Entertainment

This coming April our headline acts for the 2023 Exposition are S.J. Tucker (pictured above) and Frenchy and the Punk.

“Without our songs and stories, we are nothing.” S. J. Tucker has been the glad captain of her own independent music career since 2004, when she left the workaday world behind to travel the continent, singing songs and changing lives. Named a vanguard of the Mythpunk movement and even “the face of neo-tribal Paganism” by Witches & Pagans Magazine, Tucker is the voice of lore at the campfire and the sharp laughter of modern myth. With one hand anchored in her art and the other held out to you, she is songs and stories, community and wit.

Learn more about S. J. Tucker at her website – sjtucker.com

Across its 10 fiery, witty, and exhortative tracks, Frenchy and the Punk’s Hooray Beret challenges listeners to get off the hamster wheels of modern culture and social identity and cultivate a sturdier self and more authentic values. The fourth full-length from bi-lingual French-born singer Samantha Stephenson and post-punk guitar visionary Scott Helland, Hooray Beret is organic and largely acoustic but relentless in its downhill grooves and cheeky garage noir riffage. In song after song, Stephenson nails the vanities, traps, and disfiguring pressures of 21st century life as she delivers a genuinely affirmative and urgent call to action: the action of self-reflection.

Learn more about Frenchy and the Punk at their website – frenchyandthepunk.com

Additional entertainment can be found Friday night at the vaudevillian Buffalo Bill’s Weird West Show, Saturday night’s Labyrinth inspired Goblin Masquerade, and a variety of buskers and sideshow acts throughout the convention space. More details on all of these in the near future.

Victorian Fae
at the 1893 World’s Fair

Each year the Chicago Steampunk Exposition hosts a Special Exhibit that sets the underlying “theme” for that year’s convention; for 2023 our special exhibit will be “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Fantastic Discovery of the Fae World” setting the theme of Victorian Fae at the 1893 World’s Fair. This exhibit will feature art, relics, and other items of interest collected around the Fae Academia following Doyle and his father establishing diplomatic contact with the Fae territories. The Exposition will celebrate the many cultures, achievements, and art of Faekind, and be joined by ambassadors and representatives of these magical realms as we welcome them to Chicago. In many ways this will be like Carnival Row, but unlike the Republic of the Burgue, Chicago embraces diversity and multicultural exchanges.

PLEASE NOTE that ALL costuming is welcome, not just Fae, and you don’t even have to come in costume; 21st Century “Time Tumblers” are welcome to 1893 as well 🙂

Be a Presenter!

If you have Steampunk related knowledge and expertise that you would like to share at the Exposition, then we invite you be part of the Program and submit your proposals for presentations.

The 2023 Program Thus Far

Exposition Exhibitors

This coming April, the Exposition will offer a wide array of exhibitors and vendors to entertain, educate, and entice you.

A recent change in our planning has been to merge Artists’ Alley and Printers’ Row which will now both be located in Slate Hall with the Art Gallery. For more information visit our Exhibitor page.

If you would like to be an Exposition Exhibitor, please submit an application HERE.

The Venue

Update! More rooms have been added to the room block, so if you were having trouble booking a room, please try again.

The 2023 Chicago Steampunk Exposition is being hosted at the Hyatt Regency Schaumburg. This upscale hotel is a short drive from O’Hare International Airport with many facilities both in the hotel and surrounding it, plus FREE PARKING.