Lit & Luz Chicago 2018

Oct 20, 2018

MAKE Literary Production’s Lit & Luz Festival of Language, Literature, and Art is a cultural exchange between writers and visual artists from Mexico and Chicago. The festival runs October 13th-20th and takes place at venues and universities throughout Chicago, with the finale, a “Live Magazine Show,” presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art (tickets here). Here, collaborative teams debut their multi-media creations at this celebratory event.

This year’s festival theme, “Assembly” asks participants and audience to consider the parts we put together and those we play. Art can be created by building a sentence, a canvas, an object, and by building a community. In addition to dynamic readings, conversations, and performances, this year’s festival includes an exhibition of poetry-influenced visual art from Chicago and Mexico City, bilingual writing workshops, as well as lead-in events such as a book club and mural making. In addition to Mexico City, this year’s Mexican participants hail from Guadalajara, Saltillo, Oaxaca City, and even Berlin.

The festival is honored to host an exemplary cohort of Mexican writers and artists, including Writer in Residence, Julián Herbert, essayist, musician, and author the critically acclaimed novel, Tomb Song (trans. Christina MacSweeney), for which he was awarded El Premio de Novela Elena Poniatowska; world-renowned visual artist Mariana Castillo Deball; award-winning journalist and one of the year’s most celebrated Latin American voices for her novel Temporada de huracanes Fernanda Melchor; visual artist and musician Edgar Cobián; art historian and curator at ESPAC Esteban King; traditional mezcal maker Amando Álvarez; poet Natalia Toledo, whose work has helped revitalize interest in the Zapotec language; and up-and-coming poet and performer Jimena González.

A unique feature of the Lit & Luz Festival are collaborations between the Mexico and Chicago participants. In the months leading to the festival, participants team up to learn about each others’ practice and work, and together, create a 10-minute-or-less piece or presentation which debuts at the festival’s finale. This work is then re-staged at Mexico City’s Museo Tamayo in March 2019.

We’re proud to announce the 2018-19 Chicago participants include New York Times-best-selling author and The Shape of Water co-author Daniel Kraus, highly-regarded guitarist-composer-improviser Bill MacKay, Citizen Illegal author and co-host of The Poetry Gods podcast José Olivarez, painter and muralist Juan de la Mora, poet and scholar Edgar Garcia, playwright and #LetUsBreathe collective co-director Kristiana Rae Colón, DePaul Art Museum assistant curator and art historian Mia Lopez, poet and theorist Jennifer Nelson, and multidisciplinary artist Emilio Rojas.

In addition to the collaboration cohort, event participants include Mexican poet and former BOMB editor Mónica de la Torre,  poet and Elevated Threat Level author Rachel Galvin, and many more. We’re also pleased to announce that the festival finale will feature music from Chicago’s own Dos Santos and a one-night-only house band assembled by the one-and-only Jim Becker.

The festival kick-off is on October 13th with the opening of the exhibition, So close, far away, a group show at Sector 2337 featuring artists from Chicago and Mexico City, curated by Mia Lopez (Chicago) and Esteban King (Mexico City). More details to come!

Lit & Luz sponsors include the University of Chicago Graham School Writer’s Studio, Ace Hotel Chicago, the Consulate General of Mexico, and many more.

This project is supported in large part by awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Chicago Community Trust.

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Meanwhile, sign-up for our Lit & Luz newsletter for more details and special notices. Be sure to follow MAKE Lit on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram! Keep up with the Fest and contribute your own Tweets and IG pics by adding #litluz.