A little more than a year ago, the Beverly Arts Alliance threw a New Year’s Ever event called Speakeasy. Four writers – me, Erin Shea, Adriennne Samuels Gibbs and Grace Kuikman – did a live reading of their work and it functioned as a kind of demo version of The Frunchroom. Three of those four writers have read at previous versions of The Frunchroom and the fourth joins us this month.

Grace Kuikman started her career as a feature writer on a daily newspaper in Arkansas (long story), and been a freelance writer her whole adult life. After several freelance assignments for the paper, she took over as editor of The Villager for the Beverly Area Planning Association (BAPA) when her oldest child was still a baby. He is a grown up now, and Grace still enjoys learning and writing about the people, places and institutions that make Beverly Hills/Morgan Park one of Chicago’s best neighborhoods. In addition to her journalistic writing, Grace writes short stories and poetry, several of which have been published over the years. She founded and edited BAC Street Journal, the literary magazine that published for five years at the Beverly Arts Center, and is founder/facilitator of the Longwood Writers Guild, a critique group for serious adult creative writers.

Grace will be telling us about the time she went to a wedding…and almost died. Hear her story of celebration and peril at 730pm this Thursday at O’Rourke’s Office.