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 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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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:...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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. 

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...

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,...

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...

More details to come!

More details coming soon!

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.

Printers Row Lit Fest 2020 has been postponed until September.

Book Release and Reading for Mike Puican's new book of poetry, Central Air.  September 17, 2020 7:00pm - 8:00pm, reception to follow Poetry Foundation Also featuring readings from Mary Hawley and...

Check back soon for more details!

Marvin Tate: Schoolyard of Broken Dreams as part of the Guild's Musicality of Poetry series More details coming soon.

Fuller Award: Reginald GibbonsThursday, October 29, 2020 5:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. Reginald Gibbons's prolific writing career has included publication of ten full-length poetry collections; a short story collection and...