2019 Voices of Protest
Our inaugural program event will be a film screening of the documentary, U-Turn, by Guatemalan filmmaker, Luis Argueta
October 16, 2019
6:30pm – 9:00pm
Chopin Theatre
1543 West Division
Co-sponsored by the Chicago City of Refuge
The program will consist of an introduction of the film by the filmmaker and the 55-minute screening, followed by a brief panel discussion with the filmmaker and performance from local artists and authorities on the topic of immigration.
The film, U Turn, tells the story of a group of Guatemalan immigrant women and children who broke the silence about the abuses committed against them at the Agriprocessors, Inc plant in Postville, Iowa and—thanks to the solidarity of the community that accompanied them and to the U Visa—transformed their lives.
Luis Argueta is a film director and producer whose work spans features, documentaries, shorts and episodic TV. He has also worked as commercial director, lecturer and teacher in the United States, Europe and throughout the Americas. Born and raised in Guatemala, Argueta is a US Citizen and has been a resident of New York since 1977. His film The Silence of Neto (1994) is the first Guatemalan film to have been submitted to the Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Language Film category. In April 2009, the British newspaper The Guardian listed Mr. Argueta as one of Guatemala’s National Living Icons, alongside Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchu and singer/songwriter Ricardo Arjona.
On view through August 11th:
Of Poetry & Protest Exhibit
featuring Present Absence
Stony Island Arts Bank
6760 S. Stony Island Ave., Chicago
Open visiting hours: Fri – Sun 12- 6pm
Through August 11th
Part of a collaboration between The Guild Complex and Rebuild Foundation presented along with, and in response to, Rebuild Foundation’s Objects of Care: Material Memorial for Tamir Rice on the Arts Bank lawn, this exhibit builds on the 2016 anthology of African American political art and poetry, Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin (WW Norton), to capture the transformative power that fuels social movements and sustains families and communities confronting state violence against black and brown youth.
Curated by Of Poetry and Protest Co-Editor/Guild Founding Director Michael Warr together with The Guild and Rebuild, the exhibit presents words and images featured in the book – portraits, poems, documentation, and creative response — alongside Present Absence, a five-channel video installation by Chicago artists Salome Chasnoff + Meredith Zielke that makes visible the lives of individuals killed by Chicago Police through intimate one-on-one interviews with their families and close friends.
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Of Poetry and Protest
Presented by The Guild Literary Complex + Rebuild Foundation
Exhibit Opening: 5:30 – 7:30pm, Friday, June 28th, 2019
Legacy of the Black Arts Movement: 2-4:30pm, Saturday, June 29th, 2019
Stony Island Arts Bank
6760 S. Stony Island Ave., Chicago
FREE
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June 28th, 5:30 – 7:30pm
Of Poetry and Protest Exhibit Opening
Continuing the collaboration between The Guild Complex and Rebuild Foundation built on the 2016 anthology of African American political art and poetry, Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin (WW Norton), this exhibit seeks to capture the transformative power that fuels social movements and sustains families and communities confronting state violence against black and brown youth. Curated by Of Poetry and Protest Co-Editor/Guild Founding Director Michael Warr together with The Guild and Rebuild, the exhibit presents words and images – portraits, poems, documentation, and creative responses — featured in the book, alongside Present Absence, a five-channel video installation by the artists Salome Chasnoff + Meredith Zielke that makes visible the lives of individuals killed by Chicago Police through stories generated from intimate one-on-one interviews with their families and close friends. This work is presented along with, and in response to, Rebuild Foundation’s Objects of Care: Material Memorial for Tamir Rice on the Arts Bank lawn. The opening will provide a chance to view all of these works and meet the artists and curators behind the exhibit, who will also speak about the work during a short, informal public conversation. Light appetizers will be provided and the Stony Island Arts Bank’s bar will be open for business. The Of Poetry and Protest exhibit will remain on display through the summer.
Present Absence promo video from salome chasnoff on Vimeo.
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June 29th, 2-4:30pm
Of Poetry and Protest: Legacy of the Black Arts Movement
A screening, reading & conversation
This multi-media program looks at the legacy of the Black Arts Movement (BAM) in Chicago as part of the opening weekend of the Of Poetry and Protest exhibit, looking back at the history of Chicago’s BAM and reflecting on the artists and institutions that have extended its impact in the decades since the BAM was at its height in the city. Prof. Thabiti Lewis of Washington State University Vancouver will screen the in-progress documentary film BAM! Chicago’s Black Arts Movement he is co-directing with Prof. Pavithra Narayanan, and Of Poetry and Protest Co-Editor/Guild Founding Director Michael Warr, along with some Special Guests, will read poetry and conduct a public conversation about how the legacy of the BAM lives on in Chicago.
