The 2025-2026 academic year marks Lake Forest Academy’s fourth year implementing the Bird Artist Series: a program designed to bring authors with curricular connections to campus. While LFA has brought in notable writers in the past, the series provides a budget for the school to invite these visitors annually, thereby increasing both the quality and quantity of speakers.
The Bird Artist Series is managed by Jonathan Freeman, Dr. Ray Bird Jr. Master Chair in English. In this role, he organizes the series of speakers visiting campus, requiring him to be in constant conversation with teachers around the school to understand which authors would be most beneficial to include. Freeman balances inviting authors whose works are taught in class with others he and his colleagues believe would benefit the community.
The first author that will be showcased this school year is American novelist Colson Whitehead. Freeman describes Whitehead as “one of the most important American writers working today”, and for good reason. Whitehead is known for his fascinating varied stories, distinctly taking on new angles and approaches toward oversaturated tropes. The most notable example of this is in his novel Zone One, where he writes about a zombie apocalypse, yet centers it around the clean-up crew in a post-apocalyptic New York City. Whitehead will conduct an evening presentation in Cressey on October 23, along with visiting a few English classes the following day. The English department intends on encouraging other classes (with the teacher’s permission) to come visit him during classes, since his work of telling stories about America that need to be told is extremely relevant in our current political landscape.
Freeman aims to have his speakers for the Bird Artist Series planned four to twelve months in advance, finalizing each year’s lineup by the end of the previous one. When selecting authors, he prioritizes those who will be most beneficial, relevant, and entertaining to students. “I don’t want [the series] to be a parade of people that we bring in just because they are important,” Freeman explained. He believes students gain the most from a visit when they can connect it to something they are already working on. Additionally, he focuses on bringing in authors who are good at working with high school students. “I want the people we bring in to be enthused about the prospect of talking about their work, and that isn’t in everybody’s skillset. Finding out if it is likely to be a good personality match is important to me.”
Once the artists fly in, it’s not uncommon for the English department to have dinner with them the day before to give them a warm welcome. The LFA community is always striving to make their time here feel less like a “gig” and more like an opportunity to connect with our student body as much as possible. While they might sign a book or two for our library archive or have a sit-down with The Spectator staff, the bulk of their day consists of downtime and eating lunch in STU to fully immerse themselves in the LFA experience. Later in the year, the Bird Artist series intends on bringing authors William Hazelgrove to certain junior English classes, Cynthia Pelayo to the True Crime elective, Adrien Brooke to the Detective Fiction elective and Mark Smith, the originator of the poetry slam, back into the English 11 classes.
