Writers Week is returning for its 32nd year with an array of engaging performances and creative storytelling from Feb. 2 to Feb. 6.
While the event only takes five days, the preparation begins much earlier for Writers Week coordinators Gina Enk and Russell Anderson.
“Writers Week is a year-round project for us,” Enk said. “We try to have something for everyone during the week that they’re there.”
This year’s lineup will try to deliver. The presenters include poets and musicians, fiction and nonfiction authors, past performers and new writers. Jonathan Eig, who won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for his MLK biography KING: A Life, will be returning to Fremd for the first time in 12 years.
Meanwhile, social justice artist and novelist Tonika Johnson will take to the stage to document the history of segregation in Chicago. In 2018, her Folded Map exhibition visually accentuated the disparities that can exist between two ends of the same street. Now, she hopes to initiate new conversations and spark growth.
Joelle Charbonneau, the author of the New York Times bestselling young adult trilogy The Testing and the mother of a Fremd senior, will also be presenting on Monday. She will preview one of her newest works, which is currently in the process of being published.
Over one hundred Fremd students are also joining the lineup with pieces and topics of their own choosing. While Anderson and Enk are eager to hear all of the performances that this year’s guests have prepared, they describe the highlight of their week as student stories.
“Inevitably, the most memorable periods of the week are going to be the student periods,” Anderson said. “I know we’re going to laugh, we’re probably going to cry, and we’re going to think differently.”
Each student holds the power to “change the narrative,” as Anderson puts it. He hopes that they can use Writers Week as a vehicle of expression, or a method to convey their personal stories. And once they take the stage, that story might resonate with someone in the audience—a freshman who will be encouraged to present their own piece, or a senior who will be introduced to a future career as an author.
“It is something that we hope will inspire students to see writing as part of their lives,” Enk said. “We want them to feel comfortable in all of the different kinds of spaces that life is going to offer them.”