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Participant Bios
Michael Warr’s books include Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin (W.W. Norton), and The Armageddon of Funk, We Are All The Black Boy, and Power Lines: A Decade of Poetry From Chicago’s Guild Complex (Tia Chucha Press). Recognition of his poetry include a San Francisco Library Laureate award, a Creative Work Fund grant for his multimedia project Tracing Poetic Memory in Bayview Hunters Point, PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature, Black Caucus of the American Library Association Award, Gwendolyn Brooks Significant Illinois Poets Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Michael has served as a Director at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco DanceAfrica Chicago, and founding Director at the Guild Literary Complex (1989-1999). He is a board member of the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library and Principle Consultant at WarrConsulting.
Thabiti Lewis is Associate Professor of English and Interim Associate Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs at Washington State University Vancouver. He is the author of Ballers of the New School: Race and Sports in America (Third World Press) and the forthcoming book Black People Are My Business: Toni Cade Bambara’s Practices of Liberation (Wayne State University Press). He is also co-editing a collection about Chicago and the Black Arts Movement.
Pavithra Narayanan (Co-Director) is Associate Professor of English and Director of the College of Arts and Science at Washington State University Vancouver. She is a scholar of post-colonial studies and author of the important book, What Are You Reading? The World Market and Indian Literary Production.
Salome Chasnoff is a filmmaker and installation artist who is inspired by the enlightening, humanizing and healing capacities of storytelling. For 3 decades, she has maintained a collaborative social practice and exhibition career embracing and interrogating the indivisibility of the making of art and the making of relationship. Her installations aspire to create sacred spaces for community healing. Her work has shown across the US and internationally in film festivals, galleries, and museums including Prague’s DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Slamdance Film Festival, Creative Time’s Democracy in America, Chicago Humanities Festival and the United Nations. Chasnoff is a Purpose Prize Fellow and the recipient of a Women’s eNews Ida B. Wells Bravery in Journalism and “21 Leaders for the 21st Century” Awards, Chicago Foundation for Women Impact Award and the Illinois Humanities Council Towner Award. She teaches at SAIC in Art Education.
Meredith Zielke is a filmmaker and cinematographer. She works mainly in experimental documentary features and large scale video installation. Her films have showed in numerous national and international festivals, conferences, galleries, educational institutions and community centers. Awardsinclude: The SF FILM 2017 Documentary Film Fund, Graham Foundation Grant to Individuals, the Filmmaker Fund Grant, Espera Productions Grant (Luxembourg), Gelman Travel Fellowship, PBS Silvers Award for Independent Film; Invited participant: DOK Incubator (Czech Republic, Sweden, Slovakia), IFP Documentary Labs, Spotlight on Documentaries at IFP’s Independent Film Week Forum (2015, 2018), and Featured filmmaker at the Chicago Architecture Biennial. She currently teaches at SAIC in the Film, Video, New Media and Animation department.
Of Poetry and Protest
3A panel presented by
The Guild Literary Complex + Rebuild Foundation
3pm, Saturday May 18th
Stony Island Arts Bank
6760 S. Stony Island Ave., Chicago
FREE
RSVP
This afternoon with Angela Jackson, Haki Madhubuti, and Eugene Redmond, some of the most important Chicago-area poets working at the intersection of literary innovation and political resistance over the last 50 years, inaugurates a new collaboration between The Guild and Rebuild Foundation that builds on the widely praised 2016 anthology of African American political art and poetry, Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin (WW Norton) co-edited by Guild Founding Executive Director Michael Warr, who also joins in this collaboration. This program anticipates the late June installation, on the Stony Island Arts Bank’s lawn, of the Gazebo where Tamir Rice was murdered by the Cleveland Police. The Gazebo’s erection as a memorial will be accompanied by additional Of Poetry and Protest programming and a small exhibition co-organized by the Guild and Warr. Looking ahead, and reflecting on the deconstructed Gazebo currently on display, these Chicago area writers included in the anthology will gather to share work from the book and engage with Michael Warr, the collection’s Poetry Editor, about the histories, traditions, and experiences that their work draws on, and about the role that poetry and art can play in grieving, memorializing, and resisting the human cost that the systems of racial violence with which we live extract.
