Past Events

On July 11, Patricia Smith received the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame's Fuller Award for her lifetime achievements. The ceremony, co-presented with our host the Poetry Foundation, as well as American Writers Museum, Shipman Agency, Inc., Chicago Poetry Center, Guild Literary Complex, Third World Press, and Lee & Low Books was free and open to the public. Chicago Poet Laureate avery r. young presided over a lineup that included Nora Brooks Blakely, Reginald Gibbons, Poetry Out Loud National Champion Niveah Glover, Adrian Matejka, Marc Smith, and Jamila Woods. Lynne Thompson led a conversation with Smith at the end of the program. We expect a full audience, so register now. 

Smith, a product of Chicago's West Side, has distinguished herself as a poet, spoken-word performer, author, and teacher. For more than three decades, Smith's prolific and varied output has placed her amongst the nation's finest poets. Between 1990 and 1993, Smith won three National Poetry Slam individual championships, with a second-place finish in 1992; she captured a fourth title in 1995. During that time, Smith published her first three poetry collections: Life According to Motown (1991), Big Towns, Big Talk (1992), and Close to Death (1993). Smith's writing stood up on the page; when merged with charismatic, powerful performance skills, it made her a legend in the nascent slam community. Her introduction and initiation to the scene were all in Chicago, especially The Green Mill, where the first two national championships were held. Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott produced a selection of Smith's poetry as a one-woman play which was performed at Boston University and the Trinidad Theater Workshop.

To date, Smith has authored nine poetry books. her latest publications include, Unshuttered (Feb 2023); Incendiary Art (2017), winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the 2018 NAACP Image Award, and finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize; Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah (2012), winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; Blood Dazzler (2008), a National Book Award finalist; and Gotta Go, Gotta Flow, a collaboration with award-winning Chicago photographer Michael Abramson. Much of her work draws inspiration from urban life, especially Gotta Go Gotta Flow: Life, Love, and Lust on Chicago's South Side (2015).

Her other books include Teahouse of the Almighty (2006), the children's book Janna and the Kings (2003), and the history of Africans in America (1998), a companion book to the award-winning PBS series. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, The Baffler, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Tin House and in Best American poetry, Best American Essays and Best American Mystery Stories. She co-edited The Golden Shovel Anthology–New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks (2017) and edited the crime fiction anthology Staten Island Noir (2012).

Smith is the 2021 recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation, and a 2022 inductee of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.  She is a professor of creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University; a former distinguished professor for the City University of New York; and a faculty member at the Vermont College of Fine Arts Post-Graduate Residency Program. Smith is a Guggenheim fellow, a Civitellian, a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient, a finalist for the Neustadt Prize, a two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize, and a former fellow at both Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. 

At the second American Writers Festival on Sunday, May 19, Jane Hseu led a discussion with authors Ugochi Nwaogwugwu, Nestor Gomez, and Lani T. Montreal. These artists came to Chicago from Guatemala, Nigeria, and the Philippines. Each has explored the immigration experience in a variety of ways, including spoken work, memoir, poetry, and plays. The panel shared ideas about the importance of telling their stories, and the impact form has on their power.  

The second American Writers Festival, presented by the American Writers Museum and the Chicago Public Library, featured "a number of leading contemporary authors, poets, artists, and playwrights." This free literary festival ran all day on Sunday, May 19, and included panels, discussions, readings, and signings across multiple stages. 

Nestor "the Boss" Gomez traveled from Guatemala to Chicago with his family in the mid 80's. He was 15 years old, stutter, didn't know the English language and was undocumented. he didn't have a voice. Today, he is an American citizen, speaks English with a sexy latinx accent and has become a storyteller. He has won the Moth slam more than 80 times. He is also the creator of 80 Minutes Around the World, a storytelling show that features the stories of immigrants, refugees, their descendants and allies, 

Jane Hsue is Professor of English at Dominican University. She specializes in teaching/ researching Asian American and Latinx literatures and writing creative nonfiction. In addition to academic essays, she has published personal essays on funky Chinese American names, growing up in her mother’s Shiseido cosmetics store, and mental health, literature, and community. Jane enjoys being in creative community, especially being an organizer for Banyan: Asian American Writers Collective and telling stories in Ada Cheng’s storytelling productions. She is currently working on a memoir about how her journey with mental health necessitates coming to terms with a family history of mental illness.  

