readings, performances, exhibitions, events and such
haz click en los pink links
also celebrating dream life of night owls and the body is where it all begins.
4736 N Lincoln Ave, Chicago, IL 60625
Tuesday, April 15, 2025 - 6:30pm
Finalists to be published in the annual New Fiction from the Tennessee Williams 'Saints and Sinners' New Orleans Lit Festival 2025 Anthology, edited by Morgan Hufstader and Paul J. Willis:
Izzy Beach, Anil Classen, John Copenhaver, Laura Corin
Duncan Davidson, Lewis DeSimone, Alfred P. Doblin, Marcy Rae Henry
Miah Jeffra, Reginald Kent, Mina Manchester, Meagan Perry
David Pratt, Tom Semmes, Charlie J. Stephens
Querencia Press Reading featuring:
Danielle De Luca Adam Galanski
Marcy Rae Henry Elizabeth Marley
Luis Lopez-Maldonado Christina Rodriguez
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Printer's Row lit fest
Bilingual Latinx Poetry Reading:
Diego Báez, Luz Magdaleno Flores, Marcy Rae Henry, Jacob Saenz, Jose Luis Moctezuma, Pablo Ramirez, and Marisa Tirado.
Sat. 9/7/24 4.30pm-5.30pm
press in the Latinx Project: see #37 & 39
Who: Marcy Rae Henry, Jen Karmin and A.Martinez
What: Poetry reading and performance
When: Thursday, June 20, 2024 @ 7:00pm
Where: The Blue Jay (1230 W Greenleaf Ave, Chicago, IL 60626)
There will be books and merch for sale and refreshments at The Blue Jay's beachside concession stand.
March 9, 2024 2-5pm
1332 S Halsted St.
featuring:
- Sheri L. Flanders
- April Gary
- Marcy Rae Henry
- Ruth Hoberman
- Adrienne Nadeau
- Lyra J. Thomas
Winner 2023 Open Country Chapbook Prize:
dream life of night owls by Marcy Rae Henry
We are Primary Colors. Doublecross Press. October 2023.
Issued as Bound Together do-si-do, with The Center for Hierarchical Manufacturing, and as a special edition.
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October 21, 2023. 7pm at the MCA of Chicago.
Lit & Luz focuses on cultural exchanges between artists and writers from Chicago y México. The weeklong festival offers free bilingual events and culminates in a Live Show showcasing six cross-border collaborations.
mrh will participate in the multimedia performace in collaboration with Chicago-based visual artist Edra Soto and México-based poet-translator Adalber Salas Hernández as well as Mitch Monroy, Estefania Mena and Tina Wang.
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The Chicago Poetry Center presents BLUE HOUR, a free, public monthly in-person reading series and generative writing workshop. 7.30pm.
Haymarket House (800 W. Buena) features two readers from Chicago and beyond, preceded by a brief open mic and limited-space workshop that includes a guided generative writing practice.
October 18, 2023: Kenyatta Rogers and Marcy Rae Henry
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Sept. 2023. Best New Poets 2023 announced! 'last payphone in times square' made the list. The anthology is distributed nationally as a University of Virginia Press title and produced in cooperation with Meridian, an annual literary magazine.
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Red Rover Series Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month Walking Poem Event in Pilsen
Guest curator: Marcy Rae Henry
OCTOBER 8, 2023 4pm
Event starts at Pilsen Community Books.
Meet at 1102 W. 18th Street for outdoor reading.
Participation is welcome--bring one poem to share!
A new anthology with a Red Rover collaboration: 100 Thousand Poets for Change: 10+ Years of Poetic Activism. A Collective Memory (2011-2023).
Featuring: Nicole Bond, Joel Craig, Cean Gamalinda, Noa Michaela Fields, Laaura Goldstein, Marcy Rae Henry, Nathan Hoks, Jennifer Karmin, Toni Asante Lightfoot, Tarnynon Onumonu, Timothy David Rey & Lina Ramona Vitkauskas.