Featuring:
Angela Jackson, poet, playwright, and novelist, was the recipient of the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her poetry volume, Dark Legs and Silk Kisses: The Beatitudes of the Spinners (Northwestern UP, 1993) won the Carl Sandburg Award and the Chicago Sun-Times/Friends of Literature Book of the Year Award (1994). And All These Roads Be Luminous: Poems Selected and New (Northwestern UP, 1998) was nominated for the National Book Award. It Seems Like a Mighty Long Time (Northwestern UP, 2015) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, the Pen/Open Book Award, and was a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for Poetry. Her play Shango Diaspora: An African-American Myth of Womanhood and Love was produced in Chicago and toured widely, Comfort Stew was produced at ETA Theater in Chicago in 1997 and 2018, and as When the Wind Blows in 1985. Her debut novel Where I Must Go (Northwestern UP, 2009) was the recipient of an American Book Award. It received the Chicago Black Arts Alliance Fiction Prize in 2010. Its sequel, Roads, Where There Are No Roads (2017) was awarded the John Gardner Fiction Prize from Binghamton University (2018). A Surprised Queenhood in the New Black Sun: The Life and Legacy of Gwendolyn Brooks (Beacon Press) was published in 2017, Brooks’s Centennial year. Miracle and the Fellas, a young adult novel, is forthcoming through Third World Press. She lives in Chicago.
Haki R. Madhubuti has published more than 30 books. He founded Third World Press (1967) and Third World Press Foundation (2002). He is also a founder of the Institute of Positive Education/New Concept School (1969), and a cofounder of Betty Shabazz International Charter School (1998), and Barbara A. Sizemore Middle School (2005). He was founder and editor of Black Books Bulletin (1970-1994), and a founding member of The Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC) Writer’s Workshop (1968). Professor Madhubuti is a recipient of National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, the American Book Award, an Illinois Arts Council Award, the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award and others, including Lifetime Achievement Awards from Art Sanctuary of Philadelphia, the Juneteenth Book Festival Symposium at the Library of Congress, and the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation for Leadership in the Fine Arts, as well as the Fuller Award from the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame and the Sutton E. Griggs Lifetime Achievement Award in Literature. Professor Madhubuti earned his MFA from the University of Iowa and received his third honorary Doctor of Letters from Spelman College in 2006. His distinguished teaching career includes faculty positions at Columbia College of Chicago, Cornell University, University of Illinois at Chicago, Howard University, Morgan State University, and University of Iowa. He is the former University Distinguished Professor and a professor of English at Chicago State University, where he founded and was director-emeritus of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center and director of the MFA in Creative Writing Program. In 2010-11, Professor Madhubuti served as the Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor at DePaul University.
Eugene B. Redmond was named Poet Laureate of East St. Louis (Illinois) in 1976, the year Doubleday released his best selling book, Drumvoices: The Mission of Afro-American Poetry. Earlier, he spent two years (1967-69) as Teacher-Counselor and Poet-in-Residence at Southern Illinois University’s Experiment in Higher Education (ESL) where he taught with Katherine Dunham. From 1970-85, he was Professor of English and Poet-in-Residence at California State University-Sacramento. During that time he won an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, an Outstanding Faculty Research Award, a Pushcart Prize, and served as a visiting professor at universities in the U.S., Africa, and Europe. In 1986, a year after he returned home to East St. Louis, local authors created the Eugene B. Redmond Writers Club in his honor. Redmond has won an American Book Award (for The Eye in the Ceiling), the Sterling Brown Award from ALA’s African American Literature and Culture Association, a Staying the Course Award from ETA of Chicago and the St. Louis American Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Michael Warr’s books include Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin (W.W. Norton), and The Armageddon of Funk, We Are All The Black Boy, and Power Lines: A Decade of Poetry From Chicago’s Guild Complex (Tia Chucha Press). Recognition of his poetry include a San Francisco Library Laureate award, a Creative Work Fund grant for his multimedia project Tracing Poetic Memory in Bayview Hunters Point, PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature, Black Caucus of the American Library Association Award, Gwendolyn Brooks Significant Illinois Poets Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Michael has served as a Director at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco DanceAfrica Chicago, and founding Director at the Guild Literary Complex (1989-1999). He is a board member of the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library and Principle Consultant at WarrConsulting.