Lani T. Montreal writes to create her home in the diaspora. She is a queer feminist Filipina writer/educator/performer/activist based in Chicago. Her poems and essays have been anthologized in journals and books, and her plays, produced in the Philippines, Canada, and the U.S. She is CIRCA Pintig's resident playwright and a Chicago Dramatist Network Playwright. She is a two-time recipient of 3Arts Residency Awards, a 2017 VONA Writers of Color Workshop alumni, a 2017 Free Street Theatre Resident Artist, and a 2024 Links Hall Co-MISSION Fellow. She teaches writing at Malcolm X College.

Ugochi Nwaogwugwu is a multidisciplinary creative. Her poems have been published in “Storm Between Two Fingers” & "Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different," both international anthologies released in the UK. “Golden Shovel Anthology,” honoring Gwendolyn Brooks, “The Eternal Year of African People,” and “Wherever I’m At” released nationwide. “Not My President” published by Third World Press in 2017. Her first book of poetry & prose entitled “Seasons of Separation,” in 2023. Ugochi also created an original pan African poetry form called, “Ike,” (pronounced EE-kay) #Ikepoem, paying homage to her Igbo heritage of Nigeria and fostering black appreciation worldwide.  

The Randall Albers Young Writers Award was back for its second year. On Saturday, May 11, we presented awards to young writers of both prose and poetry and listened as they read aloud from their work. We were joined by families, friends, teachers, and a host of notable Chicago writers. It was a touching and entertaining way to welcome our new generation of great Chicago writers. In addition to the awards ceremony, we showcased other young voices, many who’d won honorable mention certificates, in a post-ceremony open mic.

Poetry, 1^st through 4^th Place:

• 1^st Place: Liam Benham, “The Herring Net – Winslow Homer”
• 2^nd Place: Morgan Montoya, “What They Won’t Tell You in the Dictionary”
• 3^rd Place: Fiona Jin, “Hauntings”
• 4^th Place: Gabe Cadichon, “Nantucket”

Poetry, Honorable Mentions (in no particular order):

• Mila Ponce, “Waning Infancy”
• Hannah Smith, “Love, Hannah”
• Lillian O’Callaghan, “Mississippi River Leeches”
• Ananya Ramji, “Kindergarten”
• Maia Pereyra, “A Different Grape”
• Ashish Prince, “Echoes of Change”

Prose, 1^st through 4^th Place:

• 1^st Place: Hazel Brown, “Harboring”
• 2^nd Place: Charlotte Hensley, “Inviolable”
• 3^rd Place: Rainey Reese, “On Innocence and Black Youth”
• 4^th Place: Reghan Barnard, “Dogeye”

Prose, Honorable Mentions (in no particular order):

• Mateo Burgos, “Halo Rich”
• Dylan McGee, “What Blooms/Flurryheads”
• Izzy Thurman, “The Art of Insanity”
• Luke Montzka, “Concert Hall”
• Eva Rodriguez, “Nothing Ever Lasts Forever: The Mean Lady Who Called Me A Dog”
• Estelle Wong, “The Face Thief”

To Support the Randall Albers Young Writers Award

Please consider supporting Chicago’s young writers by making a tax-deductible donation here, or by sending a check to: Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, 4043 N. Ravenswood Ave., #222, Chicago, IL 60613. (Please note your preference to designate your donation to the Randall Albers Young Writers Award.)

2024 Randall Albers Young Writers Award Ceremony

Our new Chicago Literary Hall of Fame class of Hamlin Garland, Eunice Tietjens, and E. Donald-Two Rivers was inducted at a ceremony featuring a lineup that included William J. Bowe, Melissa Bradshaw, Naomi Athena, Carlos Cumpián, Arica Hilton, Jesse Raber, and Dorene Wiese. Two-Rivers’s daughter, Annabelle Broeffle, Garland’s great grandson, Christopher Harper, and the Poetry Foundation were on hand to accept the CLHOF statues. Richard Guzman emceed the ceremony. A reception in the CHM's Guild Gallery followed the ceremony. The event was free and open to the public. The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame presented these statues alongside our partners, which included American Writers Museum, Chicago History Museum, Cliff Dwellers, Fastener Superstore, Inc., Glencoe Study Center, Greater Reach Consulting, Guild Literary Complex, Hamlin Garland Society, Hilton Contemporary, Mitchell County (IA) Historical Society, and Stories Matter Foundation.

