Set a manageable resolution this year and get some more poetry in your life! Start by joining us Thursday, January 28th, as The Guild Complex presents Exhibit B will feature incredible performances from artists Abigail Chabitnoy, Thea Matthews, Mary Cerney, and Allyson Young.
For this show we will also be partnering with Chicago-based non-profit organization Awakenings to showcase the incredible work they’re doing. Awakenings is dedicated to creating a physical and virtual artistic space in which to engage in an open dialogue that furthers awareness and understanding of sexual violence and promotes healing of survivors through the arts. Find out more about their important work at https://awakeningsart.org/

Exhibit B is a performance series that highlights exciting text-based work in Chicago. Presented by the Guild Literary Complex, a 30-year-old grassroots literary arts organization based in Chicago, Exhibit B showcases prose, poetry, plays, music, and more. We want to create a space that showcases work that you don’t need an MFA to feel and that leaves the audience always wanting more. We want community. We want impact.

Abigail Chabitnoy is the author of How to Dress a Fish (Wesleyan 2019), winner of the 2020 Colorado Book Award for Poetry and shortlisted in the international category of the 2020 Griffin Prize for Poetry. She was a 2016 Peripheral Poets fellow and her poems have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Boston Review, Tin House, Gulf Coast, LitHub, and Red Ink, among others. She earned her MFA in Poetry at Colorado State University. Most recently, she was the recipient of the Witter Bynner Funded Native Poet Residency at Elsewhere Studios in Paonia, CO. She is a mentor for the Institute of American Indian Arts MFA in Creative Writing and an instructor at Lighthouse Writers Workshop. She is a Koniag descendant and member of the Tangirnaq Native Village in Kodiak.

Born and raised in San Francisco, California, Thea Matthews is a Brooklyn-based Black Indigenous Mexican poet and educator. She attained her BA in Sociology at UC Berkeley, where she studied and taught June Jordan’s program Poetry for the People led by Aya de Leon. Her debut poetry collection Unearth [The Flowers] was published June 2020 by Red Light Lit Press and is listed as part of the Best Indie Poetry of 2020 by Kirkus Reviews. She has work in The New Republic, Atlanta Review, The Rumpus, and others. Currently, Thea Matthews is a MFA Poetry candidate at New York University.

Mary Cerney is a poet who dabbles in nonfiction, collage, and trying to keep her houseplants alive. She’s finishing up her MFA in Writing at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and she’s currently working on her first book, a hybrid-genre project about family trauma, hereditary illness, and evoking the voices of those who’ve passed.

To create a more accessible space, we ask that if you or anyone you know may need disability accommodations (e.g., sign language interpreters, alternative formats) please contact us at exhibitb312@gmail.com as soon as possible. Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs.

For more information about the Guild Literary Complex please visit: https://guildcomplex.org/

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Tags: Abigail Chabitnoy, Allyson Young, Chicago, Exhibit B, Guild Literary Complex, January Reading, Lower West Side, Mary Cerney, Thea Matthews