Toni Nealie and Zoe Zolbrod

Literati welcomes Toni Nealie, author of the essay collection The Miles Between Me,  and Zoe Zolbrod, author of The Telling: A Memoir, for a special night of literary nonfiction from Curbside Splendor Publishing.

Toni Nealie is a writer, journalist, and teacher living in Chicago. Her work has appeared inGuernica, The Prague Review, The Offing, The Rumpus, and been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She worked in magazines, politics, and public relations in the U.K and her native New Zealand before moving to the U.S. She holds an MFA from Columbia College Chicago. In her debut essay collection, New Zealand native Toni Nealie examines journeys, homelands, family, and motherhood. She details humiliating confrontations with airport security, muses on the color brown, and intimately investigates her grandfather’s complicated and criminal past, all while hearkening home—wherever and whatever that is.

Zoe Zolbrod‘s work has appeared in Salon, The Nervous Breakdown, The Weeklings, and The Rumpus, where she serves as Sunday co-editor. Her debut novel Currency won a 2010 Nobbie Award and received an honorable mention by Friends of American Writers. Zolbrod lives in Evanston, Illinois, with her husband and children. About The Telling: Zoe Zolbrod remained silent about her early childhood molestation for nearly a decade. When she finally decided to tell, she wasn’t sure what to expect, or what to say. Through a kaleidoscopic series of experiences as an adult, mother, and feminist, Zolbrod traces the development of her sexuality and her relationships with men in the shadow of her sexual abuse.