DISPATCH: Printer’s Row Offsite (The Whistler & Gallery Cabaret, Chicago) None of This Has to Exist
Maudlin House, Piżama, and the stubborn pulse of Chicago lit
The thing about Chicago is that it never had to exist. In a sense, it’s a city defined by its inclination to imagine itself as a project worth undertaking. In 1818, the Chicago River appeared to East Coast colonizers as a good place to set up a trading route. The direction of that river would later be reversed by leveraging the force of gravity. When it needed to implement an underground sewage system, the city’s residents raised its buildings manually. And for the World’s Fair in 1893, its finest minds developed and deployed the White City—a city within a city—especially for the occasion.
Over the weekend of September 5, 2025, more than 100,000 visitors came from around the country to participate in Chicago’s 40th annual Printer’s Row, a literary festival held each year in the South Loop neighborhood. Recently, Printer’s Row has generated its own offshoot: a crowd of independent writers who gather in the city’s bars, stages, and tents to share their work.
At the helm of this year’s offsite was Chicago indie staple Maudlin House, whose Mallory Smart (The Only Living Girl in Chicago) all but facilitated the entire weekend-long run. For the first night, Mallory tapped local legend Ben Niespodziany (Pizama Press), who runs the monthly Neon Mic Night out of Logan Square’s unofficial literary home, the Whistler.
“My mindset was if you build it, they will come,” Ben announced to the room at the top of the set.
A busy Neon Mic Night might bring around 50 people. Friday’s offsite drew over 80 at its peak.
When I walked into the Whistler with Ben at 6:00 sharp, I saw an older man in the corner with a stack of hardback books, where he sat nurturing a whiskey, neat. After some light conversation, I realized that it was none other than Dmitry Samarov, whose Hack: Stories From a Chicago Cab sits in the tower of books about Chicago at my apartment.
“We decided to hold the afterparty at Rainbo Club because of Dmitry,” Mallory told me by way of introduction. “It was his idea, because he bartends there.”
Dmitry’s newest book, All Hack, is “the ‘Criterion collection rerelease’—rewritten, remastered, all that.” All Hack completely reworks his first two taxi books, and the hand-drawn zine that started it all.
Featured throughout the night were Olivia Cronk, whose fragrant and textured prose made an immediate impression; Lemmy Ya’akova, whose job in my phone is saved as “Noted Chicago Poet”; and the “wafer of Chicago modernism” himself, Patrick Morrissey, whose exceptional poetry collection Light Box I bought on the spot.
LA-based writer and musician Jessamyn Violet made the first of a notable pair of appearances. Halfway through the set, Chicago institution Nick Rossi performed a poem that I had previously published in a handmade birthday zine. (I didn’t know it until after the performance, but it was his first time reading the poem—about history—in front of a live audience.)
“Thank you for being here on a Friday night,” he told the crowd between poems. “None of this has to exist.”
After the show, I caught up with Adrian Sobol at the bar. I saw Adrian—whose book Hair Shirt you need to go buy right now—for the first time several months ago, right there at the Whistler.
His rollicking, definitive voice captured my attention immediately.
“I was looking forward to an event like this one that celebrates Chicago’s literary scene,” he told me. “In all its variety and all its depth. Because it is varied. And it is deep.”
On the patio, I bummed a cigarette from Justin Finley of Raging Opossum Press. He wanted you to know that he’s writing a memoir all the time.
“I feel like we’re in the middle of an artistic renaissance, in a way that we haven’t been since the 90s. People are hungry to get together in rooms again. They’re tired of the internet.”
Justin said that someone had pitched him and co-founder Sam Plauche a photo book of Chicago about a year ago, but that they’d lost touch for several months.
“They’re probably waiting until the Damen Silos get torn down. Now that’s going to be a picture. The Damen Silos are like the Art Institute of graffiti.”
If Friday night felt like Chicago lit’s living room, Saturday was its fever dream. The second evening of the offsite was organized by Mallory herself at Bucktown jewel Gallery Cabaret. The bar, while only a stone’s throw from the Whistler, offered a decidedly different energy than the previous night. (Mallory describes the space in her own Zona Motel dispatch: “Inside, the room is cluttered in the best way. A long black bar stacked deep with bottles, at least three different kinds of Malört.”)
This time, Jessamyn Violet’s psych rock outfit Movie Club would provide live accompaniment to a host of new and returning writers, who read to songs they’d selected from a playlist ahead of time.
“I knew that Chicago has always had a very distinctive pulse,” Jessamyn told me in the barroom after the set. Along with Vince Cuneo, the other half of Movie Club, the festival was the first time she’d ever set foot in Chicago.
“I knew Mallory, and so it made sense to come. Sometimes it’s just about having an anchor.”
Ben kicked things off with a poem set to a psych thriller called, simply, “Snakes.” Behind him, an anxious tie-dye pattern rippled across a screen, emanating from a video projector that remained just out of sight.
Also gracing the stage were Jo Kaplan, detailing a featureless void to looped guitar swells; Brian Allen Carr, whose Greyhound odyssey across South Texas railed at fever pitch against power chords; and Scott Laudati, who started things with a story about Steven Tyler, and rounded out a Whitman-esque saga with an unexpected harmonica solo.
A sleep-deprived Dmitry made a second appearance onstage. We joined him on a haunted shift behind the bar at Rainbo Club:
At the end of the set, Jacob Stovall of Apocalypse Confidential sidled up next to me at a low-top table in the front. He was silent for a second. Then he said, “Man. It just shows you how much music adds.”
Ben, Jacob, and I stumbled out of Gallery Cabaret and caught an Uber, then reconvened with the larger group at Welcome Back Lounge. I grabbed a fried chicken sandwich and sat down at a picnic table, where someone immediately asked, “Are you the Lake Markham?”
He bought me a PBR. It was a total stranger who’d moved to Chicago two weeks before. Later, I found out that he’d listened to my music on repeat in his senior year of high school.
I ended the night talking about Townes Van Zandt with Scott Laudati, the battle for Chicago’s public space with Kristi Mackenzie, and the future of art with Jessamyn and Vince:
“Mediums evolve, technology makes it difficult,” Vince said. “But I’m attracted to people like you guys in Chicago. People who are asking, ‘How can we make the scene better?’”
If you ask me, I’d turn the river around again—if just to have another weekend like this one.
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that's it, im moving to chicago
This rips! Such a memorable weekend. A highlight of my year. Thanks for documenting it so well, Lake!