Two generations of Chicago activist-poets will discuss how to connect city organizations and young people through poetry; the founding of Tia Chucha Press; and de/industrialization's impact on violence and arts rehabilitation. These dedicated, vibrant poets have planted the seeds of poetry in community for 30 years. Chicago youth are reaping the harvest.

Join for us Wednesday, October 28 from 6pm-8pm. Light drinks and refreshments will be served. All are welcome

**This in person event will be live-streamed through Haymarket Books. Register through Ticket Tailor to receive a link to the video conference on the day of the event.

We ask that all in-person attendees wear masks in the event space during the program for the health and well-being of the speaker and other guests. We will have a reception afterwards with light refreshments and books available for purchase.**

Speakers:

Luis J. Rodriguez is a Los Angeles Poet Laureate Emeritus and the author of 18 books, including the bestselling memoir Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. Luis has spent more than 50 years in urban peace efforts in Los Angeles, Chicago, Mexico, and Central & South America. He also has 45 years in prisons, juvenile lockups, and jails facilitating creative writing workshops, poetry readings, and healing circles. He's founding editor of Tia Chucha Press in Chicago and co-founder, with his wife Trini, of Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural & Bookstore in Los Angeles. This year he received the Poetry Foundation's Pegasus Prize for Service in Poetry. His other honors include a California Arts Council Legacy Fellowship, a Los Angeles Times' Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers Award, a Dorothea Lang-Paul Taylor Journalism Award from Duke University, a Paterson Lifetime Achievement Award, PEN International’s Next Generation award, and fellowships from California, Illinois, North Carolina, Los Angeles, the Sundance Institute, and Lannan Foundation. In 2001, His Holiness the Dalai Lama presented him with An Unsung Hero of Compassion award.

Mayda del Valle has been described by the Chicago Sun Times as having “a way with words. Sometimes they seem to flutter and roll off her lips. Other times they burst forth like a comet streaking across a nighttime sky.” A poet, performer, and interdisciplinary artist, Mayda was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago. She is the author of A South Side Girl’s Guide to Love and Sex , (Tia Chucha Press) and The University of Hip Hop, winner of the 2016 Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize from Northwestern University Press.

Mayda launched her career at the legendary Nuyorican Poets Café, where she became the 2001 Grand Slam Champion before going on to win the National Poetry Slam in the same year - becoming the youngest poet and the first Latinx person to do so. She went on to appear on six episodes of the HBO series Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, and was a contributing writer and original cast member of the Tony Award-winning Def Poetry Jam on Broadway.

Her work has been featured in Urban Latino, Latina Magazine, Mass Appeal, The Source, and The New York Times. Smithsonian Magazine named her one of America’s Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences, and Oprah’s “O” Magazine featured her as one of twenty women in the first “O Power List”, a group of visionary women making a mark in business, politics, and the arts. She has performed at venues worldwide, including a 2009 appearance at the White House by invitation of President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.

Mayda holds a degree in Studio Art, and brings a multi- and interdisciplinary approach to her art practice, often incorporating photography, video, music, and movement into her work. She is a fifteen-year student of Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba, the oldest living musical tradition from Puerto Rico and is a dancer, vocalist, and composer with Las Bompleneras, the longest-standing all-women’s Bomba and Plena ensemble in the Puerto Rican diaspora.

A passionate arts educator, Mayda has taught poetry in schools, colleges, youth detention facilities and served as Program Director of Street Poets Inc. in Los Angeles. She is currently a Poet-in-Residence with The Chicago Poetry Center.

In 2024 she was awarded the Letras Boricuas Fellowship from the Flamboyan Arts Fund and the Mellon Foundation, and in 2025 was a Dark Matter Artist in Residence at Elastic Arts. Most recently, Mayda was selected as the second Poet Laureate of the City of Chicago and will begin her two-year tenure in January of 2026. She is currently developing a multi-media spoken word performance piece entitled Herencia, exploring the story of Puerto Rican migration to Chicago’s South Side.

Social Media
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/maydadelvalle/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maydadelvalleofficial/
Website: https://www.maydadelvalle.com/

Maya Marshall, a poet, essayist, and editor, is the author of author of All the Blood Involved in Love, winner of the Holmes National Poetry prize. Marshall cofounded underbelly, the journal on the practical magic of poetic revision. She holds fellowships from MacDowell, Cave Canem, and Emory University, among others. Her poems and essays are featured in numerous publications including Prose for the People (Penguin Random House), the American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, and Boston Review. Marshall is a program consultant for the Writing Freedom Fellowship, a literary fellowship for system-impacted writers. She serves as poetry director and senior editor for Haymarket Books.

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This event is sponsored by Haymarket Books. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our important publishing and programming work.