Chicago Cultural Alliance

Spieleabend | Game Night Stammtisch Open Haus
2026-01-16 19:00 - 23:30 (America/Chicago) | DANK Haus German American Cultural Center, 4740 N. Western Ave., Chicago, IL, 60625, United States
Our January Open Haus will be the best game night in town! Did you know that Germans invented the jigsaw puzzle and board games? Bring your friends and your competitive spirit and celebrate Germany with a night of German food, drink, games, and Gemütlichkeit! We’ll have games of all types for all ages – board games, card games, foosball, and more!
Food and drink will be available for purchase.

Stammtisch Open Haus, Every 3rd Friday
2026-01-16 19:30 - 2026-01-17 00:00, 2026-02-20 19:30 - 2026-02-21 00:00, 2026-03-20 19:30 - 2026-03-21 00:00, 2026-04-17 19:30 - 2026-04-18 00:00, 2026-05-15 19:30 - 2026-05-16 00:00, 2026-06-19 19:30 - 2026-06-20 00:00, 2026-07-17 19:30 - 2026-07-18 00:00, 2026-08-21 19:30 - 2026-08-22 00:00 and 11 more dates | DANK Haus German American Cultural Center, 4740 N. Western Ave., Chicago, IL, 60625, United States
Feiern Sie mit uns! Our monthly Open Haus Stammtisch is a great way to meet new friends and enjoy a little Gemütlichkeit over some delicious German food and drink!
Theme TBD
Food and drink will be available for purchase.
Free parking at 5/3 Bank after 6:00 PM located at Western and Gunnison

Religion and Journalism in Chicago with Mary Ann Ahern (IN PERSON)
2026-01-22 18:00 - 19:00 | American Writers Museum, 180 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL, 60601, United States
Join us for a conversation with Emmy Award-winning journalist Mary Ann Ahern of Chicago’s NBC 5 about covering religion, writing about Chicago’s Pope, and shaping the public’s perception and practice of faith.
Mary Ann Ahern joined NBC 5 News in March 1989 and was named the station’s Political Reporter in 2006. Most recently, Ahern was front-and-center at the Vatican for NBC 5 Chicago’s extensive on-site coverage of one of the year’s biggest international stories when Chicago native, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, became Pope Leo XIV. For her standout work at the Vatican, Ahern earned a pair 2025 Chicago/Midwest Emmy Awards.
This is an in person program at the American Writers Museum. This program will also be livestreamed, and you can register for the link to the online broadcast here.
This program is presented in conjunction with the AWM’s special exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture, a powerful new exhibit that takes you on the ultimate exploration through spirituality and storytelling. American Prophets is supported by a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. through its Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative.

The World of the Brothers Grimm | In-Person Presentation
2026-01-22 19:00 - 20:30 | DANK Haus German American Cultural Center, 4740 N. Western Ave., Chicago, IL, 60625, United States
If at its core Kultur can be defined as what a people choose to pass on to their children, the folklore of the Brothers Grimm might be said to represent a rich tapestry of the German people’s distinct, cultural memory.
This in-person presentation will explore the times in which this folklore was first collected and published. As the Grimms were part and parcel of the Romanticist movement of the early 19th century, their interpretations of the tales they collected might be seen not only as a reaction to Enlightenment rationalism but also in support of an early nationalist movement seeking to promote a “German” consciousness based on the authentic voices of a common folk bound together by language and and tradition.
Join us then as we take a closer look at the historical and cultural context behind the enchanted folklore of the Brothers Grimm.

The Fire Inside: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde (ONLINE)
2026-01-29 18:00 - 19:00 | Virtual, Chicago, IL, United States
Join us online for a discussion with Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad about her new book The Fire Inside: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde. Black, queer, feminist, Buddhist: The Fire Inside casts a fresh new light on the radical literary legacies of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde.
This is an online-only program with the American Writers Museum.
This program is presented in conjunction with the AWM’s special exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture, a powerful new exhibit that takes you on the ultimate exploration through spirituality and storytelling. American Prophets is supported by a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. through its Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative.