About our partner:
2018 Voices of Protest
Mexican investigative journalist Sanjuana Martínez has received several prestigious prizes among which are the National Prize for Journalism and the Ortega y Gasset Prize. Because of her wide-ranging investigative work, on issues including child sexual abuse by Catholic priests and the misuse of judicial power, Sanjuana Martínez has been arrested and received many death threats during her career. The most recent series of threats caused her to go into hiding once again. Sanjuana recently came out of hiding to visit the PEN Center in San Miguel de Allende, MX, which had given her assistance during this emergency. Through the efforts of PEN San Miguel and Chicago Network for Justice and Peace, Sanjuana has agreed to come to Chicago to help USA audiences understand the situation of writers like herself — not just in Mexico but throughout the world. In this public conversation she speaks about
Writing in a Climate of Fear
2PM
Sunday, 21 October
McCormick Lounge, Coffey Hall
Loyola University, Lake Shore Campus
Chicago, Illinois
The Chicago City of Refuge Initiative is a project of Chicago Network Network for Justice and Peace, the Ann Ida Gannon Center for Women and Leadership at Loyola University Chicago, the Guild Literary Complex, and PEN San Miguel Center
Mihbaj
a staged reading of a play by Riad Ismat
Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division, Chicago
Tuesday, June 19th, 7 – 9 PM
$5 suggested donation @ the door
See our Facebook event for more information.
For the past seven years, Syria has been a news headline, yet the nuances of its tragedy remain an enigma to many. Mihbaj sheds a light on the humanitarian side of this crisis that has divided families by grudges and fanatic allegiances, scattered Syrians as refugees to many Western countries, and troubled the conscience of the entire developed world.
Near the areas occupied by both extreme Islamists and Kurds in northern Syria, a widow struggles to hold her three sons together. Meanwhile, war spreads animosity, grinding the souls of a once harmonious haven like a traditional Mihbaj, grinding coffee.
Riad Ismat (Playwright/Director) is a Syrian dramatist, director, short story and screenplay writer, who has 18 stage plays, 7 television series and many published books to his credit. He directed for Damascus National Theatre and Syria’s Academy of Dramatic Arts. He teaches in Northwestern University’s Department of Radio, Television, and Film, and works with Columbia College and other institutions.
Featuring (in order of appearance):
John Green (Narrator) is a British trained professor at Columbia College, Chicago. He directed Pornography for Flinders University, South Australia, Love and Information, Come Unto These Yellow Sands and The Conference of the Birds for Columbia College, along with several other works he directed in Indiana and elsewhere.
Heidi Katz (Naifeh) has appeared in Piven Theatre Workshop’s Ivanov and The Good Doctor, and in Interrobang Theatre Project’s production of Deanna Jents’ play Falling. She has also worked with Oil Lamp Theater (The Girl in the Freudian Slip), Halcyon Theatre (The Wild Duck), Northlight Theatre, Polarity Ensemble Theatre, and Silk Road Rising.
Nawaf Gasem (Adnan) is an actor, known for Unto All Nations (2010) and Samuel: A Journey of Discovery (2010). He has acted in several Chicago theaters.
Sami Ismat (Fares) is a director, performer and teaching artist, who worked with Silk Road Rising, CollaborAction, Trap Door, Green House, Centre and Northlight theatres. Sami holds an MFA in directing from East 15 Acting School, UK.
Bassam Abdelfattah (Jasem) is an actor, known for Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams (2017) and The Chi (2018). He is well-known in Chicago theatre circles.
A discussion with the artists will follow the reading.
&
Join us afterward for a complimentary reception with light appetizers + cash bar.
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If you would like to get involved in programs surrounding writers in diaspora here in Chicago please reach out to us at guildcomplex.programs@gmail.com. We will be happy to talk with you about future programming.
Al-Sheikh, Maarouf
The Guild’s commitment to spotlighting divergent voices extends beyond the borders of Chicago in Voices of Protest. On April 25 and 26, the Guild brings Manal Al-Sheikh (Iraq) and Mazen Maarouf (Palestine)—two authors exiled from their home countries and now living in Scandinavia—to participate in conversations, film screenings, and readings with a focus on human rights, freedom of speech, and the ways literature celebrates life and inspires social change.
