classes and backgrounds. Chicago features heavily in these characters’ plans, though the plan of Chicago – shaped by divisions of race, class, gender, violence – often forces them apart. Despite that division, incongruous lives intersect here in unexpected ways. Cynthia Pelayo is a Bram Stoker Award winning and International Latino Book Award winning author and poet. Pelayo writes fairy tales that blend genre and explore concepts of grief, mourning, and cycles of violence. She is the author of Lotería, Santa Muerte, The Missing, Poems of My Night, Into the Forest and All the Way Through, Children of Chicago, Crime Scene, The Shoemaker's Magician, Forgotten Sisters, Vanishing Daughters, as well as dozens of standalone short stories and poems. In addition to a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Pelayo also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Columbia College Chicago, a Master of Science from Roosevelt University in Chicago, and she is currently pursuing a PhD in English. Moderator Michele Morano holds a PhD in English and an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from the University of Iowa. She is the author of two memoirs-in-essays, Grammar Lessons and Like Love. Her short work has appeared in many anthologies and journals, including Best American Essays, The Sun, Fourth Genre, Brevity, Ninth Letter, and WaveForm: Twenty-First-Century Essays by Women. She has received honors and awards from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the American Association of University Women, the Illinois Arts Council, and the MacDowell Colony, among others. Michele teaches at DePaul University in Chicago, where she also directs the graduate program in creative writing and publishing. How to Attend: Doors to the Multipurpose Room open at 5:30 p.m., and seating is first come, first served (200 capacity). Books are available for purchase, and the authors will autograph books at the conclusion of the program. This event will also take place live on CPL's YouTube channel and CPL's Facebook page. You'll be able to ask questions during the event as well! Can't make it to the live stream? We'll archive the video on YouTube to watch later. Accessibility Automatic captioning is available via Facebook and YouTube's closed captioning setting. Need sign language interpretation or other accessibility assistance for this event? Please call (312) 747-8184 or email access@chipublib.org to request accommodations. Requests must be made at least 14 business days before the event.