More about The Fire Inside:
The Fire Inside explores the writings of Audre Lorde and James Baldwin through a Dharmic lens, revealing for the first time how two of America’s greatest literary voices reflect—and expand—Buddhism’s most timeless truths toward justice and liberation.
Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad dives deeply into a dharma of liberation as lived by Baldwin and Lorde, offering timely lessons to help us each meet this moment. She explores the writers’ enduring legacies to show that liberation depends not only on organizing and mass movements, but the generative power of inner well-being, authenticity, art, and embodiment. Each chapter shares how looking inward is the way forward, examining Baldwin and Lorde through key Buddhist principles.
This book offers space for emerging conversations within spiritual communities—ones that don’t shy away from difficult or uncomfortable truths; that center—and celebrate—Black, queer, radical thought; and that embrace the ways our inner lives, creative fire, sensuality, and expressions of love can ignite and sustain revolutionary liberation.
Praise for The Fire Inside:
“I have followed and admired Rima Vesely-Flad’s work for years. She is tapping resources that all of us can access for greater hope and change.” —MICHELLE ALEXANDER, author of The New Jim Crow
“This groundbreaking work is a gift of love reminding us of how Black liberation struggle, like the dharma itself, has always been about everyone getting free.” —LAMA ROD OWENS, author of Love and Rage and The New Saints
“This is a read not to miss… I find my own embers of wellness, justice, and harmony stoked with her joy of expression from the heart and mind on behalf of us all.” —LARRY WARD, Buddhist teacher, author, and cofounder of The Lotus Institute
“This book is a fire that both illuminates and refines, a call to engage with the truth of our times while drawing strength from ancestral wisdom.” —RUTH KING, author of Mindful of Race
About the author:
DR. RIMA VESELY-FLAD is the Visiting Professor of Buddhism and Black Studies at Union Theological Seminary. She is the author of Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition: The Practice of Stillness in the Movement for Liberation (NYU Press, 2022) and Racial Purity and Dangerous Bodies: Moral Pollution, Black Lives, and the Struggle for Justice (Fortress Press, 2017).

Get Lit: Rom Com Night
2026-02-10 17:30 - 19:30 | American Writers Museum, 180 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL, 60601, United States
Celebrate all things charming, hilarious, and heart-fluttering at Get Lit: Rom-Com Night as we bring the world of romantic comedies to life.

Test your knowledge of rom-com films in our Meet Cute Trivia Challenge.
Meet with our friends from the Last Chapter Book Shop, Chicago’s first & only romance bookstore.
Unwrap your next read at the Blind Date with a Book station.
Design your own tote bag with your favorite rom-com quotes and drawings.
Get a custom poem from our friends at Poems While You Wait inspired by your favorite stories of love.
Enjoy beer, wine, and the night’s specialty cocktail, THE FIRST KISS. Non-alcoholic options are available as well.

Whether you’re coming with a partner, your best friends, or treating yourself to a cozy night out, this joyful evening promises nostalgia, laughter, and plenty of classic rom-com sparkle.

This is 21+ event. Attendees must show a valid photo ID at the door to enter.
Get Lit is your way to enjoy evenings in the Loop. Meet friends and fellow book nerds for an early evening treat. Each month, the AWM serves drinks, games, special experiences, and fun activities to get you lit! Funds raised at this event go towards the AWM’s Write In Youth Education Program, which serves middle and high school students from under-resourced schools. See our other upcoming GET LIT events here.

Meet the Beatles in Hamburg | In-Person Presentation
2026-02-26 19:00 - 20:30 | DANK Haus German American Cultural Center, 4740 N. Western Ave., Chicago, IL, 60625, United States
Join us in reliving the “Hamburg Days” of three working class lads from Liverpool, who spent many a “hard days night” in seedy night clubs all along the notorious Reeperbahn between 1960 and 1962, playing American rock ‘n roll to some of the toughest crowds in all of Europe.
John Lennon once remarked, “I may have been raised in Liverpool, but I grew up in Hamburg.” Sentiments also attested by bandmates Paul and George.
An experience which made them as a band before returning to England and a recording contract. In time, setting off a global revolution not only in music and fashion but in raising a “peace and love” consciousness the world over.
It was the Beatles who would significantly influence the decade known as the “Sixties”, and it all began in Hamburg–where they also met another Liverpudlian named Ringo!

Concert | The 3 B's: Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms
2026-03-08 15:00 - 17:00 | DANK Haus German American Cultural Center, 4740 N. Western Ave., Chicago, IL, 60625, United States
Andrew Schultze & Svetlana Belsky present the 3Bs Concert, featuring selections from J.S. Bach’s Peasant Cantata, Beethoven’s Adelaide, and songs from Brahms’ Opuses 48 & 49. This thoughtfully curated program highlights the expressive depth and musical evolution of three iconic composers, blending lyrical storytelling, romantic emotion, and timeless artistry in an intimate recital experience.
Following the concert a light reception of cake, tea and coffee will be offered and you will have the opportunity to purchase Mr. Schultze’s and Ms. Belsky’s CD.