Hamlin Garland (September 14, 1860–March 4, 1940) wrote nearly 50 books in his decorated literary career, distinguishing himself in a wide range of formats and a broad array of topics. His literature demanded more humane treatment of the American Indian, portrayed the Midwest farmer with nunance and compassion, expressed forward-thinking views about the role of women, and explored various psychic phenomenon. He was an early practioner in realism, but also at the forefront of frontier or Western genre fiction. He won the 1922 Pulitzer Prize in Biography for A Daughter of the Middle Border, then produced two more volumes of his family history:Trail-Makers of the Middle Border (1926) and Back-Trailers from the Middle Border (1928). Though born in West Salem, Wisconsin, Garland arrived in Chicago in 1893, after a succession of homesteads in Iowa and South Dakota and an aborted effort to make a literary career in Boston. Garland was 33 years old when he embarked in Chicago, just two years after his story collection, Main-Travelled Roads, made a splash as a literary and commercial success. In Chicago, even as he prolifically added to his literary ouevre and lectured widely on literary topics, Garland distinguished himself as a community builder. He was briefly associated with The Litttle Room, members of whom gathered in the Auditorium Hotel and the Fine Arts Building for afternoon teas and late-night theatrical productions. He helped found The Attic Club, which eventually morphed into The Cliff Dwellers Club. He was a founding member of Eagle’s Nest Art Colony in Salem, Illinois. In 1895 he published Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly, partially set in Chicago and perhaps his finest novel. He published more than two dozen books while living in Chicago, a tenure that ended in 1915 when he moved to New York City to be closer to the publishing industry. He moved to Hollywood, California in 1929.

Eunice Tietjens (July 29, 1884–September 6, 1944) was a major figure in the Chicago Literary Renaissance of the 1920s and 30s, as an editor, journalist, poet, playwright, novelist and conduit between writers at home and around the world. Tietjens published four collections of poetry—Profiles of China: Sketches in Free Verse of People and Things Seen in the Interior (1917), Body and Raiment (1919), Leaves in Windy Weather (1929), and China (1930). Her children’s books included Boy of the South Seas (1931). She also published translations from French and Spanish, plays, the novel Jake (1921), and the memoir The World at My Shoulder (1938). She edited the anthology Poetry of the Orient: An Anthology of the Classic Secular Poetry of the Major Eastern Nations (1928). Her work is featured in the anthology The Home Book of Modern Verse (1963). The daughter of an artist trained in Europe, Tietjens was educated in European schools and traveled extensively throughout her life. At various times, Tietjens lived in Japan, China, Italy, Tunisia, and on the South Pacific island of Moorea. During World War I, she worked as the Chicago Daily News correspondent in France. She served as an associate editor for Poetry Magazine for 25 years under editor-in-chief Harriet Monroe, beginning in the early years of its existence. She was instrumental in helping to shape the magazine’s aesthetic and propelling it to a status as the most important poetry publication in the United States.

E. Donald Two-Rivers (June 29, 1945–December 27, 2008), was an Anishanobae from the Ojibwa tribe of northwestern Ontario. Brought up first on the reservation and then in the Native community in Chicago, Two-Rivers emerged as a powerful voice of Chicago poetry and drama, and perhaps especially as a spoken word performer. He won a 1999 American Book Award for his collection of short stories, Survivor’s Medicine. For several years in the early 1990s, Two-Rivers wrote a weekly column called “Life in Albany Park” for a North Side newspaper chain. He has also authored numerous plays, including those collected in Briefcase Warriors: Stories for the Stage (2001). His poems have appeared widely in literary magazines and anthologies. Two-Rivers was awarded the Iron Eyes Cody Award for Peace in 1992, an acknowledgement of his activism for Native rights that began in the 1970s. Two-Rivers was a strong supporter of programs that worked toward the independence of disadvantaged Native peoples. He criticized Euro-American directors and actors as lacking the sensitivity, as non-Natives, to perform Native American plays. Two-Rivers was the founding Artistic Director of the Chicago-based Red Path Theater Company. In 2007, he returned to Chicago, to work on his last book In the Spirit of the Coyote. In 2009, a mosaic inspired by his poem "Indian Land Dancing" was dedicated in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago.