As part of this program, two short documentary films on Al-Sheikh and Maarouf will be screened. The segments are part of Poets of Protest, an Al Jazeera produced series by British filmmaker Roxana Vilk. The series focuses on six Middle Eastern authors and the relationship of their work to initiatives for democracy and social justice across the Middle East. Screenings will be followed by readings from Al-Sheikh and Maarouf.
Helge Lunde
As a supplement to this exciting series, on April 23Helge Lunde—Executive Director of the International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN)—will be giving a lecture entitled Safe, But Not Silent at Silk Road Rising’s Chicago Temple Building to discuss the significant work his organization performs to aid writers facing political threats and persecution. Both Manal Al-Sheikh and Mazen Maarouf benefited from the services of ICORN. As part of his address, Mr. Lunde will invite Chicago to become an International City of Refuge.
AND Voices of Protest: Home Edition: 03/12/2015 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
In September 2014, the Guild Literary Complex sent five Chicago writers to the 2014 Kapittel International Festival of Literature and Freedom of Speech in Stavanger, Norway. NOW, for the first time since their return, the authors will give a special reading of creative work inspired by the trip and lead a community dialogue on free speech issues. Voices of Protest: Home Edition will take place on Thursday, March 12, 7:00 p.m., and is co-presented with 826CHI at 1276 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago. The program is open to the public and free of charge. Donations will be accepted.
Participating authors include: Adam Gottlieb, L’Oréal Patrice Jackson, Sahar Mustafah, Erika L. Sánchez, and M. Quinn Stifler. Each emerging writer was chosen to participate in Voices of Protest due to their professional practices integrating art and activism, which includes work on gender, race, women’s rights, peace initiatives, and other issues.
Voices of Protest programs are supported in part by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s International Connections Fund, and in a continued partnership with the International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN).
Click here for Facebook RSVP!
See below for information on authors and partners!
For more information on the 2014 Kapittel festival, click here.
For more information on previous Voices of Protest programs, click here.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Adam Gottlieb is a poet/teaching-artist from Chicago. He got into spoken word at age 14 via the Young Chicago Authors teen poetry slam festival Louder Than a Bomb, and was featured in the documentary film by the same name. He recently graduated from Hampshire College, where he studied poetry and critical pedagogy. He seeks to promote the use of poetry as a medium for dialogue, self-expression, and positive social change.
L’Oréal Patrice Jackson is an artist rooted in theatre, music, movement and writing. As an arts educator she teaches theatre performance, improvisation, storytelling, and multi-disciplinary art. She has worked with Steppenwolf, Writers Theatre, and Columbia College Chicago, among others. Before recently relocating to California, she served as a youth leader for Soka Gakkai International (SGI), a lay Buddhist organization dedicated to peace culture and education, and she was the Education Associate at About Face Theatre, a production company with a focus on lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and ally arts.
Sahar Mustafah writes about “the others”—Arabs in the United States and abroad—who are often deemed strange and disparate from the larger racial community. Her work has appeared in anthologies and journals including Great Lakes Review, Word Riot, Flyleaf, Hair Trigger, and Chicago Literati, and she’s performed with 2nd Story Chicago. She’s the recipient of a Pushcart nomination. She is a teacher and co-founder of Bird’s Thumb, an online literary journal devoted to new and emerging voices. She received her MFA from Columbia College Chicago.
Erika L. Sánchez is a Fulbright Scholar, CantoMundo Fellow, and winner of the “Discovery”/Boston Review Prize. Her poetry has appeared in Pleiades, Witness, Anti-, Hunger Mountain, Crab Orchard Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Copper Nickel, Boston Review, “Latino USA” on NPR, and is forthcoming in diode and Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poems for the Next Generation (Penguin 2015). Her nonfiction appears in The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Rolling Stone, Salon, NBC News, Cosmopolitan, and many others.
M. Quinn Stifler received a B.A. in Creative Writing and Women’s & Gender Studies at DePaul University. Stifler has worked with Threshold, DePaul’s student-run literature and arts journal, and is a co-founder and editor of No Assholes Literary Magazine. Stifler was a finalist for the 2013 Gwendolyn Brooks Open-Mic Poetry Award, and regularly participates in and organizes house readings around Chicago.