Did Morgan Campbell Just Commit to The 2025 South Side Lit Fest in Chicago?

If you answered “yes” to the question I posed in the headline, congrats because it’s confirmed:

September 13, 2025, I’ll be at the South Side Lit Fest, which is exactly what the event’s title says it is — a literary festival dedicated to readers and writers who are either from or strongly connected to the South Side of Chicago.

Our man Jeremy Kitchen runs the event; he also runs the Richard J. Daley Branch of the Chicago Public Library at 34th Halsted in Bridgeport. The festival’s events tend to take place near there, and once I get final details on when and where I’ll be reading and signing books, I’ll relay that info to the rest of you.

The process of getting booked was refreshingly straightforward. I leapt in to the @SouthSideLitFest Instagram DMs around October and we exchanged a few messages and I sent Jeremy a PDF of the Advance Reader Copy of My Fighting Family.

Last week he asked if I might be in Chicago on the weekend of the festival because he wanted to include me. I told him that if he wanted me at Lit Fest, I’d make it my business to be in Chicago in mid-September. If you know me, you know I don’t need a reason to visit Chicago. I just need a window of time, and Jeremy’s invitation opened one for me.

A quick sidebar for the people who are new here:

My memoir is the story of what happens when a Black family chases The American Dream all the way to Canada, and it takes place in Toronto, in Chicago, and a few places in between. The South Side of Chicago in particular isn’t just the setting for the stories that form the backbone of this book. It’s just as much a character as the feuding factions of my family are.

It’s where Granny Mary spanked me for crossing the footbridge that spans the Dan Ryan, connecting Lafayette Ave. and State St., just south of 92nd St.

It’s where my dad wound up in tense staredown with some Fruit of Islam security guards when he took 15-year-old to see Louis Farrakhan’s mansion at 49th and Woodlawn.

And it’s about the time an infamous mob enforcer offered to drive down to West Pullman and take care of my grandparents’ racist neighbours. A frightening proposition if you think he was serious; a different type of chilling if he was joking. A hitman getting laughs by musing about whacking people. Hilarious.

Point is, the South Side Lit Fest is a homecoming for My Fighting Family, and I couldn’t have imagined a better place.

First print interview: South Side Weekly.

First U.S. retailer to carry my book: Call & Response Books, in Hyde Park, on the South Side.

First confirmed U.S. book festival: South Side Lit Fest.

As always, you’re all invited, because the only thing better than finding your next favourite book is hearing the author perform it.

Obviously you’ll have opportunites to buy the book on site, but I also that if you’re already here, you don’t want to wait until September. If you’re in Chicago, you can find My Fighting Family at Call & Response Books in Hyde Park, or, if you’re elsewhere in the U.S., order it from them online. Between now and September we’ll have improved U.S. distribution, but Call & Response stepped up first and took a chance on me, so I want them to milk their first mover advantage as long as possible.

Either way, you have the earliest early warning I could possibly provide. Circle September 13 on your calendars. You have seven months to get your schedules together.

See you in Bridgeport.

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