Meet our Grantee-Partner: Guild Literary Complex
Mission: The Guild Literary Complex is a 35-year-old grassroots literary arts organization creating performance-based events in and around the Chicagoland area. We partner and collaborate with other community groups on social and restorative justice issues, providing arts and advocacy programming for marginalized voices.
The Guild Literary Complex (Guild Complex) was established in 1989 as a community bookstore, which soon became a nonprofit organization providing poetry programming to communities in Chicago that did not have access to such opportunities. After more than 30 years, the organization continues to provide dynamic poetry and literary programming across the city.
As a Black-led organization, the Guild Complex has always held diversity and equity essential to its mission. Its programming targets adult audiences who are BIPOC, AAPI, LGBTQIA+, non-native English speakers, persons with disabilities, formerly incarcerated, and others who have been underrepresented in the literary landscape. The Guild Complex partners with Chicago’s 50 wards and other local organizations to share resources, knowledge, and experiences, and to plan and execute programming, which is offered in multiple languages.
Guild Complex explores social and racial justice issues through poetry, emphasizing allyship. It provides a way to gather and share experiences, stories, and art in safe spaces throughout Chicago. It gives a platform to and compensates writers from across Chicago’s communities, including established authors and emerging voices.
The Guild [Complex] is an important institution, instrumental and supportive in my start as a writer and performer in this city. It is one of the VERY few organizations that does the work of uniting the city through its language and stories.
–avery r. young, Chicago Poet Laureate
GBOMA 2023 Finalists at the Den Theatre
One of the Guild Complex’s most celebrated programs is the Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Awards (GBOMA), founded by Brooks herself. This unique competition asks poets to submit their poetry, which is reviewed by judges from the literary community and performed at a spoken-word poetry event in which audience votes decide the winner. Past winners include Pulitzer Prize winner Tyehimba Jess, Nate Marshall, Tara Betts, and many more.
“The Guild Complex is as natural to Chicago as its rivers and lakes. It represents in the writers and performers the vision of a city of flesh and blood, men and women, rather than a city of things.”
–Studs Terkel, Pulitzer Prize Winner
Receiving a fall 2023 Equity in Verse grant from the Poetry Foundation enabled the Guild Complex to hire a part-time programming coordinator to support core and new programs. The grant has also helped compensate existing staff members and provide honoraria to poet participants, supporting the organization’s efforts to continue providing dynamic literary programming across Chicago.