Name: Marian Runk and Emily Nott
Start: 2024-12-14T19:00:00-06:00
Location: Arts + Literature Laboratory

Arts + Literature Laboratory welcomes singer/songwriters Marian Runk and Emily Nott for an evening of music centered [....] on Saturday, December 14 at 7:00pm. Tickets are $20 general admission, $15 ALL Member, $10 students in advance online, or $25 at the door for everyone. Tickets available ay Brown Paper Tickets.
Join Marian Runk and Emily Nott for a night of folk and country-inspired songs and storytelling. These Midwestern-based songbirds will bring both warm and melancholy brightness to the dark winter night.
Dallas-born, Chicago-based Marian Runk's life-long fascination with storytelling evolved from book arts and comics to songwriting and performing. With the 2024 release of her second album, Two Wires and a Spark, Marian Runk hones her musical style, traversing classic country, Western swing, bluegrass, jazz and folk. Listeners may feel the influence of Karen Dalton and Gillian Welch as Runk delivers lyrics that examine domestic relationships and existential themes including (mis)communication, grief, anger, disappointment, loneliness, and of course, love.
While at Oberlin College in Ohio, Marian was drawn to biology, art, and creative writing, ultimately earning a degree in Biology & Studio Art. She went on to graduate school at Columbia College Chicago, where she completed a Masters in Fine Arts (printmaking and book arts), combining her talents into writing, drawing, and printing comic books.
The love of songwriting Runk discovered in her thirties was born from a youth filled with poetry and creative writing and years singing along with the eighties ladies in the car with her mom as a kid. Today, she is captivated by a songwriter’s ability to turn raw emotion into music.
Chicago-based Emily Nott is a singer/songwriter with a deep folk and roots sound. She writes plaintive, poetic lyrics with earnest melodies inspired by the folk traditions she was raised in. She studied ballad singing in West Virginia and grew up playing folk music with her family in Michigan. She's inspired by poet songwriters like Gillian Welch, Connie Converse, and Judie Sill. She also plays with Chicago groups Joybird and Glass Mountain, and has shared a stage with Sam Amidon, Elizabeth Laprelle, Jim Lauderdale, Bruce Molsky, and the Brother Brothers. She was a 2018 recipient of a Chicago Arts and Culture grant for her debut album Time Before, which was received as “an incredible record...there is a stripped-down beauty to the work that [Emily is] doing that harkens back to a simpler time." (Chicago Crowd Surfer). Emily is currently a doctoral student in the department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and is interested in the healing, liberatory capacities of arts education.