Date: Wednesday, May 30
Time: (doors) 6:30 p.m., (begins) 7:30 pm
Location: Hothouse / Center for International Performance and Exhibition / 31 E. Balbo Dr.
Participants: Reginald Gibbons, Poet, Novelist and Professor, Northwestern University
Kelly Norman Ellis, Poet and Associate Professor, Chicago State University
Ellen Placey Wadey, Novelist and Executive Director, Guild Complex
Toni Asante Lightfoot, Poet, Musician, and Educator

** Free event / 18 and over

Writing Bloodlines: Social and Intimate History
A Reading and Conversation

This event (highly anticipated by me) is swarming with people associated with the Guild Complex, “an independent, not-for-profit cultural center that serves as a forum for literary cross cultural expression, discussion and education in combination with other arts.” Curated by Quraysh Ali Lansana, (director of The Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing at Chicago State) tonight features Reginald Gibbons (professor of English and Classics at Northwestern) who is highly beloved in this fair city, and Ellen Placey Wadey, the E.D. of the Guild, and a fine novelist in her own right. These writers are the real deal. Look elsewhere for your drunk stories by 19-year olds, but don’t miss this all-pro event.

P.S. I like that these readers aren’t afraid to be political or controversial. An excerpt from Gibbons’ poem, “Poem Including History” published in It’s Time .
I praise the gesture of a generous hand
that smooths unequal wrongs into an equal peace,
that would turn the cost of a military aileron
into ivy and guitar strings and terraces of rice.
I praise the kiss, the bowing, the word, that mark
an instant of human time defined by loving.
I celebrate your reluctance to think of harm.
Praise the thought, the reasoning,
the prayer, too, and the tragic play
that portrays the destroyer and does not destroy