On Thursday, July 22, Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy welcomed Mike Thomas as a part of our Jumpstart Speaker Series.

As a longtime staff writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, Mike Thomas has penned hundreds of features and profiles. Some of his subjects have included movie stars, TV talkers, professional wrestlers, opera singers, human cannonballs, bestselling authors and famous comedians.

A fan of participatory journalism, Mike has burned up the skies in a Blue Angels fighter jet, done aerial acrobatics with the Lima Lima Flight Team, piloted a 600-horsepower stock car around the Chicagoland Speedway and thrown himself out of an airplane at 13,000 feet. He also failed a Navy Seals fitness test.

An occasional contributor to Chicago Public Radio’s award-winning news magazine program Eight Forty-Eight, Mike has reported and written human interest stories and essays on such disparate topics as Rocky Balboa, the art of lawn mowing, a South Side master hatter, competitive sailing, the Irish tune Danny Boy and baseball’s only third-generation major league groundskeeper.

Mike’s national work has appeared in Esquire, Smithsonian, Playboy and on Salon.com. His first book, The Second City Unscripted: Revolution and Revelation at the World-Famous Chicago Theater, was published by Villard/Random House in September 2009 and received critical acclaim in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and many other publications.

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