Barbara Mahany spent nearly three decades as a reporter and writer at the Chicago Tribune. She is now a freelance journalist and author of four collections of essays. Her first, Slowing Time: Seeing the Sacred Outside Your Kitchen Door, has been called “balm for the hurried heart,” and “a field guide into your holiest hours.” Her second book, Motherprayer: Lessons in Loving, explores the sacred mysteries of mothering—its sorrows, joys, trembles, hallelujahs, and the tumble of questions without answers.
Her latest, which debuted earlier this autumn, The Stillness of Winter: Sacred Blessings of the Season, is a "gift book," which basically means a pretty little book you might delight in holding in your hand, or tucking in your pocket, or slipping onto your bedside table. It's a lovely, fetchingly-compact tome and we have done just that with it in Bellingham and Laguna Beach, respectively. 
A pediatric oncology nurse before taking up journalism, Barb ever is drawn to deeply human stories, where she has displayed a nurse’s knack for tapping into the hearts of those whose story she is telling.
She counts among her life’s treasures the hundreds of letters she’s received from readers who tell her they’ve clipped one of her stories and tucked it in a wallet, a bedroom drawer, or slipped it in a plastic sleeve and carried it wherever they’ve gone. One such fellow, the Pigeon Man of Lincoln Square, who was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver one cold December’s eve, died clutching a laminated copy of the story she had written about him three years earlier. 
Barb still writes regularly on her longtime blog, Pull Up A Chair. We suggest you do.

Website: BarbaraMahany.com
Instagram: @barbara.ann.mahany
Twitter: @BarbaraMahany

Terri Hemmert is an absolute legend in the world of rock 'n' roll radio. She's been on the air at Chicago's WXRT (93.1 FM) radio station for 47 years, beginning with the overnight shift in 1973. In 1981, she became the city's first female morning drive personality in 1981, before moving to the midday slot in 1992 where she stayed until her retirement last year. A lifelong music lover and an OG Beatles fan, she still host's XRT's "Breakfast with the Beatles" every Sunday despite having officially retired from the radio station in 2019. A musicologist who has taught the history of rock and soul at Chicago's Columbia College and other schools for decades, in 2010 Terri was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame. Her work also has been featured at the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, and in honor of her 40th anniversary on the air, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel declared December 18, 2013
"Terri Hemmert Day" in the City of Chicago. 

Terri's Very Active Facebook Page

Terri explores the history of rock & soul
​
​National Radio Hall of Fame

Greta Chapin-McGill is a Black feminist artist who believes the narrative of her art is a living document, evolving in phases. The most important lesson she says she has learned has been "to get out of my own way and let the art lead me.” She is  drawn to artists, male and female, whose sensibilities are able to look intimately at the feminine mystic. 
“Women express openly among themselves and in every venue they inhabit emotion and spirituality," Greta says. To her, feminism means having the unparalleled physical strength literally to push humanity forward. "Feminism silently and most profoundly influences my work, she says.
"Women are the species I know best.” 
 
Reared in Washington, D.C., Greta has lived in New York, New Mexico, and Firenze, Italy. 
“My work is abstractly real. The techniques are driven by classical art 'isms,' indigenous tribal art, and my own unique ancestral DNA. I spend time reading, studying, and collecting mentors to further my art," she says. Her great influences include Wilfredo Lam, Picasso, Matisse, Leon Berkowitz, Alma Thomas, and contemporary artists with whom she converses with about art, politics, and concepts of life, such as  Lillian Burwell,  the late Jack Whitten, Oliver Lee Jackson, Akili Anderson, Alonzo Davis, and Indigenous  artist Patricia Michaels. 
“I am driven to tell the story of my time through the eyes of a Black American woman, a feminist and global citizen,” Greta says. 
 
Instagram: ChapinMcGill (where many of her works pictured are for sale—DM her!)
Facebook: Greta Chapin-McGill

Kelley Weber is an actor, teacher, spiritual director, and knitter. Originally from Connecticut, she has been teaching theater and acting professionally in St. Louis for the last 25 years. She was a founding member of St. Louis' Mustard Seed Theater, which explored our relationship with God and our ethical responsibility to the world.
​Most recently she won the St. Louis Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy for her role as Bodie in Tennessee Williams' A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur for The Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis. As kids grow and move off to college and beyond, Kelley is looking toward second-half-of-life work outside the theater, helping bring to life people's sacred stories as a spiritual director. She recently graduated from Aquinas Institute of Theology. 

