Coffee and Conversation with Tina Jenkins Bell, Sandra Jackson Opoku, and Janice Tuck Lively

Hear from three writers of fiction, poetry, memoir, and plays about writing collaboratively and writing across genres.

Tina Jenkins Bell is a published fiction writer, playwright, academic, freelance journalist, and literary activist. She has had numerous short works published in journals and anthologies, including Redline: Chicago Horror Stories, Hypertext Review, and Re-Liviing Mythology. Her plays, Cut the Baby in Half and the collaborative piece A Conversation with Lorraine Hansberry and Gwendolyn Brooks were produced as staged readings at the Green Line Performing Arts Center and the Chicago Humanities Festival, respectively. As a co-founder of FLOW (For Love of Writing), Bell has collaborated with numerous writing and arts organizations, authors, and bookstores to offer literary programming in Chicago’s underserved communities.

Sandra Jackson-Opoku is the author of novels The River Where Blood is Born and Hot Johnny and the Women Who Loved Him. Her debut mystery, Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes released in July 2025. Jackson-Opoku’s fiction, nonfiction, and dramatic works are widely published and produced. Professional recognition includes a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the American Library Association Black Caucus Award, a Chicago Esteemed Artist Award, an Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award, a James Baldwin Fellowship at MacDowell Arts, a Malice Minotaur Award for First Mystery, and others. She presents readings and workshops across the country and worldwide.

Janice Tuck Lively is a fiction writer and holds a PhD in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her fiction and creative non-fiction has appeared in the anthology The Thing About Love Is…, Hair Trigger, Obsidian III: Literature in the African Diaspora, Valley Voices: A Literary Review, among other publications. She lives in Chicago and teaches creative writing and literature at Elmhurst College. She is currently working on her first novel A Dress for Dorothy Dandridge.