In Flow
Friday, August 18 | 7-10.30pm
In Flow is an immersive art event with live painters improvising during featured poetry readings. Open mic & market.
4251 North Lincoln Avenue Chicago, IL 60618
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STEEL TOE BOOKS 2022 CHAPBOOK AWARD ANNOUNCEMENT
Steel Toe Books shortlist March 2023
'The body is where it all begins'
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DoubleCross is beautifully printing!
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Hot Mess!
Saturday, May 28 @Elastic Arts
Two Sets LIVE 4:20 & 8:00pm CST
Five artists generating hybrid performances in real time:
Shoshana Green, Marcy Rae Henry, Meenakshi Marchione, Harlan Rosen, SheenRu Yong.
HOT MESS! is an opportunity to explore promiscuously inventive hybrids of performing simultaneously in physical and virtual space. Concepts of a new world are not as concrete as the process of building one, and we will depend on one another to create new ways of listening and engaging. The series focuses on the moments of co-creation and gives the artists a play-space to discover new ways of working together and interacting with the audience. The performance itself demonstrates the power of working together in the unknown, possibilities for Queering space, and the beauty in re-starting while making art!
Elastic
www.butohchicago.com
Facebook
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NOV 30-DEC 5, 2021🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟Red Rover Series presents:
"Reading Experiment in Progress"
Mini live free events at the Chicago Cultural Center 78 E. Washington Street in the NFO XPO of the Michigan Ave galleries **covid protocols in full effect so please mask up and practice social distancing**
Readings, performances, talks, rehearsals, improvisations, meditations, writing sessions + more featuring Chicago writers & artists as part of the Lumpen exhibit "Successful Failures" https://tinyurl.com/successfail
Curated by Jennifer Karmin & inspired by Red Rover's ongoing collaboration
with 100 Thousand Poets for Change, our focus is: How can we create change in the world right now? ttps://100tpcmedia.org/
DECEMBER 1: *11am - Melissa Castro Almandina *12pm - William Amaya Torres *1pm - Norman Long *2pm - Marcy Rae Henry (with WGSS World Lit. class) *3pm - Margaret Morris Contributing artist this day: M_m<M
to see full schedule: https://tinyurl.com/redroverseries
Cumbia Therapy was yanked out of a Narnia drawer, dusted off and won 1st place. 10/26/21
Ember Chasm is now Suburbia.
red rover reading series will present a collaborative performance at this year's virtual new orleans poetry festival via zoom: friday, april 30th at 7pm (central time).
Boca de Oro (virtual) Literary and Arts Festival
keynote speaker: U.S. presidential photographer Pete Souza
closing speaker: spoken-word poet/playwright Marc Bamuthi Joseph
As part of Writers Resist: Global Voices, mrh will be reading
Friday March 5 | 7:30-9:00 p.m. (California/Pacific time)
Writers Resist, an intersectional feminist literary journal that launched 30 days after Donald Trump’s election, is hosting two readings by our diverse writers from around the globe. They will share their works steeped in political resistance and social justice, followed by a brief Q&A.
The fest continues Saturday March 6 | 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. (PST)
Black Lawrence Press Black River Chapbook Competition
results: january 2021
mrh's fiction manuscript 'Southwest Stories: A Mexican Wedding and The Magnetic Poles' was chosen as a finalist and her nonfiction manuscript, 'Eternal September,' based on her motorcycle travels through the Middle East, was chosen as a semi-finalist.
foto: pueblo, co.
Manzano Mountain Review's nominees for for the 2020 Pushcart Prize:
Gerardo Lamadrid Castillo “My middle ear a live wire”
Dorian Fox “A Bolt in the Night”
Marcy Rae Henry “Maybe we should have worn sunscreen”
Daniel Mueller “Anything you Recognize”
Allie Rigby “Orange Peel”
T.J. Staneart “Tough Out”
more democracy lessons thanks to jen karmin
virtual launch party: superstition [review's] social justice issue featuring Arizona Poet Laureate, Alberto Rios
december 1, 2020 5-6 pm
book launch! issue 3 of Channel: Ireland's Environmentalist Literary Magazine.
the youtube video will 'premiere' at 8pm dublin time nov. 26 (2pm chicago time,) and will be available for viewing from the event page or on youtube via this link.
