Hey there, I’m Dr. Bill Hillmann, an Author, East-West University English & Communication Professor, Journalist, Speaker, Storyteller, and Event Producer.

At the age of 20 I stepped into a Hemingway class at College of DuPage community college which inspired me to read Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. It was the first novel I ever read and I read it in one sitting. Afterward I decided I would devote my life to literature and run with the bulls. Since then I've clawed my way into the literary world and become an avid bull runner in Spain. I earned my MFA in Writing from Columbia College Chicago with Workshop Instructor experience, in 2014. In 2022, I earned my PhD in the English at the University of Louisiana Lafayette and am currently a full-time English & Communication professor at East-West University in Chicago. I'm the award-winning author of three internationally acclaimed books, my debut novel The Old Neighborhood (Curbside Splendor 2014) which won The Chicago Sun-Times, "Best Book of 2014" and has been optioned for a TV Series and Mozos: A Decade Running With the Bulls of Spain (Curbside Splendor 2015), which was translated and published in Spain as Corriendo Con Hemingway (Planeta 2016) and The Pueblos: My Quest To Run 101 Bull Runs In The Small Towns of Spain (Tortoise 2021).  I've Spoken to a variety of colleges and high schools about my unusual path to academia and the writing world. My audio essays have appeared on NPR and my articles and essays have graced the pages of VICE, ABC, Daily Mail, Chicago Tribune, CNN, Toronto Star, Outside Magazine, Diario De Noticias De Navarra, Washington Post, LA Times, Playboy, and others. I am an award-winning, internationally-acclaimed  storyteller. My storytelling has appeared on NPR's Snap Judgement and The Story, and I have told stories on stages nationally and internationally. I am the creator, host and producer of the internationally acclaimed storytelling series The Windy City Story Slam and produced events nationally and internationally including at the Edinburgh Festival. I also created the first ever National Story Slam which included storytellers representing series from around the United States held at the main stage of the Chicago Tribune Printer's Row Festival. So in short walking into that Ju-Co Hemingway class paid off big-time.