Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Awards

Guild Literary Complex is pleased to announce the 20^th Annual Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Awards. Join us Tuesday July 23, 2013, 7:00 pm, at the Chopin Theater, 1542 W Division Street, for a live voting event and award ceremony. Preliminary judges, Gwendolyn A. Mitchell and Noël Jones have narrowed the submissions down to just 20 semi-finalists who now have the opportunity to showcase their talents in front of a live audience. Audience members will be voting throughout the evening and will ultimately crown the winner of $500 and the 20^th Annual Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Awards. Brooks’ daughter, Nora Brooks Blakely will present the first place award. The emcee for the event is celebrated poet and performer Toni Ashante Lightfoot. Included in the festivities will be a special reading by Mark Turcotte, the first winner of the Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Awards in 1993. Tickets are $7 / $5 for students.

The 2013 semi-finalists are: Olivia M. Arredondo, Lucia Blinn, Ann Breen-Greco, Quintin Collins, Dina Elenbogen, Glenn Ford, Amelia M. Garcia, Marc Livingston (a.k.a. G.P.A.), Nate Marshall, Maya Marshall, Diana Pando, Gregory Pickett, Kelly Reuter, Shanara “The MouthPeace” Sanders, Sandra Santiago, Rachel Slotnick, Javon Smith, M. Quinn Stifler, Sharon Warner, and Arne Weingart

EMCEE: Toni Asante Lightfoot is a lecturer and co-editor of Dream of a Word: A Tia Chucha Anthology, The It’s Your Mug 10th Anniversary Commemorative Anthology, and The Sixth Wave: An anthology of Black writers from the late 70s to 2000.

SPECIAL PRESENTER: Nora Brooks Blakely is a committed educator and the daughter of Henry Blakely and Gwendolyn Brooks. She developed Brooks Permissions in 2000 to manage her mother’s body of work.

SPECIAL READER: Mark Turcotte is an educator and the author of four poetry collections, including The Feathered Heart and Exploding Chippewas.

PRELIMINARY JUDGE: Gwendolyn A. Mitchell is a poet and editor.  Her poetry has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies including American Review, Prairie Schooner, Warpland: A Journal of Black Literature and Ideas, Essence Magazine, Spaces Between Us and Valley Voices. Ms. Mitchell is the author of two poetry collections, Veins and Rivers and House of Women, and is the author of the book-length poem, Ain’t I Black.  She is the co-editor of two anthologies, Releasing the Spirit and Describe the Moment, both collections of literary work from Gallery 37 in Chicago. Her forthcoming book, Among the Missing, will be published later this year. Gwendolyn Mitchell resides in Illinois, where she serves as Senior Editor for Third World Press.

PRELIMINARY JUDGE: Noël Jones is a writer and former member of the 2000 National Poetry Slam Champion Team NYC-Urbana, featured in The New York Times and on NPR’s “Infinite Mind,” as well as at the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, TX. As a performance poet, Jones has toured internationally and was elected to be part of an all-woman tour introducing slam poetry to Denmark. Among other appearances, Jones has been featured at the YWCA Student Association’s National Convention in Phoenix, Arizona; on New York’s Studio Y on the MetroChannel and Boston’s Stand-Up Poetry.

The 20th Annual Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award program is sponsored by Wicker Park Bucktown SSA #33.  WPB SSA #33 is administered by the WPB Chamber of Commerce.