View the 2024 Chicago Literary Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony Program

A nice crowd celebrated a brand new season of baseball and the betting that attends it at the second annual Opening Day themefest last Friday night, March 29, upstairs at Mrs. Murphy & Sons Irish Bistro. This free themefest featured live music and spoken word presentations on the themes of baseball and betting, along with comic relief and a raffle of prizes. Peanuts and Cracker Jacks were on the house. 

Join literary organizations from around the city to discuss what it means to build literary community in Chicago. Panelists include DL Moore (Semicolon Bookstore), Carey Cranston (American Writers Museum, Chris Aldana (Luya Poetry), and Mike Zapata (MAKE Literary Productions). Audrey Niffenegger (Artists Book House) will moderate the conversation. 

Meet representatives from:

826CHI | American Writers Museum | Big Shoulders Books | Chicago Literary Hall of Fame | Guild Literary Complex | Luya Poetry | MAKE Literary Magazine | Off Campus Writers Workshop | Printers Row Lit Fest |Ragdale Foundation | RHINO Poetry | Northwestern MFA in Prose & Poetry| Northwestern Summer Writers Conference | Northwestern University Press | Semicolon Bookstore...and more.

Colvin House is located in Edgewater. Red line to Thorndale | Buses 201, 206. Limited free parking available in the Swift School lot. Pull into the Colvin House entrance on Thorndale to receive a pass (first come, first served). Free street parking is findable for the perseverant.

Suggested Donation: $15

Chicago writer, educator, and abolitionist Diego Báez will launch his debut poetry collection, Yaguareté White, with a reading that includes fellow poets Jacob Saenz and Pablo E. Ramirez. In Yaguareté White (University of Arizona Press), English, Spanish, and Guaraní encounter each other with humor and insight through the elusive yet potent figure of the jaguar.

Báez was a finalist for The Georgia Poetry Prize and a semi-finalist for the Berkshire Prize for Poetry. A recipient of fellowships from CantoMundo, the Surge Institute, the Poetry Foundation Incubator for Community-Engaged Poets, and DreamYard’s Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium, Diego has served on the boards of the National Book Critics Circle, the International David Foster Wallace Society, and Families Together Cooperative Nursery School. His poems have previously appeared or are forthcoming in Freeman's, Poetry Northwest, and Latino Poetry: A New Anthology. Essays and other non-fiction have been published in The Georgia Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Los Angeles Review of Books. Diego teaches poetry, English composition, and first-year seminars at the City Colleges, where he is an Assistant Professor of Multidisciplinary Studies.

Jacob was born in Chicago and raised in Cicero, Illinois. He earned a BA in creative writing from Columbia College in Chicago. His first collection of poetry, Throwing the Crown (Copper Canyon Press, 2018), was awarded the 2018 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize. He has been an editor at Columbia Poetry Review and an associate editor at RHINO. He works as an acquisitions assistant at the Columbia College library and has read his poetry at a number of Chicago venues. A CantoMundo fellow, Jacob has also been the recipient of a Letras Latinas Residency Fellowship and a Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship.

Pablo shares his poetic exploration of 21st century Chicago's ethnic and working-class heritage neighborhood of Pilsen. Pocho Love: Pilsen Heart Beats To Chicago Streets is soaked in colorful imagery forming a powerful collage of tattoo, wall murals, pop culture and Chicano graphics. This debut collection is written in English and some Spanish.In addition to being a visual artist and poet, Pablo is an activist and curator for cultural events in the Pilsen community. 

The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame is an official partner in this exciting event. The reading is free and open to the public. Guests will have an opportunity to read their own poems in a short open mic reading at the conclusion of the featured program. 

Rana Segal has been filming Chicago Literary Hall of Fame events for nearly a decade, and in that time her substantial body of work has increased steadily. Her latest project is a documentary called Light of Truth: Richard Hunt's Monument for Ida B. Wells. The film weaves together the stories of Richard Hunt’s life, his fabrication of the Light of Truth monument, and Ida B. Wells’ heroic fight for justice, as told by her great-granddaughter, Michelle Duster. On Tuesday, Feb. 27, Dominican University hosted a screening of Rana's 60-minute documentary, as well as a panel presentation with Rana, Michelle, and filmmaker Laurie Little. This program was free and open to the public. The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame was a sponsoring partner in this event. Wells was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame as part of its second class, in 2011. Hunt, the highly celebrated sculptor who died last December 16 at the age of 88, presented Leon Forrest’s induction into the CLHOF, in 2013. Duster serves on CLHOF’s Advisory Council.

Event recording.