Speakeasy

MARYLEE WILLIAMS: Writer, editor and occasional community theater actor in Pittsburgh. Originally from New Orleans, Louisiana, she's lived across the country working for local NPR stations, most recently she worked on The Confluence at WESA. She's the co-founder of the Not "Gal Pals" Bookclub, and she will talk to you about books for hours. 

BRIAN BROOME: His debut memoir, Punch Me Up to the Gods, is an NYT Editor’s Pick and the winner of the 2021 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction. He is a contributing columnist at The Washington Post. His work has also appeared in Hippocampus, Poets and Writers, Medium, and more. Brian was a K. Leroy Irvis Fellow and an instructor in the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh.

He has been a finalist in The Moth Storytelling competition and won the grand prize in Carnegie Mellon University’s Martin Luther King Writing Awards. Brian also won a VANN Award for journalism from the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation in 2019. His film, Garbage, won the Audience Choice Award at the Cortada Short Film Festival and was a semi-finalist in the Portland Short Fest.