Nicole Blackwood

Patrick Hinds (left) moderates an "Ethics in Amateur Investigations as Podcasts" panel featuring Sarah Turney, Laurah Norton, Tim Pilleri and Ottavia Zappala.

True Crime Podcast Festival saw survivors, advocates and listeners engage in communal curiosity

July 15, 2019 at 10:19 a.m.

At Saturday's inaugural True Crime Podcast Festival, everyone was speaking the same language. In one live show, tucked away on the seventh floor of the Magnificent Mile Marriott, a podcaster...

Angelíca Grace, second right, leads other performers in rehearsal for About Face Youth Theatre's upcoming production called 20/20 on July 3, 2019.

About Face Youth Theatre’s ’20/20′ is a living, breathing queer retrospective

July 10, 2019 at 10:47 a.m.

In the About Face Youth Theatre rehearsal space, a group of 12 actors, age 13 to 24, stand in a circle. They're in the preliminary stages of choreography, and the...

Bring comedy show ‘Freshman’ your tired, your cringe-worthy, your terrible teenage art

July 9, 2019 at 10:42 a.m.

In 2015, comedian Annie Russell found a Word document on an old, forgotten hard drive. On it was an ancient relic, lost to the known world: a one-act Russell wrote...

Actor Cameron Boyce, 20, died of an epileptic seizure Saturday. Boyce had been a star on Disney Channel since 2011.

When a celebrity dies, it can trigger grief and sadness. Here’s what parents need to know to help kids process Cameron Boyce’s death

July 9, 2019 at 1:11 p.m.

There are handbooks on most types of grief, devoted to the internal processes of loss in both youth and adults. But the handbooks have yet to catch up to the...

Plus-size burlesque troupe The Femme FATales is serving ‘fat liberation on a silver platter’

July 2, 2019 at 3:32 p.m.

Good burlesque, the kind that sticks its landing, requires a performer to know their body innately. It's one thing to teasingly reveal skin, said burlesque dancer Carina Shero. It's another...

Chicago native Zach Barack is the first openly transgender actor in a Marvel Studios film, making mainstream blockbuster history.

How ‘Spider-Man’ star and Evanston native Zach Barack, the first openly transgender actor featured in a Marvel film, shed his own secret identity

July 2, 2019 at 10:02 a.m.

If you haven't been living under a particularly obtrusive boulder for the last two decades, you know Spider-Man's story by heart. The Marvel Studios franchise has seen three actors in...

Andersonville sex shop Early to Bed has served Chicago’s queer community for almost two decades of change, one rainbow appendage at a time

June 20, 2019 at 3:14 p.m.

At first glance, Early to Bed could be a toy store: The walls are drenched violet and periwinkle blue, and a front display includes a "Queer Heroes Coloring Book." At...

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