Thursday June 7th
3 – 5pm @ the Arts Incubator in Washington Park
301 E. Garfield Blvd.
BrooksDay is the Guild Literary Complex’s annual celebration of Gwendolyn Brooks, held every year on June 7th, the anniversary of her birth. Since 2013, BrooksDay has been a marquee event in the Guild’s yearly calendar with many literary, cultural, and civic leaders from Chicago and beyond taking the stage to celebrate and honor Gwendolyn Brooks, former Poet Laureate of Illinois and the first African American writer to win the Pulitzer Prize. BrooksDay honors her legacy as an artist and an iconic figure of generosity and civic conscience in Chicago and the nation.
Each year’s celebration has been unique, but each has commemorated Gwendolyn Brooks’s artistic achievements, her legendary generosity toward other poets, her influence as a pathbreaking cultural figure in Chicago and the nation, and her well-deserved stature as an iconic poet of modern Chicago, through public performances of her work. Last year’s spectacular BrooksDay@nite was a flagship event in the City of Chicago’s celebration of Brooks’s 100th birthday, featuring one hundred one-minute performances, a reception, and more at the University of Chicago’s Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts.
This year marks the 101st anniversary of Brook’s birth, and will include the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame’s Gwendolyn Brooks statue unveiling in Gwendolyn Brooks Park afterward.
Guild Board President Andrea Change will emcee, with confirmed readers to include Bill Ayers, Nora Brooks Blakely, Nicole Bond, Reginald Gibbons, Jan Spivey Gilchrist, Krystal Grover-Webb, Jyreika Guest, Angela Jackson, Sandra Jackson-Opoku, Eric Charles May, Haki Madhubuti, Ydalmi Noriega, Nikki Patin, Timothy David Rey, Mario, Willie Williams, and more…
“Gwendolyn Brooks: The Oracle of Bronzeville,” a larger-than-life bronze portrait of Gwendolyn Brooks, will be unveiled after the readings in Brooks Park, just a short drive (or long walk) from the Arts Incubator. This will be the very first sculpture of an African American woman, and also the very first sculpture of a woman poet, in any Chicago park. The unveiling, which is part of the Night Out in the Parks series, will run from 6-8 p.m. and include readings, performances, and tributes in Gwendolyn Brooks Park, 4542 S. Greenwood Ave.
Bill Ayers 