The Podcast Salon featuring Red for Revolution & Unboxing Queer History

Welcome to The Podcast Salon - an immersive, curated listening experience where podcast discovery meets the culture. 

Whether you are a podcast super listener, a creator looking to network, or just someone ready to find out what the podcast hype is all about—pull up!

In this edition, we are honored to feature Jana Naomi Smith, creator/writer/director of the two-time Ambie award-winning podcast Red for Revolution. We are also featuring Chicago’s own Chijioke Williams producer of Unboxing Queer History. Both will sit down with Chicago’s own award-winning host and producer, Anna DeShawn.

Red for Revolution is a six-part Black lesbian coming of age story exploring love and liberation.

Unboxing Queer History centers a different story of LGBTQ history that lives inside the Gerber/Hart collections & archives.

The Experience

Silence the noise from the outside, grab a pair of our silent headphones, and step into a unique podcast listening experience. We play short and impactful audio clips, whether they are hilarious or really emotional, we listen and talk about it together.   

Podcast Open Mic 

Got a podcast? Sign up for our podcast open mic? Where creators take the stage to share their podcast elevator pitch with the intention of growing their shows.

Tickets are limited to keep the vibe intimate. Grab yours today!

About Jana Naomi Smith & Red for Revolution

Jana Naomi Smith (she/her) is a Gary, Indiana-bred, interdisciplinary writer, filmmaker, and cultural worker.

She is the writer/director behind the 2x Ambie and Tribeca Film Festival award-winning audio drama, Red for Revolution, a six-part series exploring love and liberation starring Jordan Hull, S. Epatha Merkerson, Loretta Devine, Rutina Wesley, Renée Wilson, Danny Glover, Jennifer Beals, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Caro Guzmán, Vanessa E. Williams, Alimi Ballard, and many more amazing talents.

About Chijioke & Unboxing Queer History

Chijioke Williams (she/her) is a performance artist, journalist, and storyteller based in Chicago. She is the voice, writer, and sound designer on several audio drama, and, most recently, a producer on Division Street: Revisited (PRX) and Unboxing Queer History.

Chijioke believes nothing is more central to societal change than the art of storytelling. She loves combining her experience as a community activist with her technical skills as a sound designer, bringing depth to the characters she writes and the worlds she builds. Chi prides herself on pushing the bounds of genre, sound, and story through creative applications of sound.

She is extremely active in Chicago’s LGBTQ+ community, where she advocates for trans representation, queer archival accuracy, and de-stigmatization of LGBTQ+ eroticism. She also teaches self-defense around the city, equipping her fellow queer community members with the tools to keep themselves safe. 

Unboxing Queer History is a podcast from Gerber/Hart Library and Archives.

Each episode of this podcast focuses on a different story from the LGBTQ history inside of Gerber/Hart’s collections and archives. The episodes range from discussions of the importance of a LGBTQ circulating library to Chicago drag history which includes interviews with community leaders, volunteers, researchers, and local historians.

About Anna DeShawn

Anna DeShawn, pronouns anything respectful, is your favorite queer radio personality. Host of the Ambie award-winning podcast, Queer News, she is a social entrepreneur, storyteller and community organizer known for her signature greeting of "Family". Media has always been her passion and in 2009 she turned that passion into a reality when she founded E3 Radio. In 2021, she expanded her media reach when she founded her podcast company, The Qube.

Anna is determined to ride media into its next era by utilizing digital media streams to tell the stories and play the music that deserves to be heard.

About The Qube

The Qube is where discovery meets the culture. In an industry where Black and Brown podcasts are still hard to find, we are stepping in to diversify the fastest-growing medium today by building the world's largest database and dopest search engine of Black and Brown podcasts.