Allison Sansone is the inaugural program director for the new American Writers Museum, the first national museum dedicated to American authors and their work. The Museum opens to the public May 16, 2017 on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, IL and features more than 12,000 square feet of interactive exhibits that celebrate the depth and diversity of American literature from Native American storytelling traditions to the present day.

Sansone spent a decade as a newspaper reporter in Chicago and its suburbs, covering religion, crime, land use issues and education. She won numerous city, state and national journalism awards and has authored and edited five books, including It Doesn’t End With Us: The Story of the Daily Cardinal. Her writing has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and numerous other publications.

From 2007 to 2016 she served as executive director of The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park, which operates the Hemingway Birthplace Home and Museum. She created its writing residency, and coordinated the 17th Biennial Hemingway International Conference, a gathering of more than 300 scholars from around the world. She lives in Oak Park, IL with her husband and daughter.