From Sunday, March 13 through Friday, March 18, the Columbia College Chicago Fiction Writing Department presents its 15th Annual Story Week Festival of Writers: Class Acts.

This year’s theme will spark discussion among Story Week participants about how issues of class manifest themselves in creative works and the rapidly changing world of publishing. It also reflects the high quality of writing from this year’s featured guests.

As it has for the last 15 years, Story Week 2011 will offer six days jam-packed with readings, conversations with authors, panels, performances, and book signings at venues throughout Chicago—all free and open to the public. It is co-sponsored in part by the Chicago Public Library and Metro.

Story Week will once again present a diverse group of headliners who will read from and discuss their works. They are: Scottish-born Irvine Welsh, who grabbed the world’s attention with his daring working-class fiction novel Trainspotting; Chicago-born Jennifer Egan, whose most recent book, A Visit from the Goon Squad, was named one of the top 10 books of 2010 by the New York Times; and Karen Tei Yamashita, National Book Award finalist and author of I Hotel, about the Yellow Power movement in 1970s San Francisco. Also lighting up the Story Week stage is Columbia College Chicago professor Audrey Niffenegger, acclaimed author of The Time Traveler’s Wife, Her Fearful Symmetry, and the serialized graphic novel The Night Bookmobile. Goodman Theatre playwrights Regina Taylor (The Trinity River Plays) and Tanya Saracho (El Nogalar) will explore the collaborative nature of storytelling and the stage.

The complete Schedule of Events and Authors is available at the Story Week website: http://www.colum.edu/SpecialEvents/Story_Week/