August 17, 2026 — (Chicago, IL) — The two-day Printers Row Lit Fest, the largest free literary event in the Midwest, September 12-13 from 10am to 6pm, will feature an expansive roster of Black novelists, journalists, historians, poets, scholars, children’s authors, educators, performers and cultural leaders whose work explores Black history and identity, Chicago’s neighborhoods and communities, race and democracy, social justice, family, music, sports and the broader American experience.
“Taken together, this is far more than a collection of author appearances,” said Amy Danzer, Printers Row Lit Fest program director. “It is a cross-section of Black Chicago and Black America—writers documenting history, poets redefining language, journalists challenging conventional narratives, scholars recovering stories that have been overlooked, artists creating new forms of expression, and cultural leaders connecting those traditions to the next generation.”
Among the most prominent is Geoff Bennett, PBS NewsHour co-anchor and author of Blackout: Reporting on Race and the Untold Stories of American Journalism, who brings his perspective as one of the nation’s leading Black journalists to the Lit Fest on Sunday, September 13, at 12pm on the Digital Realty Stage, West Polk Street at Plymouth Court.
Dolen Perkins-Valdez, the New York Times bestselling author and recipient of the NAACP Image Award and Black Caucus of the American Library Association Fiction Award, will discuss her acclaimed novel Happy Land with Chicago journalist and author Natalie Y. Moore. Happy Land draws on the little-known history of a self-governing Black community founded by formerly enslaved people in the mountains of North Carolina. Perkins-Valdez’s Take My Hand, inspired by the real-life experiences of Black women subjected to involuntary medical experimentation, won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work.
Moore, whose The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation examines the history and contemporary consequences of segregation in Chicago, brings a particularly strong local perspective to the conversation.
The festival’s Black literary roster extends well beyond its headliners:
Dawn Turner, award-winning journalist and author and former Chicago Tribune columnist, will bring her celebrated memoir Three Girls from Bronzeville, a deeply personal examination of race, opportunity, friendship and sisterhood centered on three Black girls growing up on Chicago’s South Side. The book was named a New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by BuzzFeed and Real Simple. Turner also served as a Pulitzer Prize commentary juror and was a Nieman Journalism Fellow at Harvard.
LaShawn Harris, an award-winning historian of Black women’s history and Professor of History at Michigan State University, will discuss her newest book, Tell Her Story: Eleanor Bumpurs & the Police Killing That Galvanized New York City. The book tells the story of the 66-year-old Black grandmother whose 1984 killing by New York police became a catalyst for community activism and the movement against racist policing. Harris’s first book, Sex Workers, Psychics, and Number Runners, won both the Organization of American Historians’ Darlene Clark Hine Award and the Philip Taft Labor Prize.
Atima Omara, named to Ebony magazine’s Power 100 and Jet magazine’s 40 Under 40, is the author of The Instigators: How Black Women Are Essential to Democracy, and What We Can Learn from Them. Drawing on nearly two decades in political organizing and advocacy, Omara examines
the often-underrecognized role Black women have played in building and defending American democracy.
Taylor Byas, a Black Chicago native, brings one of the festival’s most decorated recent poetry collections, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times. Inspired by The Wiz, the collection follows a Black woman’s journey from Chicago’s South Side into adulthood and back home. It won the Maya Angelou Book Award and Chicago Review of Books Award in Poetry and was also recognized with the Ohio Book Award and a Black Caucus of the American Library Association honor.
avery r. young, Chicago’s first Poet Laureate and a 2023 inductee into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame, will bring his distinctive spoken-word tradition to the festival. His collection neck|bone: visual verses explores Black experience, masculinity, memory and place through a hybrid of poetry and visual language.
Chicago poet, performer and cultural organizer Marvin Tate, a former Chicago poetry slam champion and longtime force in the city’s experimental arts scene, has published Schoolyard of Broken Dreams and The Amazing Mister Orange. His work blends poetry, music, humor, improvisation and performance, and he has collaborated with artists including Theaster Gates and Angel Olsen.
Ugochi Nwaogwugwu, the multidisciplinary poet, singer, songwriter, composer and founder of Spirit Speaks, brings a distinctly Pan-African perspective. A member of Chicago’s poetry community and London’s Malika’s Poetry Kitchen, she created the original Ike poetry form in homage to her Igbo heritage. Her work appears in The Golden Shovel Anthology, Wherever I’m At: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry and other international collections.
