City Dweller

Nick first made a name for himself as a food writer in 2006 when he co-founded the home cooking blog The Paupered Chef. He went on to be the editor of Grub Street Chicago and founding editor of Serious Eats Chicago. His food writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Newsweek, Epicurious, Baltimore Sun, Serious Eats, Grub Street, New York Magazine, and Tasting Table, among others. Nick joined the Chicago Tribune in 2016 as a food and dining reporter. He and fellow food and dining reporter Louisa Chu took over as food critics for the newspaper in 2021.

Natalie Moore is an award-winning journalist based in Chicago, whose reporting tackles race, housing, economic development, food injustice and violence. Her work has helped shift the way Chicagoans today think about segregation in the region.

Natalie’s acclaimed book The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation received the 2016 Chicago Review of Books award for nonfiction and was Buzzfeed’s best nonfiction book of 2016. She is also co-author of The Almighty Black P Stone Nation: The Rise, Fall and Resurgence of an American Gang and Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation. Haymarket Books published her play “The Billboard” in March 2022. The play is part of the 2021 Bridge Program of the National New Play Network. It was performed by 16th Street Theater in June of 2022.

Gail Morse is the Director of Volunteers for Big Apple Greeter, the world's first free “Welcome Visitor” program. Big Apple Greeter was founded in 1992 and has nearly 300 volunteers who accompany about 5,000 visitors a year to over 100 neighborhoods in all five of New York City's boroughs. Today, there are free Greeter programs in over 120 cities across more than 30 countries.

Eric Rogers is the Manager of Events and Communications at the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. He joined the Conservancy staff in early 2020 after six years at the Chicago Architecture Center, where he worked on and ultimately managed the major annual event Open House Chicago.

Eric is passionate about exploring cities by bike, transit, and foot, and photographing the built environment, particularly historic and architecturally-significant places. He holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in the Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, and has called the South Side of Chicago home since 2006.

Billy Lombardo is the 2011 Nelson Algren Award winner for Fiction. He is the author of four books of fiction – The Logic of a Rose: Chicago Stories, How to Hold a Woman, The Man with Two Arms, and Meanwhile, Roxy Mourns. His novel, How to Hold a Woman was re-issued as Morning Will Come by Tortoise Books in January 2021. 

A high school English Literature and creative writing teacher for 25 years at The Latin School of Chicago, and for nine years at other Chicago-area high schools, he now runs his own writing and editing business called Writing Pros/e.

Billy is the founder of Polyphony Lit, a global literary platform for high school writers and editors, at the core of which is a literary magazine run by an international staff of more than 200 high school editors around the world who comment on every one of the thousands of submissions that come to them every year.

Wendy Bright grew up in the Milwaukee area. She has lived in both Milwaukee and Chicago, and she was a tour guide in both cities. Her podcast, Cream City-Windy City explores the connections between Milwaukee and Chicago. Wendy currently lives in Lexington, Kentucky where she works as the Marketing and Communications Manager at Ashland, The Henry Clay Estate, a museum that promotes the legacy of statesman Henry Clay. 

Justin Kaufmann is a reporter for Axios Chicago and part of the ensemble that created Chicago4Real, a new Twitch channel that features great Chicago content. He's also part of Schadenfreude, a Chicago sketch comedy group.

Justin previously worked in Chicago radio, both at WBEZ and at WGN.

Ghian Foreman is the President and CEO of the Emerald South Economic Development Collaborative, a group that works to develop and support South Side communities through a focus on commercial-corridor expansion, sustainable housing, and workforce development. Foreman sits on several boards including serving as President of the Chicago Police Board and member of the Rebuild Foundation. He earned his BS from Florida A&M University, and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He lives in Kenwood with his wife Traci and daughter Jade.

In this episode, I speak with Ryan Tova Katz. Ryan is a Chicago-based artist and muralist. In 2009, she started her first custom art and mural company. She has painted murals in hotels, private homes, schools, restaurants, galleries, orphanages, and on buildings in 9 countries.