2022 Keynote speakers & guests

A CELEBRATION of sherlock holmes

Scroll through to see a highlight of some of the keynote speakers and guests who will be at this year’s conference!

Curtis Armstrong is an American actor and singer best known for playing the role of Booger in the Revenge of the Nerds movies, Herbert Viola on the TV series Moonlighting, Miles Dalby in the film Risky Business, and famed record producer Ahmet Ertegun in the film Ray as well as for playing the role of Metatron on the TV series Supernatural. He will be speaking about “An Actor’s Search for Sherlock Holmes.”

Arwel Wyn Jones is a Production Designer and Art Director on many productions from BBC Wales. He was installed as Production Designer on the Pilot for Sherlock in 2009, and returned to the role when the concept was approved to Series. He has worked in various capacities on Doctor Who and its spin off series since 2006.

Dr. Tom Ue is Assistant Professor in Literature and Science at Dalhousie University and an Honorary Research Associate at University College London. His research, teaching, and public engagement reconsiders the global nineteenth century to reveals the close correspondence between canonical and less canonical writers, foreground the commonalities and differences in their thinking, and illustrate the persistence of their concerns in our own times.

Ashley D. Polasek, PhD, FRSA, is the Executive Director of The Ken Ludwig Company and the Editor-in-Chief of the interdisciplinary academic journal The Conan Doyle Review. In addition to publishing and lecturing widely on the subject, Ashley also serves as a technical advisor for television, film, and stage adaptations of Sherlock Holmes. She is a member of the Association of Adaptation Studies and The Baker Street Irregulars. You can find Ashley on Twitter @SherlockPhD.

Susanna Calkins holds a PhD in history and writes two award-winning historical mystery series. The first is the Lucy Campion historical mysteries, featuring an chambermaid turned printer’s apprentice in 17th century London. The second is the Speakeasy Murders, which are set in 1920s Chicago. Her fiction has been nominated for multiple awards, including the Bruce Alexander Historical Mystery Award, the Sue Feder Historical Mystery award, the Agatha, the Anthony and the Mary Higgins Clark award. Currently, she is an educator at Northwestern University. She lives in the Chicago area, with her husband, two sons and a cat named Sister.

Tracy Clark, a native Chicagoan, is the author of the Cass Raines Chicago Mystery series, featuring ex-cop turned PI Cassandra Raines. A multi-nominated Anthony, Lefty, Edgar and Shamus Award finalist, Tracy is also the 2020 winner of the G.P. Putnam’s Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award and has been shortlisted for the Grafton Award again in 2022. She is a proud member of Crime Writers of Color, Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime and serves on the boards of Bouchercon National and the Midwest Mystery Conference. Her latest book, RUNNER, was released in June 2021. Her debut novel, BROKEN PLACES, has recently been optioned by Sony Pictures Television. Her next book, HIDE, featuring Det. Harriet Foster, releases in December of 2022.

Michelle Falkoff is the author of Playlist for the Dead, Pushing Perfect, and Questions I Want to Ask You. Her fiction and reviews have been published in ZYZZYVA, DoubleTake, and the Harvard Review, among other places. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and currently serves as Director of Communication and Legal Reasoning at Northwestern University School of Law.

Stephen Lee is a lawyer who served as a federal prosecutor in Chicago for 11 years and has written and spoken about Sherlock Holmes. Before becoming a lawyer, he was a reporter for the Chicago Tribune.

Lori Rader-Day is the Edgar Award- and Agatha Award-nominated and Anthony Award- and Mary Higgins Clark Award-winning author of The Lucky One and Under a Dark Sky. She lives in Chicago, where she co-chairs the Midwest Mystery Conference and teaches creative writing at Northwestern University. Her latest book, Death at Greenway, is based on a little-known moment in history, when a group of London children were evacuated from the Blitz during World War II to Agatha Christie’s holiday estate. Visit her at www.LoriRaderDay.com, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

I began my private detective career when I was 10 years old. That’s the year my father, Edward F. Rice, started our family private detective agency. We had nine kids and we all worked there. We did boring jobs like numbering hospital charts. I vowed to never work there as an adult but came on board in my early 20’s.

E. F. Rice Co., Inc. investigated medical malpractice claims for Chicago-area hospitals. My dad was a pioneer in the field. I became a pioneer in investigating environmental pollution cases. I was a male “Erin Brockovich.” My investigation of Kerr-McGee in West Chicago resulted in a 5 billion dollar cleanup. I also investigated the Air Disaster at Lockerbie, Scotland.

Lisa "Dreaming Ace" Rothman is a freelance writer, blogger, and poet who is really excited the game is afoot for this year's Sherlock conference. She comes from a family of writers and went to her first con at 3 months old. Lisa has attended every DePaul Pop Culture Conference so far (starting with Doctor Who) and is excited to be on the other side of the table for a third time. She is looking forward to speaking about "Who Gets to Interpret a Character? Intersections of Asexuality in Sherlock Holmes"

Kristin Noone (she/they) is an English instructor and Writing Center faculty at Irvine Valley College in Southern California; her research interests include medievalism and adaptation, heterotemporalities, superheroes, fantasy and the fantastic, and popular romance, and she has published on topics from ethics in the works of Terry Pratchett to the symbolism of Dean Winchester’s pie in Supernatural. In her not-too-secret identity, she is an Amazon bestselling author of LGBTQ romance fiction, and is a Rainbow Award winner, a Queer Indie Book Award winner in the Fantasy category, and a Good Sex Awards runner-up in the Sexiest Consent category.