Our Founders and Mission

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Judi L. Goshen and Anne Beall founded Chicago Story Press. Although Judi has since stepped away, her vision and guidance continue to shape everything we do.  

Chicago Story Press was founded in 2020 by Anne Beall and Judi Goshen, members of the storytelling community who saw live performances disappear when the pandemic hit. When a fellow storyteller passed away without having been published, they created the press to ensure that these stories would live on. In 2024, Anne Beall took the helm, expanding the mission beyond books to make stories even more accessible. She launched the Chicago Story Press Literary Journal, an online, no-paywall journal dedicated to creative nonfiction. 

  Our goal is to publish stories that change the way you look at the world. We want to give you a new perspective on something you’ve never thought about—or something you thought you understood. We want our essays and stories to stay with you, coming back later and slowly gnawing away at you. We want to publish work that moves you emotionally and shows you what it’s like to love, what family means, what it is to grieve, and how people rebuild and keep going. We want you to consider what it’s like to have a disability, what it’s like to grow up in another place, what it’s like to be female, to be male, and just to be human.

We love stories because they help us navigate the world and make sense of it. We also want the stories we publish to be widely read. Chicago Story Press Literary Journal is an online, no-paywall journal dedicated to creative nonfiction. We share published pieces through our website, Substack, and the EBSCO literary database. Our subscription is free, and authors retain the copyright to their work. We believe in championing writers, helping their stories reach readers, and ensuring their voices live on.

We also believe in paying authors for their work, which is something we proudly do every single week.