Get Lit: Grown-Up Book Fair
2026-03-10 17:30 - 19:30 | American Writers Museum, 180 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL, 60601, United States
The best night of the year is back: Grown-Up Book Fair! With books for sale, games to play, and drinks to drink… cheers!

Indulge your literary impulses at Get Lit: Grown-Up Book Fair! Mix and mingle with fellow bookworms, share your favorite titles, and discover new ones. From cozy mysteries to epic adventures, there’s something for every reader to discover and enjoy! Vendors and tabling partners to be announced!
Interested in joining us? Email general@americanwritersmuseum.org to pitch your bookstore or literary non-profit to join in the fun!
Get Lit is your way to enjoy evenings in the Loop. Meet friends and fellow book nerds for an early evening treat. Each month, the AWM serves drinks, games, special experiences, and fun activities to get you lit! Funds raised at this event go towards the AWM’s Write In Youth Education Program, which serves middle and high school students from under-resourced schools. See our other upcoming GET LIT events here.

This is 21+ event. Attendees must show a valid photo ID at the door to enter.

Get Lit: Speakeasy Rhymes
2026-04-14 17:30 - 19:30 | American Writers Museum, 180 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL, 60601, United States
Step back into the glittering, shadowy world of the Roaring Twenties at Get Lit: Speakeasy Rhymes, an evening of clandestine charm, jazz-age flair, and unfiltered artistic expression.

Share an original piece of poetry or song during our open mic. Don’t have anything to share? We’ll have pieces from notable American poets and songwriters that you can select.
Stop by the Blackout Poetry Bar to create a unique blackout poetry inspired by works of the 1920s.
Uncover the Secret Password hidden in clues around the museum to earn a special prize.
Enjoy beer, wine, and the night’s specialty cocktail, the Giggle Water. Non-alcoholic options are available as well.

Slip through our secret door, raise a glass, and lose yourself in a night where every whispered word keeps the spirit of the speakeasy alive.

This is 21+ event. Attendees must show a valid photo ID at the door to enter.
Get Lit is your way to enjoy evenings in the Loop. Meet friends and fellow book nerds for an early evening treat. Each month, the AWM serves drinks, games, special experiences, and fun activities to get you lit! Funds raised at this event go towards the AWM’s Write In Youth Education Program, which serves middle and high school students from under-resourced schools. See our other upcoming GET LIT events here.

Water to Water: Gaza Renga – Marilyn Hacker & Deema Shehabi (IN PERSON)
2026-04-20 18:00 - 19:00 | American Writers Museum, 180 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL, 60601, United States
Award-winning poets Marilyn Hacker and Deema K. Shehabi visit the American Writers Museum to read from their powerful new book Water to Water: Gaza Renga, a poetry collaboration in the call-and-response form of Renga during the conflict in Gaza. The pair will have a conversation on their writing journey and share how the collaboration came to be. Books will be available for purchase and the poets will sign them following the program.
This is an in person program at the American Writers Museum. This program will also be livestreamed, and you can register for the link to the online broadcast here.
This program is presented in conjunction with the AWM’s special exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture, a powerful new exhibit that takes you on the ultimate exploration through spirituality and storytelling. American Prophets is supported by a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. through its Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative.
More about Water to Water:
From the publisher: “In 2009, prompted by the Israeli siege of Gaza, poets Marilyn Hacker and Deema Shehabi started a correspondence. It took the form of responding to each other’s poems. They resumed their poetic dialogue by email after Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023.
Their project involved an alternate call and response between them in the tradition of the Japanese renga form, each poet picking up a word, phrase, or image from the poem preceding. The result is a fascinating poetic conversation. The two poetic voices are beautifully meshed together, so that it actually reads as one long poem.
The poetry is very rich in imagery, and these images stay with you, as do feelings the poems generate, for example, of unrest, of being in exile. Television and social media show you the pictures in the streets, this poetry takes you into the homes and minds of people. You can read it very much between the lines, and therefore it seems to speak to people about their own experiences.
Water to Water: Gaza Renga is a dignified celebration of humanity in and among atrocities. Although triggered by events in Gaza, it weaves in other conflicts past and present.”
Praise for Water to Water:
“[A] stunning sequence of renga… We celebrate these two voices, bleeding in and out of each other, quicksilver, mercurial, eloquent in song and silence, even as they celebrate the human spirit in a ruptured world.”
—Mimi Khalvati
“This book’s revolutionary form is most revolutionary of all in making serious political engagement and sophisticated poetic pleasure inseparable.”
—Fiona Sampson, Professor of Poetry, University of Roehampton

