FLOW Authors & Woman Made Gallery Proudly Presented:
Of Healing, Spirit and Re(storation) | A Prose and Poetry Reading
Event Date: Sunday, March 23, 2025 | 2–4PM
Location: 1332 S. Halsted St., Chicago, IL 60607
Learn more about the authors from FLOW:
Writing as L. D. Barnes, she is a published author, poet, book reviewer and local performer. Her poems have been published in Revise The Psalm, Works Celebrating The Writings of Gwendolyn Brooks, The Skinny Poem Journal, Chicago’s South Side Weekly 2019 Lit Edition and Expressions From Englewood. She also writes police procedural mysteries, and her debut novel is The 107th Street Murder.
Heather ‘Byrd’, named a Living Legacy by Brooks Permission, is an international award-winning writer, and CEO of Byrd’s World Publishing. Byrd’s been featured in festivals and publications across the country, including Hope Ignited, and Trouble The Waters, a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and Locus Award. Her work has earned her the International Anthem Award, standing alongside HBO, Google, and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Her favorite words are balloon and bubble.
Tina Jenkins Bell, a published speculative fiction writer, playwright, and literary activist, recently won Definition Theater’s Amplify competition for her play “Death of a Marriage.” Her short stories have appeared in numerous journals/anthologies, including The Overturning, featuring her short story, “Kaiko.” She is finishing the novel manuscript, Down and Dirty in Kosciusko, Mississippi, is a co-founder of FLOW (For Love of Writing) and collaborates with other authors/literary groups to offer literary programming on Chicago’s southside.
April Gary is a writer, poet, filmmaker, producer, actor, screenwriter, artist and public speaker. She is the author of four poetry chapbooks: Love and Butterflies, The Dialect of Amazons, Tapestry – A Modern Tale of Ancient Times and Thorns on Roses. Her current film project, Spiritual Gifts – Episode 1, celebrated its film premiere in January 2025. The film explores the lives of people with intuitive and prophetic abilities. It has been entered into several 2025 film festivals. www.spiritualgiftsfilm.com
Janice Tuck Lively is a published writer of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and a playwright. Her work celebrates and examines the joys and struggles of Black women’s lives and has appeared in such various literary journals, including Obsidian III: Literature in the African Diaspora, Jet Fuel Review, and others. Tuck Lively is a 2019 Illinois Arts Council Literary Award winner and a 2016 Pushcart Award nominee. She is a Professor in the Department of English at Elmhurst University where she teaches Beginning and Advanced Fiction Writing, Creative Non-Fiction, Multi-cultural Postcolonial Literature, and Feminist Poetry.
Sandra Jackson-Opoku is the author of the award-winning novel, The River Where Blood is Born and Hot Johnny and the Women Who Loved Him, an Essence Magazine Bestseller in Hardcover Fiction. She also coedited the anthology Revise the Psalm: Work Celebrating the Writing of Gwendolyn Brooks. Her fiction, nonfiction, and dramatic works are widely published and produced, appearing in Adi Magazine, Midnight & Indigo, Aunt Chloe, Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, New Daughters of Africa, Obsidian, Another Chicago Magazine, storySouth, Lifeline Theatre, the Chicago Humanities Festival, and others. Professional recognition includes a Plentitudes Journal Fiction Prize, the Hearst Foundation James Baldwin Fellowship at MacDowell Arts, a US National Endowment for the Arts Fiction Fellowship, an American Library Association Black Caucus Award, a City of Chicago Esteemed Artist Award, the Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award, a Globe Soup Story Award, and a Pushcart Prize nomination.
Guest Readers:
Mallory Raven-Ellen Backstrom is a award-winning playwright and author, illustrator, and teaching artist. Mallory, a former member of the Playwright’s Unit at Goodman Theatre, where her work has been developed in Future Labs and The New Stages Festival. A Recipient of the Chicago Esteemed Artist Award, the B2B Arts Award, and a Chicago Dramatists Tutterow Fellow. Mallory was the inaugural Sullivan Playwright-in-Residence at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Nurtured by The Story Theatre, Sideshow Theatre, The Athena Project, The New Coordinates Theatre and The Refracted Theatre Company.
Andrea Change is a hometown girl, born and raised in Chicago. A graduate of Northwestern University with a Master’s degree from Roosevelt, she has been an active member of Chicago’s literary community for than 20 years. Her work has been published in the past in various journals and poetry anthologies from Tia Chucha Press, Powerlines and Stray Bullets. Her poetry was also included in the Steppenwolf Theatre production, Words on Fire. She is currently working on a book of memoir poetry and prose inspired by her experiences growing up on the city’s west side.
