HotHouse has developed a rich series of programming that shines a spotlight on artists that took great risk to speak out against the prevailing and dominant State forces – often constituted in dictatorships brutally repressing political (and artistic) opposition, or otherwise antagonistic to human rights.

Partnering with the HotHouse, The Guild Complex has curated two events related to this theme. Aligning historical voices with local contemporary multi-disciplinary writers, these special programs will re-assert the mutual commitment to present and affirm “we will not go back,” and we will not accept the re- writing of our experiences through the lens of neo-colonial impositions. Culture is our Weapon!

On Sat Oct 18th, the Guild Complex will present a screening of the film from the Lannan Foundation: Writers Uncensored-Lucille Clifton and Sonia Sanchez, Good Women and Baddd. This will be immediately followed by a brief discussion led by author Dr. Tara Betts, from the DePaul University Department of Peace Studies, along with a reading featuring Keli Stewart, poet/writer, and Angelique Zobitz.

Dr. Tara Betts, Ph.D. is the author of Refuse to Disappear, Break the Habit, and Arc & Hue. She also coedited The Beiging of America and edited a critical edition of Philippa Duke Schuyler’s Adventures in Black and White, and Carving Out Rights from Inside the Prison Industrial Complex. In addition to her work as a teaching artist and mentor for young poets, she has taught at several universities and at Stateville Prison via the Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project. She is the Inaugural Poet for the People Practitioner Fellow at University of Chicago. Betts currently serves as Poetry Editor at The Langston Hughes Review.

Keli Stewart (she/her) is an author, educator, and arts activist whose writing has been published in Rhino, Meridians, and WarpLand: A Journal of Black Literature and Ideas, among others. Her published works include the full-length collection Small Altars (Bronzeville Books, 2021). She has received fellowships from Hedgebrook, an Adrienne Reiner Hochstadt Award, and an Augusta Savage Gallery Arts International Residency. Stewart was a 2021-2022 School of the Art Institute of Chicago Nichols Tower Artist-in-Residence. An alum of the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation and Callaloo summer writing workshops, her writing won first place for a Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award from the Illinois Center for the Book. She earned a BA in fiction writing from Columbia College in 2002 and an MFA in poetry from Chicago State University. She is proud to be the founder and executive director of Front Porch Arts Center and founder of WestSide Arts House, for which she opens her historic Victorian home to her community on Chicago’s West Side.

Angelique Zobitz (she/her) writes from the lineage of Black womxn, resilience, and lyrical reclamation. Her debut full-length collection, Seraphim (CavanKerry Press, 2024), explores joy as communal resistance and was a finalist for the 2023 Jake Adam York Prize and a semifinalist for the 2022 Philip Levine Prize. She’s also a chapbook author: Burn Down Your House (Milk & Cake Press, 2021), a white-out erasure of Madeleine L’Engle’s marriage, and Love Letters to The Revolution (American Poetry Journal, 2020). Her work has earned finalist spots for the 2022 St. Lawrence, Tupelo, and Georgia Poetry Prizes, plus nods from Best of the Net, Best New Poets, and Pushcart Prize. Her poems appear in Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, The Journal, Sugar House Review, About Place, and many others. She holds a B.A. in English (Creative Writing) from the University of Illinois at Chicago and has served as Poetry Editor at The Night Heron Barks and Ran Off with the Star Bassoon and Contributing Editor at Cave Wall. She writes to honor maternal legacies and to reimagine survival beyond colonial narratives. Find her at angeliquezobitz.com and @angeliquezobitz.

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Tags: Angelique Zobitz, Austin, Chicago, Culture is Our Weapon: Lucille Clifton and Sonia Sanchez, Dr. Tara Betts, Front Porch Arts Center, Good Women and Baddd, Keli Stewart, Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez, The Guild Complex