• RUTHERFORD’S TRAVELS with Dr. Charles Johnson

    Chicago Dramatists 773 N. Aberdeen, Chicago, United States

    Pegasus Theatre has a special deal this weekend just for Guild Literary Complex fans: This weekend, Pegasus Theatre presents sneak peak readings of RUTHERFORD’S TRAVELS, a spellbinding tale based on the beloved book MIDDLE PASSAGE. Told through Rutherford Calhoun’s 1830s log entries, The newly freed Illinois youth has migrated south to New Orleans seeking fortune,...

    Variable
  • Return Us to Nakedness, A Celebration of Rane Arroyo

    Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center 4048 West Armitage, Chicago, IL, United States

    RANE Flyer, Jpeg Guild Literary Complex, Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, After Hours Press, and the Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center invite you to join us for an evening celebrating the life and work of iconic Chicago poet Rane Arroyo. Readings and remembrances for the night will include performances by: • Rey Andujar • Eduardo...

  • RAP 101

    Iridium Clothing CO 1330 North Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago, United States

    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...

    $10
  • BrooksDay Preview at the MCA, Chicago

    Museum of Contemporary Art 220 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago, United States

    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...

  • Palabra Pura, May 18, 2016

    La Bruquena Restaurant 2726 W. Division, Chicago, IL, United States

    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...

  • RAP 101 meets Real Love No Drama, Artist Talk about women, music, and Mary J. Blige with Author Danny Alexander

    Volumes Bookcafe 1474 N. Milwaukee Ave, Chicago , United States

    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...

    Free
  • 4th Annual BrooksDay, June 7 2016

    Chicago Cultural Center 78 East Washington Street, Chicago, United States

    Welcome to the 4th Annual BrooksDay, a day long celebration of Gwendolyn Brooks Tuesday, June 7, 2016, Time: 10:00 am until 6:00 pm Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E Washington St., Chicago, IL 60602. Our annual celebration of Gwendolyn Brooks is back, this year at the Chicago Cultural Center.  Special features, amazing readers and all things...

  • Where Margins Meet ~ the Guild’s Annual Benefit

    Filament Theatre 4041 N. MILWAUKEE AVE, Chicago , IL, United States

    The GUILD LITERARY COMPLEX is set to party with you on June 22nd 6:00 - 9:00 PM at Filament theatre. Come celebrate nearly 30 years of the Guild's legacy in Chicago as we look to our next 30. Performances, music, fun, food and drink will round out a night with some of your favorite Chicago...

    $15 – $180
  • One Poet/One Poem

    La Bruquena Restaurant 2726 W. Division, Chicago, IL, United States

    The Guild’s annual One Poet/One Poem event starts the year off by looking back.  Past Palabra Pura performers are invited to return and share a single poem or other 3-minute piece, painting a portrait in snapshots of our ongoing bi-lingual reading series and all of the styles, voices, and communities it includes.

  • Born Woke: 30 years of Guild Literary Complex – Programming Ahead of the Times

    Newberry Library 60 West Walton Street, Chicago, IL

    A Newberry Colloquium Wednesday, October 2, 2019 4pm Towner Fellows’ Lounge, Newberry Library Join us for a talk featuring the Guild Literary Complex’s rich archive, exhibiting its groundbreaking impact on literary programming across Chicago communities. The discussion will feature Guild collaborators and curators Kurt Heintz, Marci Merola, and Lew Rosenbaum. Kurt Heintz co-founded the Guild’s Poetry...

  • Creative Freedom: Writing In and Out of Prison

    Green Line Performing Arts Center 329 E. Garfield Boulevard, Chicago, IL, United States

    A reading and panel featuring formerly incarcerated writers, and writers who teach in prisons, sharing their work and their perspectives on writing in prison, writing outside of prison, and writing about prison from both inside and out. Presented in partnership with UChicago Arts & Public Life + Chicago Torture Justice Memorials in connection with the exhibition Still Here:...

  • Of Poetry and Protest

    Stony Island Arts Bank 6760 S. Stony Island Ave, Chicago, IL, United States

    3A panel presented by The Guild Literary Complex + Rebuild Foundation 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...

  • Performing Identities On (& Off) the Page: Queer Femme Artists of Color

    Hairpin Arts Center 2800 N. Milwaukee Ave., 2nd floor, Chicago, IL, United States

    Building on a conversation begun with last Fall’s Applied Words: Performing Queerness On (& Off) the Page, this reading and performance panel brings together three Chicago-based queer femme artists of color working across writing and performance, who use language, body, and voice to reconsider and confront the limitations and possibilities of identity in diverse ways. Through three...