Nov. 3, 2020. Election Day. Fateful Day. Most Nerve Wracking Election. Of My Lifetime. Jennifer Karmin shares a participatory poem: Excerpt from D̶e̶m̶o̶c̶r̶a̶c̶y̶ ̶L̶e̶s̶s̶e̶n̶s̶ Democracy Lessons.
Nov. 7, 2020. @rebelmusicteach: "White for suffragettes, who also would have denied Kamala a vote as a Black woman. Pantsuit for Hillary. Pussy bow to troll.Whoever helped dress Madame VP-elect tonight is a genius."
Launch Party and Reading Pangyrus 7
Hosted by: Pangyrus LitMag
Tuesday, August 25 from 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM ET
Invite: ttps://tinyurl.com/y46u2hf6
*mrh will be a bit late
EVENT TITLE: Cruising Poem for Walt Whitman
SITE: the Formal Garden in Humboldt Park
near the intersection of Sacramento & Division
https://il-asla.org/award/homboldt-park-formal-garden/
DATE: Friday, August 21 (rain or shine)
TIME: 5-6pm
READINGS: *each of the 8 poets will stand on a rock pedestal *there is approximately 8 feet between each rock pedestal *poets can read writing by Whitman or any of their own poems that are in Whitman's spirit *poets can take breaks over the 1 hour and/or stand in silence
PERFORMANCE PLAN: *audience meets us at the buffalo statues *open the event with a safety statement about sharing space during the pandemic *at this point the poets can move to their rock pedestals *poets will read simultaneously / overlapping / polyphonically
*audience will keep walking around the circular track to listen, not stopping or congregating *when each poet is finished, they can step down from their rock pedestal
*if it rains: we will shift the readers to the multiple covered gazebos
July 29, 2020. scroll and scroll and scroll some more to the honorable mentions. 'years that ask questions' inspired by BLM. the title is a nod to zora neale hurston.
South Broadway Press
partnered with Denver Food Resuce
to produce this Summer 2020 poetry anthology
a portion of the book's proceeds go to Denver Food Rescue
buy the book or donate here
also, see this photo journal of food insecurity in america where nearly 1 in 8 households doesn't have enough food to eat.
ep;phany: a literary journal's
The Border Issue Reading and Release party
online via zoom and youtube
Fri. June 26, 2020 at 8pm EST
register here
live stream here
buy the issue here
The Chachalaca Review, The Borderlands journal from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, invites you to attend the first online Launch Event via Zoom.
Saturday, June 20th from 6-8 PM (CST)
The issue is due to go live at the same time and artists from the Spring 2020 volume and the upcoming Fall volume: Metamorphsis will be reading/presenting work.
mrh has a piece of visual art, 'el patriarca,' in the Fall issue.
UNREAL Anniversary Show Power Hour
Tues. June 16, 2020
a special collaborative story format in which 15 performers each have 4 minutes to contribute a piece/portion of piece that will be stitched together into a single, hour-long piece of narrative fiction. Pieces should engage in some manner with the theme: "chaos."
show starts at 6p CST (live, socializing, waiting for audience to join)
Power Hour starts at 7p CST
hanging out live after from 8p CST till whenev
Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83878801840
password is: 4MoreBeers
https://www.facebook.com/events/856702928191691/
May 4, 2020. Puerto del Sol's Annual Poetry Contest results. '8th Day' will soon be published in Pangyrus Literary Magazine's 'Life in the Pandemic' issue.
April 2020
NOPF--new orleans poetry fest--was cancelled this year due to the virus, so the organizers staged a virtual fest. search people by name on the NOPF website to view vids or see some posted in the gallery.
January 29, 2020. 48th New Millennium Award for Fiction.
Honorable Mention is better than dishonorable mention...or, in this case, none at all.