Nikki Patin, a resident of Lansing, IL, whose 2024 memoir Working on Me chronicles her journey through trauma, healing and self-discovery, is a multidisciplinary artist, educator and advocate who has performed and taught nationally and internationally. She is the founder and executive producer of Surviving the Mic and received the 2024 Leadership Award from The Network. In 2014, she addressed the United Nations in Geneva on behalf of Black women survivors of sexual violence.
Reshona Landfair, formerly the face of the RCA/BMG recording group 4 The Cause, makes her literary debut with Who’s Watching Shorty?: Reclaiming Myself from the Shame of R. Kelly’s Abuse.
The deeply personal 2026 memoir recounts Landfair’s experience as a teenager caught in R. Kelly’s orbit and her journey toward reclaiming her voice and identity. Landfair is now a community-health professional and founder of Project Refine, a mentoring program for young women.
James Stewart III, a Chicago writer, educator and arts organizer, will discuss his debut novel Defiant Acts, a 2025 novel about a Black working-class man, his interracial family and the complicated realities of race, family and economic survival in a predominantly white Chicago suburb. The novel won a 2025 Foreword INDIES Bronze Award for Multicultural Fiction and a 2026 Literature Award from the Friends of American Writers, and Stewart was named to Newcity’s 2025 Lit 50.
Tisa Bryant, whose groundbreaking Unexplained Presence was reissued by Wave Books in 2024 with a new afterword by Pulitzer Prize winner Margo Jefferson, explores Black presence and absence in film, literature and visual art through an innovative blend of criticism, fiction and hybrid prose. Bryant is also co-editor of War Diaries, an anthology of Black gay men’s desire and survival that was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Her recent book, Residual weaves together memories from her life of her late mother and her research into the lives of other Black women writers and artists.
Alfred L. Martin Jr., Department Chair and associate professor of Cinematic Arts at the University of Miami, is the author of The Generic Closet: Black Gayness and the Black-Cast Sitcom and editor of Rolling: Blackness and Mediated Comedy, bringing scholarship on Black representation, sexuality and popular culture to the festival.
dezireé a. brown, publishing as Dez Brown, is a Black queer nonbinary poet and scholar whose debut collection, they/she/he: ritual to forget your (un)becoming, won the 2025 Joe W. Bratcher Prize. A Pushcart Prize nominee and assistant professor of Creative Writing and African and African American Studies at Earlham College, Brown’s work examines identity, transformation and liberation.
The festival also features Jamia Wilson, award-winning author of books including Young, Gifted, and Black, Together We Rise and Step Into Your Power, and a publishing executive whose career has included leadership of the Feminist Press and her current role as a vice president and executive editor at Random House.
Sports, culture and journalism intersect with Robert “Scoop” Jackson, the Chicago-born sports journalist, author and cultural critic whose books include The Game Is Not a Game: The Power, Protest, and Politics of American Sports and his collaboration with basketball Hall of Famer George Gervin on Ice: Why I Was Born to Score. Jackson is a former senior writer and editor at ESPN, SLAM and XXL and now writes for the Chicago Sun-Times.
The festival’s broader roster also includes Nikesha Elise Williams, two-time Emmy Award-winning producer and author of The Seven Daughters of Dupree; Danielle Bainbridge, Northwestern University professor, PBS host and author of Currencies of Cruelty, which examines the history of Black performers subjected to enslavement and exploitation; and Heather Ireland Robinson, executive director of the Jazz Institute of Chicago and a longtime Chicago arts and education leader.
Other Black writers and cultural voices appearing include Ed Taylor, Ashley Jordan, Morgan Campbell, Reshona Landfair, Nikki Patin, Marvin Tate, Ugochi Nwaogwugwu, Leslé Honoré and others, making the Black presence at this year’s festival remarkably broad in both subject matter and generation.
And the celebration extends beyond the written word.
Internationally acclaimed Chicago dancer and choreographer Homer Hans Bryant, founder of the Chicago Multicultural Dance Center and creator of the groundbreaking Hiplet technique combining classical ballet with hip-hop and other dance forms, will bring the festival’s celebration of Black creativity to young audiences and families.
With more than 200 authors, presenters, eight Pulitzer Prize winners, booksellers, publishers and something for readers of every age, the 41st Annual Printers Row Lit Fest offers an opportunity to explore the festival through a unique literary and cultural lens. Admission is free. For a complete schedule and list of all the authors, programs and presenters, visit www.PrintersRowLitFest.org.
