David Kodeski, Billy Lombardo, Elyzabeth Ashe.... Fray Day 7 Chicago is shaping up! We have some great featured performers and more on the way.

David Kodeski is a native of Niagara Falls, New York and currently lives and performs in Chicago, Illinois. He is perhaps best known to Chicago audiences as a long-time cast member of "Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind" and his original series of five solo performances, presented under the umbrella title of "David Kodeski‚s True Life Tales." His second show in the series, "Niagara! (you should have been Yosemite)" was adapted for NPR's "This American Life." The third "True Life Tale" - entitled "Another Lousy Day" - was toured to Perth as part of the Western Australia Fringe Festival (and was subsequently awarded "Best of the Fringe") in 2003. Kodeski will return to Perth in February of 2004 to present his most recent critically acclaimed show, "I Can't Explain The Beauty" at the Perth International Arts Festival with a tour of regional Australia to follow.

Billy Lombardo lives in Forest Park, Illinois. He directs the Service Learning program and teaches a senior writing seminar at The Latin School of Chicago. He has had several stories published in Other Voices, Cicada, and River Oak Review, and poetry published in Threshold and Hammers, and the anthologies Stray Bullets and Power Lines. He has given numerous readings and writing workshops and has an annual Father's Day feature at the Green Mill's Uptown Poetry Slam. Billy is also the recipient of a fiction writing fellowship from the Ragdale Foundation, which he would gladly have attended if it hadn't conflicted with his managing a Little League All-Star team. Stories from his collection have earned him an Illinois Arts Council (IAC) Fellowship Award.

From living in the rainforest of Belize to years on theatre stages, Elysabeth Ashe recounts nature and life adventure stories. Personal experiences and adaptations of stories of life lived by "coloring outside the lines" are often enhanced with song, music and audience participation. City slicker as well as outdoors woman, Elysabeth tells tales from her life as nature educator, team building facilitator, solo traveler, wildlife rehabilitator, dog walker, corporate career woman, poet and theatre performer.