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22nd Annual Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Awards Program
07/22/2015 @ 7:00 PM - 9:30 PM
$8Update: Congratulations to the winner, Javon J. Smith!
After the first four rounds, the finalists were chosen by the live audience—no easy task—and included Aja Zakiya Hall, Cassandra McGovern, Javon J. Smith, and Sam Herschel Wein. Javon won with his dynamic performance of the poem “Nig(g)ot.”
Javon J. Smith, an educator at Perspectives/IIT Math & Science Academy, is a double Louder Than A Bomb college slam champion. He recently appeared in Victory Gardens Theater’s We Must Breathe. He has won numerous awards with Totally Positive Productions, Chicago Black Gay Men’s Caucus, Queer Foundation, and Young Chicago Authors. A graduate of DePaul University, Smith studied Secondary Education English with three minors in African and Black Diaspora Studies, LGBTQ Studies, and Theatre Studies. He has served as an Artist-in-Residence with Young Chicago Authors and a Teaching Artist for Free Street Theater and Victory Gardens Theater. His poetry collection Righteous Rage will be released later this year. (Updated July 24 ,2015)
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For 22 years, the Guild Literary Complex annual Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award has recognized emerging poetic voices from across Illinois. That tradition continues with an award program and live reading from 20 semi-finalists and special guests—and the audience will choose the $600 winning poem!
Here are the semi-finalists:
Catalina Bode, Asia Calcagno, Suman Chhabra, Solomohn Nallshi Ennis-Klyczek, Aja Zakiya Hall, Larry Janowski, Caroline Johnson, Maya Marshall, Cassandra McGovern, David Nekimken, Kelly Raymundo, Timothy David Rey, Rachel Slotnick, Javon Smith, Myron Stokes, Jacob Victorine, Adam Webster, Sam Wein, Dylan Weir, and Kelly Xintaris. (Laura Merleau-McGrady is also recognized as a semi-finalist, but will not be competing on July 22.)
More party than reading, Chicagoist says of the event, “If you only attend one poetry reading a year, it might as well be the Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award.” The program sold out last year, so get your tickets in advance!
The 22nd annual Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award will be co-hosted by Toni Asante Lightfoot (2005 winner) and Quraysh Ali Lansana. Last year’s award winner Deepak Unnikrishnan will return to give an opening reading of a Gwendolyn Brooks poem, and special guest avery r. young will present a poetic tribute in memory of author, activist, and teacher Mama Brenda Matthews, one of the first winners of the award and an inspiration in the spoken word community.
There will be a free reception following the event, with drinks provided by the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts and food courtesy of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture.
This event is co-presented with the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, and is sponsored by the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture.
Quraysh Ali Lansana is author of eight poetry books, three textbooks, a children’s book, editor of eight anthologies, and coauthor of a book of pedagogy. He is a faculty member of the Creative Writing Program of the School of the Art Institute and the Red Earth MFA Creative Writing Program at Oklahoma City University. He is also a former faculty member of the Drama Division of The Juilliard School. Lansana served as Director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing at Chicago State University from 2002-2011, where he was also Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing until 2014. Our Difficult Sunlight: A Guide to Poetry, Literacy & Social Justice in Classroom & Community (with Georgia A. Popoff) was published in March 2011 by Teachers & Writers Collaborative and was a 2012 NAACP Image Award nominee. His most recent books include The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip Hop w/Kevin Coval and Nate Marshall (Haymarket Books, 2015) and The Walmart Republic w/ Christopher Stewart (Mongrel Empire Press, September 2014).
Toni Asante Lightfoot is a founding member of the Modern Urban Griots, a performance poetry group that was just honored with a Splendid Wake Award from George Washington University in Washington, DC. She has coached several poetry slam teams over the past 15 years, and her 2003 Gwendolyn Brooks Center team won Brave New Voices National Teen Poetry Slam in 2003. Since her 2005 fellowship at Soul Mountain in Connecticut, Lightfoot has been researcing and writing poems/vignettes about Mom’s Mabley’s life as a vaudevillian, actress, and as a comedian who came out to her audience in her 70’s.
ABOUT OUR SPECIAL GUESTS
Deepak Unnikrishnan is a writer from Abu Dhabi. His first set of short stories, Coffee Stains in a Camel’s Teacup was published by Vijitha Yapa Publications (Colombo, Sri Lanka). His fiction and non-fiction has appeared in Drunken Boat, Himal Southasian, Bound Off, The State Vol IV: Dubai, the art project Autopoiesis (www.autopoiesis.io), and in the anthology Breaking the Bow: Speculative Fiction Inspired by the Ramayana (Zubaan Books, India). He has an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where on scholarship he completed the manuscript for his first work of fiction set in the Gulf, excerpts from which are forthcoming in Guernica. He is the winner of the 2014 Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award.
avery r. young is a multidisciplinary artist and a Cave Canem alum & 3Arts Awardee who’s work has appeared in American Studies Journal AIMPrint, Coon Bidness,and other anthologies. His work with language, visual text & sound design has been featured in exhibitions & on-line publications. Recently, as an artist-in-residence at The University of Chicago, young completed a collection of sound designs that will be featured on his first full-length album “booker t. soltreyne: a race rekkid” and a collec- tion of concrete poems called “cullud sign(s).” His work celebrates Black American history and culture, all the while pushing boundaries in aesthetics and the spaces language lends itself.
ABOUT OUR PRELIMINARY JUDGES
Yolanda Nieves, a Chicago native, is a researcher and poet. She has a M.A. in Organizational Development from Loyola University, an M.A. in Reading from Northeastern Illinois University, and an Ed.D in Adult Education from National Louis University. Her work has been published in various independent anthologies, literary magazines, and research journals. Additionally, she is a playwright and centers her work on social justice issues. Dr. Nieves is the recipient of the Dissertation of the Year Award-Arts Based Research from the American Educational and Research Conference, 2009. Currently, she is an adult educator and is an Associate Professor at Wilbur Wright College in Chicago.
Coya Paz is a poet, Artistic Director of Free Street Theater, and an Assistant Professor in the Theatre School at DePaul University. She is also a founding member of Proyecto Latina, and the co-founder of Teatro Luna, where she served as co-Artistic Director from 2000-2009. Recent projects include Nerds, Sluts, (Commies) and Jocks and DOPE at Free Street Theater, and The Americans, based on interviews. Coya holds a PhD in Performance Studies at Northwestern University and is a regular commentator on race, media, and pop culture for Vocalo.org (FM 90.7). In 2014, the Guild Complex named Coya one of 25 Writers to Watch.
ABOUT OUR PARTNERS
The Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts advances arts practice, inquiry, and presentation at the University of Chicago, and fosters meaningful collaboration and cultural engagement at the university, on the south side, and in the city of Chicago.
The Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of Chicago was established in 1994 under the direction of Professor Michael Dawson. From its inception, faculty, students, and staff who have been involved with the Center have been committed to establishing a new type of research institute devoted to the study of race and ethnicity, one that seeks to expand the study of race beyond the black/white paradigm while exploring social and identity cleavages within racialized communities.