Short Story Theatre

Beverly Friend, PHD, Emeritus Professor of English and Journalism at Oakton Community College, Des Plaines, IL, also served as adviser to the student newspaper. Friend is the author of Science Fiction, the Classroom in Orbit and The Science Fiction Fan Cult (Doctoral Dissertation, Northwestern University,1975). Formerly a theater reviewer for Pioneer Press, she is currently a reviewer for www.ChicagoOnline.com  and a member of the American Theater Critic’s Association.  Friend is co-author (with Professor Xu Xin) of Legends of the Chinese Jews of Kaifeng. She wrote book reviews and was a Science Fiction Columnist for the Chicago Daily News and  is a free lance writer, lecturer, and scholar. She is a regular contributor to Engage (the publication of the North Shore Senior Center), The Insider, the Township Citizen, and the Sun Sentinel, in Florida. She is active in several writer’s groups and has self published an autobiography, No Girls in the Marching Band (2007) and several books of essays including The Girl Who Takes Diagonals (2019) and Banished to Paradise. In addition, she is Executive Director of the China/Judaic Studies Assn., a Board Member of the Sino Judaic Institute and an Honorary Director of the Glazer Institute for Judaic and Israeli Studies at Nanjing University.  She is also an artist and a percussionist with the North Shore New Horizons Band and most recently with the virtual Congaree New Horizons Band of the Music School of the University of South Carolina.