Instagram: @kells_shwell
and @a_spiral_space
Kelley's website: www.aspiral.space 
Kelley's Substack: A Spiral Space
Poe in the Park

​NUULY (Kelley's code)

WestKnits on Instagram

Teri Hansen is an actress, singer and writer. Her film and TV credits include Into the Water, Street Scene, FBI: Most Wanted, The Blacklist, Law & Order: SVU, and Orange is the New Black. On stage, she’s performed in An American in Paris, The Sound Of Music, Camelot (opposite Robert Goulet), The Music Man, Boys From Syracuse, and Show Boat, as well as in concert as a soloist with Marvin Hamlisch, the Boston Pops, the National Symphony, and multiple operatic roles throughout North America and Europe.
Her writing credits include Into the Water (screenplay) and CHÉRI (music & book, adaptation of Colette’s CHÉRI). Teri also holds an honorary PdD (doctor of fine arts) from Central Michigan University. 

Teri's website: TeriDaleHansen.com
Teri on Facebook: TeriDHansen
Into the Water on Facebook
IndieGogo for Into the Water

Nikki Kimbrough is a TV personality, Broadway performer, producer, director, personal trainer and entrepreneur. She’s the CEO and founder of Get Fit with Nik, Inc. She made her Broadway debut as Etta James in the Broadway musical A Night with Janis Joplin. She is the executive director and owner of the Harlem All-Stars Theater Group, where their mission is to create extraordinary theater experiences that educate, encourage and inspire underserved youth.  With her boyfriend Billy Davis, she co-created, a live Zoom podcast/talk show called The Amputee and His Girl: "chronicles of a couple living the entrepreneurial lifestyle while on the grind in NYC with only three legs.”
During the COVID lockdown, Nikki also created The Ladies First Chit-Chat Crew Talk Show, “where we honor the voice of the everyday woman,” which airs at 11 a.m. EST every Saturday on Zoom and Facebook Live. 

 Instagram: @getfitwithnik   
Facebook: Nikki Kimbrough
Facebook: Get Fit with Nik  
Website: GetFitWithNik.com  ​
Instagram: @theladiesfirstchitchatcrew 

 Billy Davis is a musician, athlete, personal trainer, real estate agent, and entrepreneur. 
  In May 2012, Billy survived a horrific motorcycle accident that took his left leg above the knee. He spent more than four months in rehab and endured nine surgeries, after which he returned to personal training just six months after his accident. Always up for a challenge, less than a year after that, Billy returned to cycling, joining the Wiggle Your Toes and Achilles Triathlon teams, which led to his first triathlon in the summer of 2015 and subsequently to an Iron Man competition. Billy has documented much of his training through social media and he’s been a daily source of inspiration for thousands of people around the world.   
After living in the NYC area for the better part of 20 years, Billy became a licensed real estate salesperson and a member of The Signature Team at Compass Real Estate. During the COVID lockdown, wit his girlfriend Nikki Kimbrough, he co-created the live Zoom podcast/talk show The Amputee and His Girl, "chronicles of a couple living the entrepreneurial lifestyle while on the grind in NYC with only three legs.”
 
www.theamputeeandhisgirl.com 
Instagram: @theamputeeandhisgirl 
Facebook: The Amputee and His Girl 
 Billy's Instagram: @realestatetriathlete 
The Black & White Cookies

Originally from Minnesota, Rob Laqui is a New York City-based creative producer and first generation Filipino-American. Presently, he is the production coordinator for NT America, the North American producing office for the National Theatre of Great Britain, and an associate producer with Octopus Theatricals (founded by Tony and Grammy Award-winning producer Mara Isaacs). Rob also is a co-founder of The Industry Standard Group LLC, which addresses the lack of representation and diversity in commercial arts and entertainment investing and producing.  
  
Before Rob's producing career, he performed as an actor, dancer, and puppeteer, in New York City (including Here Lies Love at the Public Theater), as a member of various companies including LaMama, and in tours nationally and internationally, including War Horse and Cirque du Soleil's Toruk. Additionally, over the years Rob has served as a choreographer, director, production spokesperson, press representative for various productions, ​puppet captain, and puppet builder. 
 
The Industry Standard Group 
Rob's Website: RobLaqui.com
Instagram: @roblaqui  
Twitter: @rmlaqui ​

Ben Davis is a singer/actor originally from Indianapolis. He has lived in New York City for the last 19 years. Ben enjoys an international concert career and has been seen on TV and in films around the world.
​
Instagram: @thisBenDavis
​Twitter: @BJDavis​
Website: Benjamin Jay Davis 
​Soundcloud: BJ Davis