Applied Words: Re-Built: Writers on Architecture and the Urban Plan

If urban design is the language of the city, where is the story – and who tells it? In “Re-Built: Writers on Architecture and the Urban Plan” the Guild Literary Complex presents Chicago authors examining human-scale relationships with the built environment, the history of Homan Square, and what comes next. This reading is part of Open House Chicago, a program of the Chicago Architecture Foundation. Stop by for stories built brick by brick!

The event will featuring readings by Nwaji Nefahito, Sandra Seaton, and Benjamin van Loon, along with students from Henry Ford Academy: Power House High. An open-mic starts the program. Sign-up for the open-mic begins at 1:30 pm.

The venue, a 14-story brick tower in a Neo-Classical style, was once part of the world’s largest commercial building, a 3.3 million square foot warehouse for the old Sears Roebuck and Company.

Applied Words: “Re-Built” is programmed in partnership with Open House Chicago, a program of the Chicago Architecture Foundation, and is generously underwritten by the Foundation for Homan Square.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Sandra Seaton is the author of twelve plays. Her libretto for the song cycle From the Diary of Sally Hemings, a collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer William Bolcom, is available as a CD from White Pine Music and as a score from Hal Leonard. Famed actor Ruby Dee appeared in a 1998 Ann Arbor production of The Bridge Party, Seaton’s first play. In 2009, A Chance Meeting (adapted from the short story by Chicago author Cyrus Colter) premiered at the University of Michigan starring acclaimed Met tenor George Shirley. A recent play, Music History, set at the University of Illinois at Champaign in 1963, focuses on African American college students from Chicago and their responses to the struggle for civil rights in the South. In 2012 Seaton received the Mark Twain Award “for distinguished contributions to Midwestern literature” from the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature.

Benjamin van Loon is a writer living in Chicago, IL. He is the co-founder of Anobium (an experimental literary publication); a former staff writer for Green Building & Design magazine; a runner-up for the Calvino Prize for Fiction; and is presently participating in the Communications, Media, and Theater graduate program at Northeastern Illinois University.

Nwaji Nefahito was born and raised in the Lawndale district.  She currently resides on the West Side of Chicago, where she is a longtime community activist. Ms. Harris is also a baker and an African dance performer.  Her West Side roots have continued to influence her perspective on contemporary life, which has also been enriched by her extensive travels throughout the world, including visits to West Africa, Egypt and Haiti. Ms. Harris attended the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and Southern University at New Orleans. She has the ability of a lifelong Westsider to reflect on the ways things have changed in Chicago beyond downtown and the lakefront.

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