Dean, Alumni Join Printers Row Lit Fest
School of Education and Social Policy Dean Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy will speak with Pulitzer Prize-winner Kathleen DuVal at 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 7 during the 40th annual Printers Row Lit Fest—the largest literary festival in the Midwest.
DuVal, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina, won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in history for her book Native Nations: A Millennium in North America. Called “essential American history” by The Wall Street Journal, the book traces 1,000 years of Native history, showing how tribes have adapted to many challenges, including the arrival of Europeans and climate change.
Brayboy has interviewed a wide variety of artists, poets and writers since becoming dean in 2023, including Musa al-Gharbi, Ruha Benjamin, Louise Erdrich, Larissa FastHorse, Tricia Hersey, Mitchell Jackson, Rebecca Nagle and others.
DuVal is one of seven Pulitzer Prize winners appearing at the free, two-day Printers Row Lit Fest, which features more than 200 presenters on six stages and is one of the longest-running in the country. The others include Bill Adair, Maureen Dowd, Jonathan Eig, Edda T. Fields-Black, Mary Schmich, and School of Education and Social Policy alumnus Bill Healy (MS08).
Healy is an award-winning investigative journalist and podcast producer with the Invisible Institute in Chicago. His production of You Didn’t See Nothin won the Pulitzer Prize in audio reporting in 2024. His photojournalism has been featured in the Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post and many magazines and books. He previously taught fifth grade in Chicago’s Altgeld Gardens community and at a high school in the Pilsen neighborhood. He regularly teaches documentary audio storytelling at Northwestern.
In addition to Brayboy and Healy, alumnus Faisal Mohyuddin (MS03) and instructor Liz Shulman are participating in Lit Fest.
Mohyuddin is an English teacher at Highland Park High School in Illinois, and an award-winning poet and visual artist. He is the author of Elsewhere: An Elegy and The Displaced Children of Displaced Children.
Shulman teaches English at Evanston Township High School and is an instructor in the Master of Science in Education program.
Events Featuring School of Education and Social Policy Faculty and Alumni
Instructor Liz Shulman
Session: Blending Travel Writing and Memoir
Shulman, author of Good Jewish Girl: A Jerusalem Love Story Gone Bad, speaks with poet Tony Trigilio, a professor at Columbia College Chicago.
- 10 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 6
- Grace Place, First Floor (637 S. Dearborn St.)
Also featuring: Michael McColly, Walking Chicago’s Coast: A 63-Mile Journey to the Indiana Dunes; and Alex Poppe, Breakfast Wine: A Memoir of Chasing an Unconventional Life and Finding a Way Home
Alumnus Bill Healy
Session: Ordinary People, Revolutionary Times
Healy and Mary Schmich talk with WBEZ’s Tracy Brown about Division Street Revisited, a podcast that connects the 1960s to today.
- 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 6
- W. Polk St. at Plymouth Court
Alumnus Faisal Mohyuddin
Mohyuddin joins a conversation with poets Elise Paschen (Blood Wolf Moon) and Ruben Quesada (Brutal Companion).
- 1 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 7
- North Stage (S. Dearborn St., just south of Ida B. Wells Drive)
Dean Bryan Brayboy
Brayboy speaks with Kathleen DuVal, author of Native Nations: A Millennium in North America.
- 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 7
- Plymouth Court Stage (W. Polk St. at Plymouth Court)