  • BrooksDay 2019

    Chicago State University, Gwendolyn Brooks Library 9501 S. King Drive, Chicago, IL, United States

    BrooksDay is the Guild Literary Complex’s annual celebration of Gwendolyn Brooks, held every year on June 7th, the anniversary of her birth.  Since 2013, BrooksDay has been a marquee event in the Guild’s yearly calendar with many literary, cultural, and civic leaders from Chicago and beyond taking the stage to celebrate and honor Gwendolyn Brooks, former...

  • The Guild’s 30th Anniversary Party

    Chopin Theater 1543 W Division

    The Guild hosted an evening celebrating the Guild’s first 30 years, and looking forward to the next 30. Important voices from the Guild’s past introduced the Guild’s 30 Writers to Watch in 2019 and beyond. We saw old friends & made some new ones, while enjoying music, hors d’oeuvres, and an-end-of night raffle featuring unique...

  • Of Poetry and Protest Exhibit Opening

    Stony Island Arts Bank 6760 S. Stony Island Ave, Chicago, IL, United States

    Presented by The Guild Literary Complex + Rebuild Foundation 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...

  • 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...

  • Narraciones en Tiempos Distintos / Narrations in Different Times

    La Bruquena Restaurant 2726 W. Division, Chicago, IL, United States

    En estos tiempos difíciles y en mérito a la evolucion de la lengua, contamos las historias que nuestros zapatos caminan, desde 4 perspectivas diferentes. Democracia, intertextualidad, el muro, THC, LGBTTQQIAAP, el decálogo, historias de supermarkets, literalidad, teorias secretas y mucho más. Stories for difficult times and the evolution of the language, from 4 different perspectives....

  • GBOMA Finals 2019

    The Promontory 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. West, Chicago, IL, United States

    The Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Awards (GBOMA) is an annual poetry competition founded by Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000) and open to all Illinois residents over the age of 18. The top contestants selected by guest judges from the poetry community are invited to perform their original poems at the live finals event, where the audience favorite...

  • Incarcerated: Stories, Poetry and Perspectives

    Read/Write Library at the Justice Hotel 6108 North Kenmore, Chicago, IL, United States

    Information Wants to Be Free & So Do We A Pop Up Library on Communication, Control & Mass Incarceration In collaboration with Read/Write Library, the Guild Complex brings the stories from the formerly incarcerated. “Information Wants to Be Free & So Do We” asks audiences to question the idea that social, emotional, and intellectual control...

  • Final Palabra Pura of 2019 on Translation

    La Bruquena Restaurant 2726 W. Division, Chicago, IL, United States

    Join the Guild Literary Complex for the last Palabra Pura event of the year, hosted by Kolin Jordan and featuring Amaia Gabantxo and Andrew Hertzberg. Translation will be a theme of this event, so feel free to bring a translation of yours (a poem or a few lines of a prose piece) for the open...

  • Cyntoia Brown-Long: An Evening in Dialogue

    Mandel Hall 1131 E. 57th Street, Chicago, IL, United States

    Join us for a powerful evening of dialogue between Dr. Tara Betts, the Literary Editor of New City, and author Cyntoia Brown-Long as they discuss her new book, Free Cyntoia: My Search for Redemption in the American Prison System. 

    $5 – $20
  • One Poet/One Poem

    La Bruquena Restaurant 2726 W. Division, Chicago, IL, United States

    Join us for the Guild’s annual One Poet/One Poem event as part of our ongoing bi-lingual Palabra Pura reading series. Here are this year's participants: Emcee: Mary Hawley Readers: Emmanuel Ayala Eduardo Arocho Melissa Cintron Carlos Cumpián Angelica Davila Nick Garcia Silvia Goldman Gregorio Gomez Adam Gottlieb Carolina Herrera Kolin Jordan Olivia Maciel Pedro Pablo...

  • Cancelled: Backbone Press Chicago Reading

    Chopin Theater 1543 W Division

    The Guild Complex Presents: A reading with Backbone Press Featuring our 30 Writers to Watch Tara Betts and Faisal Mohyuddin, along with other Backbone Press authors Naoko Fujimoto, Allison Joseph, and Aozora Brockman. As a response to the bleak state of diversity in publishing, Backbone Press has been publishing diversely since 2012, supporting writers who...

  • Cancelled: 30W2W Book Release & Reading

    Hopleaf 5148 N Clark St, Chicago, IL

    Join the Guild Literary Complex in celebrating the recent release of The Distance Between by Timothy J. Hillegonds, and a reading from Kenyatta Rogers, two of the Guild’s 30 Writers to Watch. Hillegonds’s memoir is a finely wrought exploration of, and reckoning with, absent fathers, fatherhood, violence, adolescent rage, white male privilege, and his own...

  • BrooksDay – Postponed

    BrooksDay 2020 will not be held on June 7th, due to COVID-19 restrictions. We're planning a date for the fall and will have more details soon.