Diane Kastiel is the producer, director, and host of First Person Live. A writer and storyteller from Chicago, she’s a three-time winner of the National Public Radio’s Moth StorySLAM; her work has been featured on the Moth Radio Hour, its podcast, and at special events for WBEZ. Diane has told stories on stage at The Second City, the Park West, Victory Gardens and other theaters - but also in more unconventional settings, including comedy clubs, art galleries, the basement of a tattoo parlor, homeless shelters – she even did a show in the middle of the woods! Diane is an alumna of The Second City Conservatory and the University of Chicago’s Great Books program, and has an MBA from Northwestern University…just in case. 

Lawrence Wood is the Director of the Housing Practice Group at LAF, the Midwest’s largest provider of free civil legal services to people living in poverty. He is also a Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago, where he teaches a seminar on poverty law that Justice Antonin Scalia publicly dismissed as a waste of time. Lawrence has won The New Yorker  Cartoon Caption Contest a record-setting seven times.

Roisleen Todd is a preschool teacher in the Chicago public schools. Growing up in Boston, she fell into writing at a young age when she began writing her own Scooby Doo scripts (which, unfortunately, never made it to the big screen), and now writes every day as a form of therapy and self-care. She began storytelling through Moth StorySLAMs, and quickly fell in love with the art for the way it reminds both the performer and the audience of our common humanity and how alike we really are. 

Nancy Chovancek has recently discovered a little piece of heaven through storytelling. She was a project manager for many years, but Meniere’s disease forced her to retire and find more creative ways to spend her time. She is a published author of three books, a HearStrong champion for those who struggle with Meniere’s and hearing loss, and a budding artist, dabbling with acrylic paint and drawing stick people. Nancy also loves dogs and has four German Shepherds to prove it. She spends her days searching for the most powerful vacuum on the planet, keeping her Little Free Library from getting looted, walking all four dogs (!), and trying to keep her sarcasm from rendering her friendless. She’s married to Dave, a Colonel in the U.S. army, and loves to travel, especially to Maui.   

Annie Gottschalk is a retired litigation paralegal looking for her next job. She came to Chicago from Colorado a decade ago, and in that time has graduated from the Second City Conservatory, received a Master’s degree from Loyola, and progressed to the stage where drinking anything but red wine gives her a terrible hangover. Annie likes to tell stories -  in writing, in film, and on stage – and just won her first Moth StorySLAM in January. She lives in a perpetually messy condo with her husband Ken and their asshole dog, Moose.

Marya Morris is a city planner and freelance writer and editor. She lives in Wilmette with her husband Andy, mother Wilma, and three kids at various points on the launch trajectory (there are no straight lines in that regard). Marya considers each difficulty, embarrassment and absurdity of everyday life to be ripe material for storytelling. She began telling stories at in 2015 and has performed at the Moth and other storytelling shows in Chicago, becoming a Moth GrandSlam Champion in October 2018.

Kevin Biolsi is a statistician and on-again, off-again empty nester who enjoys brewing beer and, every few years, attempting to learn to play the banjo. He is a relative newcomer to storytelling on stage, having performed solo storytelling/comedy shows in 2016 and 2017 as fundraisers for two performing arts youth groups before starting to tell stories at Moth StorySLAMs in late 2017. Prior to this, Kevin’s performing experience was limited to a couple of Latin Club plays in high school and a traumatic piano recital at the age of 33 where he was placed between two eight-year-olds in the performance order.

As a pathologist, Elizabeth Brownspent hundreds of hours hunched over either a microscope or a dead body. She then worked as a consultant to the medical device industry writing technical reports, all dry as dust and utterly humorless. Original thoughts were few, as all statements had to be referenced. Spreading her wings to become a creative nonfiction writer has been a liberating joy. Elizabeth focuses on personal narrative that combines humor with pathos, and recently segued into storytelling. Her essays, stories and podcasts can be found at www.fanagrams.net.