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Working Poets Unite!
Past event
About This Event
We are united as working writers. We labor at writing, often without pay, and many of us labor at other jobs. This poetry reading focuses on labor and labor organizing—organizing that is inclusive of issues such as race, gender, and national origin in the workplace and larger community—which is necessary for winning the pay and conditions that would allow us to creatively thrive. The poems explore oppression in workplaces such as higher ed and factories as well as the solidarity of collective resistance.
Featured Author
Jennifer Karmin
Jennifer Karmin has published, performed, exhibited, taught, and experimented with language across the U.S., Cuba, Japan, Kenya, and Europe. As a founding curator of the Red Rover Series, she has often led ensembles of poets improvising together at festivals, artist-run spaces, and on city streets. Widely published in anthologies, journals and handmade editions, her books include the text-sound epic Aaaaaaaaaaalice and The Sexual Organs of the IRS a collaboration with Bernadette Mayer. Since 2000 she has worked with immigrants and refugees at Truman College, using creative writing to support literacy in Chicago. She is a union steward and co- established a housing cooperative in Humboldt Park.
About the Venue
Pilsen Community Books
Pilsen Community Books is a worker owned and operated independent bookstore that specializes in new and used literary fiction, radical history and politics, and literature in translation. The staff's goal is to unite their bookselling experience with their belief that labor is entitled to all it produces.
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Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age: The Music, Culture, and World De La Soul Made
Join us on Friday, October 23 at 7pm for a conversation with Austin McCoy and Charles Hughes as they talk about his book, Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age: The Music, Culture, and World De La Soul Made. Austin McCoy is an assistant professor of history at West Virginia University. He specializes in African American History, labor history, social movements, and hip hop culture. He is the author of Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age: The Music, Culture, and World De La Soul Made. His writings about politics and culture have appeared in The Washington Post , CNN, and The Baffler.
Signature Event: Running Tour of Brown in the Windy City
Run or bike with author Dr. Lilia Fernández inspired her book, Brown in the Windy City: Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Postwar Chicago. About the event: Join Read & Run Chicago, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant & Refugee Rights (ICIRR), and Dr. Lilia Fernández at Pilsen Community Books ((1531 W 18th) on Sunday, October 25 at 10:00 AM for a 4-mile running tour or biking tour (s/o BFF Bikes!) of Brown in the Windy City: Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Postwar Chicago as part of our Fall 2026 Signature Events Season, “Chicago Between the Lines.” After the route, enjoy snacks, social time, and book sales at Pilsen Community Books. A portion of tickets sales will be donated to ICIRR.