Essay Fiesta to Celebrate Five Years of Live Lit
Essay Fiesta will celebrate five years Nov. 17 at the Book Cellar.
At the very first Essay Fiesta performance on Nov. 16, 2009, founders Keith Ecker and Alyson Lyon didn’t know what to expect. They’d invited a handful of writers they knew to read essays for strangers they hoped would come out for it, at the Book Cellar in Lincoln Square. The pair were in then-uncharted territory, seeking an audience for the live performance of written essays and first-person narratives. Live literature was new and Chicago, now the art form’s epicenter, was the wild west.