Katie Prout

Chicago

Feature Writer at Chicago Reader

Features writer, @chicago_reader. Proud member & co-chair @Reader_Union. I believe in the Midwest. [email protected]

Featured in: Favicon

chicagoreader.com Favicon

chronicle.com Favicon

newrepublic.com Favicon

longreads.com Favicon

counterpunch.org Favicon

lithub.com Favicon

streetsblog.org Favicon

themillions.com Favicon

utne.com

beltmag.com + 7 more

Articles

preface to a feature on Geneva's youth prison

Mar 28, 2025 | chicagoreader.com | Katie Prout

Of course, my fascination with Geneva and its ghosts began with a girl. “There’s this cemetery,” my friend Logan texted me, “in the middle of a subdivision.” The Atlas Obscura article she sent me showed pictures of gray headstones stained by moss, wet with yellow autumn leaves. A chain-link fence snaked around the background of the pictures.
The ghosts of Geneva's 'home for wayward girls'

Mar 26, 2025 | chicagoreader.com | Katie Prout

“I ’m going to jump out the window and run away tonight,” one teenage girl confessed to another. It was May 20, 1903. In a collection of stone cottages 50 miles west of Chicago, approximately 500 girls, ages ten to 20, were baking bread, washing laundry, and doing what they could to avoid the cruel attention of their superintendent. After spending the last two years of her life incarcerated at the compound, one of the girls was getting ready to run for her freedom.
Emily Mester on the American urge to consume or be consumed

Mar 4, 2025 | chicagoreader.com | Katie Prout

Emily Mester is one of the best writers I know and sometimes that really pisses me off. Her book, American Bulk: Essays on Excess, covers the upper-middle-class American desire to consume or be consumed, via personal and critical essays on Costco as church, fat camp as liberation, the Chicago suburbs, the Olive Garden, Ulta, and the mall. They’re also about coveting, longing, and trying to soothe the ache you feel when the family who is supposed to love you hurts you deep.
Imagining a world without landlords

Dec 18, 2024 | chicagoreader.com | Katie Prout

Last winter, during a polar vortex that swept in windchills of -30 degrees, the property manager for my apartment building directed the building maintenance worker to drill a hole into my window instead of fixing a leak from the ceiling. While I watched, metal shavings from the window frame rained onto the floor of the tiny, uninsulated room I use as an office.
Illinois's convoluted process for allocating opioid settlement funds

Dec 4, 2024 | chicagoreader.com | Katie Prout

Jolt Harm Reduction in Peoria, Illinois, began in 2012 as an overdose prevention and naloxone distribution program, founded by Tamara and Blake Olt, after their 16-year-old son died from an overdose. The rural ambulance that responded to their 911 call didn’t carry naloxone, the opioid overdose reversal drug also known by the brand name Narcan. “That could have saved his life at that moment,” said Chris Schaffner, Jolt’s executive director.
Ron Camacho, The Organizer/Outlaw

Nov 13, 2024 | chicagoreader.com | Katie Prout

Ron Camacho, 69–artist, organizer, outlaw–is one Chicago’s greatest living history keepers. He was never going to have a small life. Ron’s mother Louise (Lou) was Ojibwe, and, along with Ron, was enrolled in the White Earth Reservation of Minnesota. His great-great-grandfather, George Bonga, was the first Black man born in Minnesota and served as the official witness to the treaty signing that created the reservation. Ron’s biological father, Valentine (Val), was Mexican American.
What is an overdose prevention site?

Oct 4, 2024 | chicagoreader.com | Katie Prout

An overdose prevention center (OPC), also referred to as an overdose prevention site, safe injection site, or supervised consumption site, is a legally sanctioned space where people can use drugs without fear of harassment, arrest, or overdose death. At an OPC, participants are provided with the tools they need to use drugs more safely—like sterile syringes, glass pipes, and drug testing kits.
The greatest show on earth?

Aug 28, 2024 | chicagoreader.com | Katie Prout

I’m a block or two north of Damen and Lake when I start to hear the helicopters. It’s a Monday afternoon in mid-August—the first day of the 2024 Democratic National Convention (DNC). Biking by an endless line of cop cars and police in tan tactical camo vests, I cut through a park and pass four older Black men playing chess. At the entrance to the United Center, a graveyard of abandoned water bottles rests on the ground outside the security checkpoint.
Kahlo Margarita at Nobody’s Darling

Aug 7, 2024 | chicagoreader.com | Katie Prout

Reader Bites celebrates dishes, drinks, and atmospheres from the Chicagoland food scene. Have you had a recent food or drink experience that you can’t stop thinking about? Share it with us at [email protected]. There’s a fine line between pleasure and pain. I hate the sound of people lip smacking as they chew, but I love food and drink that requires a robust, sticky intimacy between the imbiber and the imbibed.
Roasted chicken and red pepper relish sandwich at Sfera Sicilian Street Food

Jul 17, 2024 | chicagoreader.com | Katie Prout

Reader Bites celebrates dishes, drinks, and atmospheres from the Chicagoland food scene. Have you had a recent food or drink experience that you can’t stop thinking about? Share it with us at [email protected]. One of my survival strategies includes going to the beach year-round, particularly in the winter months when the sky is the same color as the sidewalk and when everything else, including my complexion, is gray.