News — when you hear the drum you may speak

My name is Elizabeth. I am a Chicago-based writer and poet. I was born and raised in Chicago, first in Lincoln Park, and then, when I was 12, our family schlepped south to Hyde Park. In my earliest years of adolescence, I was self-conscious and lonely. I viewed myself as strange, an outsider from the other girls who seemed to be confident in the way they carried themselves, who congregated on the playground and weren't afraid of their own girlhood. I began creating to cope with the adult pieces of my life that began to intrude on my childhood.  During...