MARILYN HACKER (left) is the author of twenty-one books of poems, including three collaborative books, and twenty-two collections of translations from the French. Over the course of her career, she has received numerous honors, including the National Book Award, the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, the PEN/Voelcker Award, the Argana International Poetry Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, editor of the Kenyon Review, and editor of the French literary journal Siècle 21. She lives between Paris and New York.
DEEMA K. SHEHABI (right) is a Palestinian American poet and editor. She is the author of Thirteen Departures from the Moon and the co-editor (with Beau Beausoleil) of Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, for which she received NCBR’s recognition award. She is also the winner of the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Prize in 2018 and a recipient of Best of the Net nomination in 2021 as well as several Pushcart Prize nominations. Her poems have been widely published in literary journals and her work has been translated into Arabic, French, and Farsi.

Author Talk: “Parks and Rec” by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong (IN PERSON)
2026-04-22 18:00 - 19:00 | American Writers Museum, 180 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL, 60601, United States
Pop culture historian and bestselling author Jennifer Keishin Armstrong (Seinfeldia, When Women Invented Television) visits the AWM to discuss her new book about the making of a beloved television show. Parks and Rec: The Underdog TV Show That Lit’rally Inspired a Vision for a Better America tells the definitive story of the creation and legacy of Parks and Recreation, with exclusive interview content from its cast, crew, and creators, as well as an introduction by Nick Offerman.
Books will be available for purchase and Keishin Armstrong will sign them following the program.
This is an in person program at the American Writers Museum. This program will also be livestreamed, and you can register for the link to the online broadcast here.
More about Parks and Rec:
More than fifteen years after Parks and Recreation premiered, it has become a streaming and pop culture staple. It’s beloved for its jokes, characters, and expressions—the show even created a now widely observed holiday, Galentine’s Day. How did it all happen and how did the show transform from a ratings disappointment into a cult classic? Pop culture historian Jennifer Keishin Armstrong reveals all this and more in the definitive history of the show, which is as full of humor, optimism, and heart as Parks and Recreation itself.
Through new and exclusive interviews, as well as deep insight and smart and entertaining pop culture analysis, Armstrong tells the story of how Parks and Recreation came to be: how it grew from The Office’s success and Obama-inspired optimism, how producers assembled one of TV’s most lovable casts but barely survived a mediocre first season, how the show found its voice by getting more political and more romantic, and how it became a cultural force despite middling ratings during its network run, going on to become a television savior of the Trump era and a modern classic.
For fans of the show, readers who enjoy behind-the-scenes stories, and everyone who loves a nostalgic deep-dive, Parks and Rec is an exploration of its legacy as an enduringly lovable modern comedy classic full of optimism and heart. Lovingly told and deeply researched, Parks and Rec is the ultimate history of the show that taught us what’s important in life: friends, waffles, and work.
Praise for Parks and Rec:
“A magnificent job of chronicling the unlikely beginnings of the show—the way that Greg Daniels and Mike Schur conceived of the premise and the world, and then the rag-tag way they put the cast together…You’ll be treated within to all manner of winning anecdotes about the adorable and talented team of champions that made up our cast.”
—Nick Offerman, excerpted from the foreword to Parks and Rec
“Making Parks and Rec was fun, pure fun, achieved through joyous collaboration with an incredible collection of writers and actors and creative people. I miss it every day, and Jennifer Keishin Armstrong’s book is as close as I (or anyone) can get to actually being there, working and laughing and making something we all loved so much.”
—Michael Schur, co-creator of Parks and Recreation
“Sweet as a plate of JJ’s waffles, Parks and Rec is a thoughtful celebration of the underdog sitcom that, for seven seasons, put an optimistic lens on liberal democracy and small-town life. Full of behind-the-scenes stories from the show’s writers, cast and crew, Parks traces the NBC sitcom’s transformation from mid-season misfire to witty, romantic television classic. A perfect gift for members of the Leslie Knope-o-verse—or anyone searching for a little sunlight in a dark time.”
—Emily Nussbaum, staff writer at The New Yorker and author of Cue the Sun!
New York Times bestselling author JENNIFER KEISHIN ARMSTRONG has written nine books, including Seinfeldia, Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted, Sex and the City and Us, and When Women Invented Television. She is the cofounder of the “Ministry of Pop Culture” Substack and a former local newspaper reporter. She lives in New Paltz, New York. She is also the co-host of the American Writers Museum podcast Dead Writer Drama.
