We’re excited to host the May installment of Exhibit B: A Literary Variety Show with Nat Holtzmann, Fulla Abdul-Jabbar, Ignatius Valentine Aloysius, and Tamara Matthews.

Nat Holtzmann is a writer and bookmaker who frequently collaborates across mediums with other artists. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions, and stories of hers have appeared in or are forthcoming from Chicago Review, Salt Hill Journal, Necessary Fiction, the Minnesota Review, and elsewhere. She is a co-founding editor of TEMPER Press, a publishing project dedicated to fostering and chronicling micro-movements.

Fulla Abdul-Jabbar is a writer, artist, and editor living in Brooklyn. She presents thought in the form of language and presents language in various forms. She teaches in the Department of Writing at the Pratt Institute where she was awarded an AICAD Postgraduate Teaching Fellowship. Previously, she was Editor and Curator at Green Lantern Press. She has performed, screened, or exhibited nationally and internationally at SPACES, Defibrillator, Woman Made Gallery, ACRE, the Electronic Literature Organization, Human Resources LA, the Altered Aesthetics Film Festival, the Brussels Independent Film Festival, the Obskuur Ghent Film Festival, and the Ann Arbor Film Festival. Her work has been supported by the Vermont Studio Center and Zaratan Arte Contemporânea and her writing has appeared in Bad at Sports, DIAGRAM, Bombay Gin, Jellyfish Review, Passages North, Northwest Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Her debut book Who Loves the Sun was released in 2023 via Meekling Press.

Ignatius Valentine Aloysius earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Northwestern University, where he teaches writing and experimentation. He is the author of the literary novel Fishhead. Republic of Want (Tortoise Books, 2020), and his prose and poetry have appeared in or are forthcoming in Cold Mountain Review, Thanatos Review, Roi Fainéant Press, Another Chicago Magazine, Porter Gulch Review, and others. Ignatius is a host and curator of the long-running reading series Sunday Salon Chicago. He serves on the Curatorial Board at Ragdale Foundation, an arts residency in Lake Forest, Illinois, where he is also its newest Board of Trustees member. A resident of Evanston, Ignatius is currently shopping his second novel manuscript, a speculative and historical literary work, and a poetry collection that he co-wrote with David Allen Sullivan, poet laureate of Santa Cruz, CA. Ignatius is working on his next book, a lyrical novel.

Tamara Matthews is a Chicago-based writer who has been published in New Ohio Review, Story Club Magazine, and the Rumpus, where she ran a column called “This Week in Essays.”

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Tags: Chicago, Exhibit B, Fulla Abdul-Jabbar, Ignatius Valentine Aloysius, Lower West Side, Nat Holtzmann, Pilsen Community Books, Tamara Matthews