Gwendolyn Brooks Conference halted for April 18 Poetry Festival
CHICAGO – The Gwendolyn Brooks Conference will not proceed as scheduled, April 17-18, 2009. Chicago State University (CSU) officials cite various reasons for why the conference has been halted. In its stead will be a one day poetry festival on April 18,2009, entitled the Gwendolyn Brooks National Poetry Month Festival.
The Brooks National Poetry Month Festival, which will occur on the campus of Chicago State University, features distinguished poets and fiction writers such as Achy Obejas, Major Jackson Angela Jackson, Willie Perdomo, and Colin Channer. This event will be free and open to the public. Workshops in fiction and poetry will be $100.
Like the conference, this festival will be sponsored by the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing at CSU, which has produced the internationally-acclaimed Brooks Writers’Conference for nearly two decades.
Even without the conference, April will not be a barren month for literary events at CSU. Two Gwendolyn Brooks Center events will occur in addition to the National Poetry Month Festival, including Richard Wright: The Legacy and the Man and the CSU MFA Graduate Reading. The panel discussion in celebration of Richard Wright will take place April 8, 7-9 p.m., in the Legislator’s Room of the New Academic Library, and will feature Wright’s daughter Julia and CSU Distinguished University Professor Haki R. Madhubuti. The 2009 CSU MFA class, showcasing the poetry, fiction and non-fiction from the world’s only African-centered graduate program in Creative Writing, will occur from 7pm-9pm on April 23, 2009, also in the Legislator’s Room of the New Academic Library.
For more information about the Gwendolyn Brooks National Poetry Month Festival and the other April events at CSU, please contact Tacuma Roeback at 773-995-4440 or at troeback@csu.edu.
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The Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing (GBC) was founded in 1990 on the historic campus of Chicago State University (CSU). It is named after Ms. Brooks, the former Poet Laureate of the State of Illinois and Distinguished Professor of English at Chicago State University. The Brooks Center is especially well known for its annual Gwendolyn Brooks Writers’ Conference, which is in its 18th year. The GBC is also home to the International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent (IHOF), which has more than 150 inductees. Mr. Wright, whose plaque hangs in the Brooks Center, was inducted in the IHOF’s inaugural 1998 class.
