Our Mission
The Guild Literary Complex is a 35-year-old grassroots literary arts organization creating performance-based events in and around the Chicagoland area. We partner and collaborate with other community groups on social and restorative justice issues, providing arts and advocacy programming for marginalized voices.
Our HISTORY
In 1989, a local, community-based bookstore, Guild Books (once located on Lincoln Avenue) began regularly hosting progressive, stimulating, and eclectic literary events. Soon after, the Guild Complex established itself as an official non-profit organization with poet Michael Warr as its first executive director.
For the last 35 years, the Guild Literary Complex has been a pioneer on Chicago’s literary landscape, consistently hosting innovative and diverse events, featuring leading literary names, and welcoming new, emerging voices.
Accolades
The Guild Literary Complex is regularly nominated for the Chicago Reader’s Best Poetry Organization, and Guild board members and leaders continue to appear in Newcity’s annual Lit 50.
The Guild has been acknowledged as “Chicago’s premier literary center” by the Illinois Arts Council and twice selected as a model literary center by the National Endowment for the Arts.
NOTABLES
Chicago writer Studs Terkel, activist Meridel Le Sueur, and blues legend Willie Dixon are among many famous faces who passed through the doors of Guild Books, and past collaborators have included some of history’s most influential contemporary writers, including:
Ana Castillo | Lucille Clifton | Eduardo Galeano | Ricardo Gamboa | Kent Foreman | Alex Kotlowitz | Gwendolyn Brooks | Jack Hirschman | Angela Jackson | Li-Young Lee | Eve Ewing | Michael Ondaatje | Sharon Olds | Grace Paley | Octavio Paz | Sterling Plumpp | Adrienne Rich | Carolyn Rodgers | Luis Rodriguez | Salman Rushdie | Patricia Smith | Quincy Troupe