Poetry Foundation
Nov. 19, 2019
So excited to be reading at the Poetry Foundation with Athena Guizar, my friend and former student, as part of the Open Door Reading Series! The series features readings by two Chicagoland writing program instructors and two of their current or recent students and the amazing Jen Karmin (who read last month with her students from the adult ed program at Truman) and I are the first to read from the City Colleges!
The foundation is located at: 61 W. Superior St.
The event starts at 7pm.
It's free, but the foundation encourages people to register online in advance.
Links: instagram and facebook and you can read the bios and find more info here.
We will be sure to resist.
Come out to see an important film and meet a filmmaker who, as newday.com says, "...brings into sharp focus the resilience of immigrants, their struggle to succeed often against impossible odds as well as their contributions to their countries of origin and to American society." mrh is honored to read a couple of poems and sit on the panel.
100Thousand Poets for Change
Red Rover Series {readings that play with reading]
Experiment #120: We Are All Illegals
On September 28, 2019, poets around the world will raise their voices collectively to declare the changes they'd like to see in the U.S. and throughout the international community as part of worldwide events for 100 Thousand Poets for Change, now in its 8th year.
FEATURING:
Carole Bernstein, Kira Calliouet, Lizett Carm, Melissa Castro, Noa/h Fields, Stefania Gomez, Maya Marshall, Faisal Mohyuddin, blake nemec, Maya Nguen, Joseph Padilla, Pegah Pasalar, Sav Robinson, Lew Rosenbaum, Lily Someson, Emma Waldo & more special guests!
**please note special location**
at the Read/Write Library | 914 N. California Avenue
Suggested donation $4 **proceeds to be donated to Immigrant Families Together**
This night of poetry activism in Chicago will be based on the theme "We Are All Illegals" inspired by Outernational's anthem of immigrant solidarity. Local writers will address ideas of citizenship, nationalism, borders, and the rights of indigenous peoples. To say somos todos ilegales is a necessary irony, bigger than the internet or a wall or a law or a language. What we mean is that no one is illegal, what we mean by ill is that we ate our fill. How was it legal to force us to hablar en lenguas europeas, move gentes all over the divided States, y seguir encerrándonos en la frontera?
A special event curated by the 100 Thousand Poets for Change, Chicago Community Council 2019: Andrea Change, Laaura Goldstein, Marcy Rae Henry, Jennifer Karmin & Toni Asante Lightfoot.
Co-sponsored by the Guild Literary Complex & the Read/Write Library
https://guildcomplex.org
https://readwritelibrary.org/
Immigrant Families Together was founded in June 2018 in response to the inhumane immigration policy separating families at the U.S./Mexico border. They pay bonds for parents in detention and work to reunite them with their children. Additionally, they support over 100 reunited families as they recover from their detention trauma and adjust to life in the U.S. while their asylum cases are adjudicated.
Chicago Artist Coalition
At the invitation of Erin Hayden, poets and writers will share work within her solo exhibition ‘song and story’ at the Chicago Artists Coalition.
Local writers (including Jen Karmin and Marcy Rae Henry) will read for 5-10 minutes in response to these themes: water, shedding, vulnerability, imagination, story telling, singing, and stuttering.
Saturday August 10th, 2019
7-9pm
2130 W. Fulton Street
(<--painting by Erin Hayden, "Hold Me" series, acrylic on dyed canvas, 2018)
7th Annual Gwendolyn Brooks Day
by the Guild Literary Complex
Friday June 7th, 2019
3-8pm Reception 5pm
Chicago State University, 9501 S. King Dr.
Gwendolyn Brooks Library 4th floor
Jen Karmin and Marcy Rae Henry will read between 3-5pm
PANTONE 213U® | LITRO LAB | PODCAST
Listen to mrh read 'Pantone 213U' featured on this week's (4/25/19) Litro Lab's UK Podcast.
We're going to NOLA again!
Poetry Festival and Small Press Fair, April 18-21, 2019.
Chi peeps performing Sat. 1.50pm.
