Join us the weekend of Wicker Park & West Town Lit Fest for a special reading from the newest book from the amazing Quraysh Ali Lansana! He will be reading from a never before seen book! A Gift from Greensboro (Ages 5 & up) is at once an elegy, a celebration of the magic of…
Join the Guild Literary Complex, The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, and the Poetry Foundation as we celebrate the great writers of Chicago. This year we are celebrating one of our very own: Rosellen Brown. Mark your calendars to come and celebrate Rosellen’s amazing body of work, not to mention a life dedicated to the…
The Guild Literary Complex is back for our Fall 2016 season! Launching us off is the Wicker Park and West Town Lit Fest, September 15-18th with Guild Events partnered with Volumes Book Cafe, 826 Chicago, Young Chicago Authors, Book Club, Chicago PRC, Quimby’s Bookstore, Myopic Books, and Impossible Industries. Join us Saturday September 17th at Volumes…
Call for 2016 Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic awards submissions DEADLINE EXTENDED TO SEPTEMBER 15th! Guild Literary Complex announces its open call for poetry submissions for the 23rd Annual Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award. Deadline to submit is has been extended to September 15th, 2016! Twenty (20) selected semi-finalists will compete for a $500 prize in front of a voting…
The Guild Literary Complex presents: PALABRA PURA: A Night of Corridos July 20, 2016 7:30 – 9:00 PM, La Catrina Cafe 1011 W 18th St, Chicago, Illinois 60608 Hosted by Juan Díes, folklorist and co-founder of the GRAMMY-nominated Sones de México Ensemble. Palabra Pura promotes literary expression in more than one tongue through a bi-monthly bilingual…
Tuesday, June 7, 2016, Time: 10:00 am until 6:00 pm Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E Washington St., Chicago, IL 60602. Join us for the fourth annual BrooksDay, celebrating the works of Gwendolyn Brooks on her birthday! We are honoring her tremendous legacy as an artist and an iconic figure of generosity and civic conscience in…
Thursday May 26, 2016. Wicker Park Chicago Guild Literary Complex Presents: Where Margins Meet 5:30 – 7:30 PM Artist Talk with Danny Alexander, Volumes Bookcafe 7:30 Door, 8:00 – 9:45 PM RAP 101, Iridium Clothing Danny Alexander, the author of Real Love, No Drama: The Music of Mary J. Blige will be sitting in with…
Palabra Pura with Miguel López Lemus of Lobo Estepario Press presents: Palabra Pura as part of the Guild Literary Complex Una noche bohemia. A bohemian night. Poetry, song, music, storytelling Cuento, poesía, música, canción Sponsored by Pandora lobo estepario productions press. We are mixing it up a bit this month and will have a group…
The 4th Annual BrooksDay is right around the corner, and to pique your interest the Guild Literary Complex in conjunction with the Museum of Contemporary Art is hosting a preview night of artists who represent the broad scope of the BrooksDay legacy and vision. Showcasing their own work, artists who are part of the BrooksDay…
Welcome to Chicago’s newest DIY underground hip-hop event. On the last Thursday of the month (August and December excluded) the Guild Literary Complex hosts an a cappella hip-hop series with a diy/underground flair. Partnering with Artist AWK and Iron Heart Productions theRAPY 101 is featuring local and national spoken word talent, spin-artists, DJs, and one…
Palabra Pura March 16, 2016 ~ “Turnt in Relevant Opacity” With THIS MONTH’S CURATOR: RICARDO GAMBOA Ricardo is an artist, activist, and an academic working in his native town of Chicago. He is a company member of Barrel of Monkeys, Southside Ignoramus Quartet, and Free Street Theater. He is the founding Artistic Director of…
This year opens with a splash on Wednesday, January 2oth! The Guild Literary Complex is pleased to kick off the 11th season of PALABRA PURA returning with “One Poet / One Poem”. Come join in the fun 11 years in the making. This year’s season will feature 2016 Guest Palabra Pura curators and past readers some…
The Guild Literary Complex is proud to announce the three semi-finalists from each category who will read their work at our Annual Prose Awards event.