Andrea is the executive director for the Guild Literary Complex and currently lives in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood with her two dogs Sasha and Missy.
Jamie Wendt: Book Launch & Signing
Event Date: Sunday, May 4, 2025 | 2–3:30PM
Location: 1332 S. Halsted St., Chicago, IL 60607
Join us for the launch of Laughing in Yiddish by Jamie Wendt, a collection of persona and ekphrastic poems that explore the lives of Jewish women in Russia’s Pale of Settlement and their journey to Chicago. Through vivid character portrayals, the poems delve into themes of immigration, assimilation, and the struggle to maintain cultural traditions. Laughing in Yiddish offers a heartfelt reflection on Jewish heritage and the longing for connection to spiritual ancestors.
Event is FREE and OPEN to the public.
About the Author: Jamie Wendt is the author of the poetry collection Laughing in Yiddish (Broadstone Books, March 2025), which was a finalist for the 2022 Philip Levine Prize in Poetry. Her first book, Fruit of the Earth (Main Street Rag, 2018), won the 2019 National Federation of Press Women Book Award in Poetry. Her poems and essays have been published and are forthcoming in various literary journals and anthologies, including Feminine Rising, Catamaran, Green Mountains Review, Lilith, Jet Fuel Review, the Forward, Clockhouse, Consequence, Minyan Magazine, and others. She contributes book reviews to the Jewish Book Council. She won third prize in the 2024 Reuben Rose Poetry Competition and won second prize for the 2024 Holloway Free Verse Award through the Illinois State Poetry Society. Wendt holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska Omaha. She lives in Chicago with her husband and two kids.
Follow her online at https://jamie-wendt.com or on Instagram @jamiewendtpoet
WMG’s Literary Events Curator
Jae Green – WMG Literary Events Curator Jae Green is connected to Woman Made Gallery since its early days when the organization was located at its first location in Ravenswood Manor on Chicago’s northwest side. Jae is a visual artist, writer and published poet. She serves since 2020 on WMG’s Board of Directors and is also part of WMG’s Program Committee. In celebration of Woman Made Gallery’s 30th Anniversary she co-juried the Generations group exhibition in 2022 together with Gallery Coordinator, Marisa Miles.
WMG’s Former Literary Team
Nina Corwin Much gratitude goes to Nina Corwin and her years of service as WMG’s Literary Events Curator until Covid prevented us from planning any public events. Nina is a published poet, Founding Editor for Fifth Wednesday Journal and psychotherapist/advocate for victims of sexual assault. She is the author of two books of poetry, The Uncertainty of Maps and Conversations With Friendly Demons and Tainted Saints. Her work has appeared in ACM, Forklift OH, Hotel Amerika, New Ohio Review, Southern Poetry Review, Verse and has been nominated for the Pushcart prize. Corwin is an Advisory Editor for Fifth Wednesday Journal and co-edited Inhabiting the Body: A Collection of Poetry and Art By Women. She has read and performed her work across the country, at times set with musical or choreographic compositions.
Jennifer Steele Thank you Jennifer Steele for your service as WMG Literary Events Outreach Coordinator for several years. She is a published poet and educator and serves as Partnerships Coordinator for Teen Services at Chicago Public Library. She served as co-founder and co-curator of the Revolving Door Reading Series. Her work has appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Callaloo Journal, Columbia Poetry Review, Warpland Journal, So To Speak, and others, and is a Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop fellow. She has taught creative writing and digital media arts across Chicago since 2008 and has collaborated with numerous youth organizations and cultural institutions, designing innovative arts programming.
Kurt Eric Heintz We are grateful to Kurt Eric Heintz who served as WMG’s Literary Events Audio Recordist through 2019. Kurt once taught computer graphics programming at Columbia College, and worked as an independent web developer. He’s since become the lead video director at Britannica. Kurt is known for his poetry videos, begun in the early 1990’s. He also video-conferenced his colleagues’ poetry in the late 1990’s — years before Skype and the iPhone. He was a technical advisor to the Electronic Literature Organization in its earliest years, and is the video content editor for Another Chicago Magazine.
Thank you Angela Narciso Torres, for your wonderful work and support for WMG and our past Literary Program!
Woman Made Gallery is supported in part by grants from The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events; The Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation; The Illinois Arts Council Agency; the Arts Midwest GIG Fund, a program of Arts Midwest that is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional contributions from the Illinois Arts Council Agency; the Puffin Foundation; a major anonymous donor; and the generosity of its members and contributors.