With Waves: A Collaborative Performance
(<--painting by Debra Hurd)
Yesenia Bello: My mouth is a motherlode
Tuesday, March 5
7:00-8:30pm
Tiger Strikes Asteroid Chicago: 2233 S. Throop St., #419
In conjunction with the solo exhibition, My mouth is a motherlode, by artist Yesenia Bello, Tiger Strikes Asteroid Chicago is pleased to host a reading by artists, curators, poets, and makers. Drawing on the exhibition's theme of bilingualism, readers will respond to the notions of memory or loss; fluidity or futility; or new forms of self-expression, as they relate to language.
mrh will be reading en spanglish towards the end of the event.
OVERSLEEPOVER4: SLUMBER PARTY PLUS BEDTIME RITUALS AND ATMOSPHERES
(My dog and I recorded yawns (morning yawns; we are not morning creatures) for this bedtime ritual performance.)
Bring on the night; bring on the ritual.
2/16/19 | 8:30pm-sunrise
1550 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Woodland Pattern Book Center
25th Annual Poetry Marathon & Benefit
15 hours | 150 poets
Chicago group reading/performing around 8pm
JANUARY 26 - JANUARY 27, 2019
10:00AM | $10 | FREE FOR THOSE WHO PLEDGE A READER FOR $35 OR MORE
720 EAST LOCUST ST
MILWAUKEE, WI
News is...
Roxane Gay. Giving a writers workshop for some of us this fall and we oh so grateful!
Red Rover Series [readings that play with reading]
Experiment #114: Island of Abundance
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17th | 7pm
Outer Space Studio
1474 N. Milwaukee Ave
suggested donation $4
Featuring:
Stacy Blint | bio
Carleen Tibbetts | bio
Mike Hauser | bio
Marcy Rae Henry to read new poems & display visual pieces made to accompany them
&Now 2018, &Whenever it's needed: A Festival of New Writing
Chicago poets/Red Rover performance: Saturday, October 6th from 4-5:20pm
Snite Museum, University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN
As part of the 100 Thousand Poets for Change Chicago Community Council 2018, i'm co-curating a Temporary America reading/performance with Laura Goldstein, Jennifer Karmin, Toni Asante Lightfoot, Ira S. Murfin & Kenyatta Rogers. Co-sponsored by the Guild Literary Complex and Red Rover Reading Series.
Inspiration: Homer Erotic's cult song Temporary America. The readings will address the precariousness of the era we're living in and how vital it is to keep each other charged up for awareness, action, change + revolution. Barbara Barg, beloved Chicago poet, wrote the song and co-founded the all-women band. She experimented with writing, teaching, performance and music and passed on in May 2018.
Deets: Saturday September 29, 2018 7 PM – 10 PM
Outer Space Studio: 1474 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago, Illinois 60622
Suggested donation $4/proceeds to be donated to Chicago Jobs with Justice
2018 interview with No Good Poetry, episode #57
Chicago poets come in at about the last 9.30 minutes
August 16, 2018 | 1-3pm National Poetry Slam's "Station to Station" open mic water taxi -- on the Chicago river and on the anniversary of my Abuelita Soledad's 93rd birthday.
Rocking out with mariachis on her 80th birthday.
'Solamente una vez...'
April 20-22, 2018, New Orleans. Representing Chicago's Red Rover Reading Series, a few of us will be performing here.
"there was something about that city, though
it didn't let me feel guilty that I had no feeling for the things so many others needed.
it let me alone.” bukowski
Jan. 27, 2018. Milwaukee, WI. A few of us from Chicago have been invited to read at the Woodland Pattern Book Center for this:
Saturday, September 30, 2017 at 7:00 - 9:00pm: 100,000 Poets for Change
event to raise $ for México and Puerto Rico Relief Fund
Recorded to be shown at release party in Shanghai, China, 2017
'Holding Each Other Up,' #10 on 2015 digital album: Red Rover Experiment #89: Fight the Power, partof the Tenth Annual Chicago Calling Arts Festival