Rare Book Auction To Support The Guild The nights are getting longer, making it a perfect time to settle in with a good book. And November provides a unique opportunity for book lovers: bid on the rare books up for auction from the library of Reginald Gibbons. The proceeds will support the Guild! Many of you know Reginald as the Guild…
July includes our last hurrah before we take a little summer vacation, so be sure to join us for this month’s Palabra Pura (July 15), curated by Ruben Quesada, and the 22nd annual Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Awards (July 22), with 20 poets competing for a $600 top prize. These two events will feed your…
This month’s forecast includes vast geography, musicality, and respect, all played out in the first three weeks. Outside temperatures may vary, but the artists and projects featured by the Guild this April are hot. We jump right in on Monday, April 6, with a continuation of our new series foregrounding Asian / American authors and…
March roars like a lion all month long. No lambs about it. The Guild means business. And it begins with a Voices of Protest “Home Edition” on Thursday, March 12. The emerging authors we sent to Kapittel, Norway’s international festival of literature and freedom of expression, will give readings inspired by the project and talk…
February is a winter month of storms (check), sub-zero temperatures (check), and gray skies (check). While the Guild doesn’t control the weather, every month we program events that bring people together to celebrate diverse, divergent, and emerging voices. And that’s hot—regardless of the season. The 10th year of Palabra Pura continues on February 18 with…
Happy new year to you! All of us at the Guild wish you a happy, healthy, and productive 2015. For our part, we’ll work on “productive” with a January party to celebrate 10 years of Palabra Pura. This energetic and lively series continues to support and showcase emerging and established authors in the Latino and…
It’s November! Time to recover from your Halloween-candy coma with a trio of festive Guild Literary Complex events! But before we put our party hats on, we want to remind you about our Author Challenge Grant! Some sterling Chicago authors have pledged $2500 to the Guild if we can match it by November 15. Can…
You know the saying good things come in pairs? We couldn’t agree more and this month we have quite the literary duo – Palabra Pura: Want and our Annual Prose Awards. But before we get into those events, let’s not forget one very important deadline. Submissions for the 2014 Prose Awards are due on…
…and we’re ready to kick off the fall with a whole month of spotlighted readings and events—but not to fret, we won’t kill your grooves. We’ll keep them going. First up, a dance party. Quraysh Ali Lansana and Christopher Stewart teamed up to produce The Walmart Republic, a new book of their collected poems. It…
So far, 2014 has been one of the best in our 25-year history. It’s only July, and we’ve put on as many events as we did in the entirety of 2013. From storytelling events to book releases and some amazing Palabra Pura readings—not to mention an incredible 25th birthday party—it has been quite the year….
To put it short: We are overwhelmed by last night’s Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award & Reading. Chicagoist offered up their thoughts: “If you attend one poetry reading a year, it might as well be the Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award.” First, the emcee: Toni Asante Lightfoot never ceases to amaze us. Her ability to…
Well, July is for lovers of many things: Bike riding, beaches, camping, gardening, back porches, front porches, other people’s pools…and, yes, poetry. Until we can book a spot for a poolside Palabra Pura (think: the audience gets their own floating lounges), we’re continuing our marvelous Palabra Pura at La Bruquena Restaurant on July 16. This…
June is here! Our Director John Rich took a trip to Slovenia to attend the International Cities of Refuge Network conference, our Marketing Coordinator finished up her Master’s program, and we graduated yet another terrific intern, Anna Hayden-Roy. So between our fabulous REVEAL 25 birthday party and now—a lot has happened. But that’s not slowing…
Our 25th Anniversary benefit, REVEAL, is just two weeks away. Originally, we thought we’d wait for the big day to announce our 25 Writers to Watch—a collaboratively-assembled list of 25 emerging-to-mid career writers whose works are making waves in both Chicago, and around the country. These are some amazing writers, so please join us in…
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…
That title is a bit vague, but we’ve booked April with events that encompass a lot of what the Guild values: International perspectives, freedom of speech, access to what nourishes us (both body and self), and transformative literature. This month, you can look forward to another evening of community and poetry at our April Palabra Pura,…
They say seven is a lucky number—well, we are co-producing seven, (yes, seven) events in March to get everyone ready for spring! Call it the luck of the Irish, but we’re just incredibly fortunate to be partnering with About Face Theatre, Science is Sexy, and, of course, to continue our partnership with Columbia College for…