Past Events

Join us for an in-person celebration of Season 6 of VS with our first live episode recording since 2020! Featuring Aricka Foreman and Tommye Blount.

Join us for an intimate look at the painter Alex Katz’s extensive collaborations with poets, followed by a reading by Vincent Katz.

Join us for a virtual reading celebrating the 2022 Forms & Features Visiting Teaching Artists: Cecilia Caballero, Christiana Castillo, Antoinette Cooper, Sara Elkamel, Ernest Ògúnyẹmí, and Chessy Normile.

All are welcome to a poetry discussion and creative writing workshop led by Maggie Queeney. In this session, we focus on alliteration, a repetition of initial consonant sounds. The group...

All are welcome to a poetry discussion and creative writing workshop, “Reorienting the Audience through Ars Poetica,” created and led by Lisa Low.  In this session, we will explore the relationship...

Join us for the first Open Door event of the Spring Season, featuring José Olivarez, Britteney Black Rose Kapri, Raych Jackson, and Vic Chávez.

All are welcome to a poetry discussion and creative writing workshop led by Maggie Queeney. In this session, we focus on shape poetry in conversation with Tishani Doshi’s essay In...

In-person with livestream (hybrid) Please register here.

All are welcome to a monthly book group moderated by library staff. In January, we will read and discuss How to Communicate by John Lee Clark. Registration is required for...

All are welcome to a poetry discussion and creative writing workshop, “Making dragons out of maps: How to use research in poetry,” created and led by Samira Asma-Sadeque. For this workshop,...

All are welcome to a poetry discussion and creative writing workshop led by Maggie Queeney. In this session, we focus on the abecedarian, a poem organized by the sequence of...

All are welcome to a poetry discussion and creative writing workshop led by Maggie Queeney. In this session, we focus on organic structures. The group will explore a wide variety...

All are welcome to a monthly book group moderated by library staff. In December, we will read and discuss The Glass Constellation by Arthur Sze.  To allow for more readers to...

Join us for a reading and celebration of the diverse voices, rich experiences, and powerful words of poets from around the country, and the world. Poets working in the online...

All are welcome to a poetry discussion and creative writing workshop led by Maggie Queeney. In this session, we focus on asemic writing, a type of composition that uses lines...

Join us for a live in-person reading with Sylvia Aguilar Zéleny, Kemi Alabi, Benji Hart, and blake nemec. The Open Door series highlights creative relationships in Chicago, including mentorship and...

All are welcome to a poetry discussion and creative writing workshop led by Maggie Queeney. In this special process session, we focus on our relationships to fear and failure, and...

All are welcome to a poetry discussion and creative writing workshop, “Hymns, Thingness, Broth,” created and led by Chessy Normile.  “The world had been created to comprehend itself/ as matter”  -from Brenda...

This event will feature a conversation between Diana Solís and exhibition curators Oscar Arriola and Nicole Marroquin about individual works in the exhibition.

All are welcome to a poetry discussion and creative writing workshop led by Maggie Queeney. In this session, we focus on the ode, a lyric poem of address, praise, and...