StorySlam 2025
Thursday, October 16
7:00 - 10:00
Once again at our traditional home at Fitzgerald’s Nightclub in Berwyn with delicious food from Babygold BBQ.
Thank you to our auction prize donors!
Get your Tickets now — including Early Bird tickets (regular ticket prices go up to $100 on August 1)
Our storytellers this year include:
Diane Kastiel
Diane Kastiel is the producer and host of First Person Live. She’s a three-time winner of the Moth StorySLAM; her work has been featured on the NPR’s Moth Radio Hour, its podcast, and at Moth special events. Diane has told stories on stage at Second City, the Park West and Steppenwolf, among other Chicago theaters and many unconventional settings. Diane works with schools, libraries, community centers and homeless shelters to bring storytelling to a wider audience and leads storytelling workshops at Northwestern University. Diane is an alumna of The Second City Conservatory and the University of Chicago’s Great Books program. She also has an MBA from Northwestern University’s business school…just in case.
Lawrence Wood
Like Diane Kastiel (see above), Lawrence has won the Moth StorySLAM three times. Unlike Ms. Kastiel, he is a supervisory attorney at Legal Action Chicago, which represents people who are living in poverty. For 22 years he was a Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School, where he taught a seminar on housing and poverty law that United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia dismissed as “a waste of time.” After winning The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest a record-setting eight times, he wrote a book about the contest called, Your Caption Has Been Selected (St Martin’s Press, June 4, 2024). Bob Mankoff, the former cartoon editor at The New Yorker, wrote the foreward. Please buy as many copies as you can afford.
Lawrence’s book, Your Caption has been Selected is available here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250333407/yourcaptionhasbeenselected/
Illustration credit: Benjamin Schwartz
Michele McGuire
Singer-Songwriter and Chicago native Michele McGuire has been writing and performing music for over 15 years. She cleverly combines candid lyrics with charming stage banter and a soulful voice that will stick with you long after the show ends.
Loren Williams
Loren grew up in Ohio and graduated from THE Ohio State University. After time in Israel and Detroit, he settled in Chicago, where he and his wife, Ruth, raised three children. After 30+ years in corporate computer hardware, Loren joined PCs for People, a nonprofit turning "retired" corporate computers into affordable home technology for low-income families. In his free time, Loren enjoys biking, traveling, and exploring Chicago’s diverse culinary scene, tracking how many international cuisines he can sample!
Get your Tickets now — including Early Bird tickets (regular ticket prices go up to $100 on August 1)
Each Premium Ticket purchased earns Farther Foundation a $100 matching donation!