Iranian American playwright, author, film critic and poet, Ezzat Goushegir, has published four books (in Farsi), including collections of short stories: The Woman, the ROOM, and Love, ... And suddenly the panther cried: WOMAN; Migration in the Sun, a book of poetry and Metamorphosis and Maryam's Pregnancy, Two plays, a book of plays. Her plays have been produced by a variety of theater companies including Maryam's Pregnancy, which won a Richard Maibaum award and Behind the Curtains, recipient at a Norman Felton award.

Tony Fitzpatrick  is an artist, poet, playwright, radio personality and sometime movie actor.  He  has published seven books, including three collections of art and poetry: The Hard Angels (1988), Dirty Boulevard (1998) and Bum Town (2001); a collection of etchings entitled Tony Fitzpatrick: Max and Gaby's Alphabet (2001) and three collections of drawing-collages entitled, The Wonder: Portraits of a Remembered City, Volume 1 (2005), The Wonder: Portraits of a Remembered City, Volume 2, The Dream City (2006), and The Wonder: Portraits of a Remembered City, City of Monsters, City of Ghosts (2008).

Fitzpatrick's artwork can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the National Museum of American Art in Washington D.C., the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Marc Smith is the creator and founder of the International Poetry Slam movement. As stated in the PBS television series, The United States of Poetry, a "strand of new poetry began at Chicago's Green Mill Tavern in 1987 when Marc Smith found a home for the Poetry Slam." Since then, performance poetry has spread throughout the world, exported to over 500 cities large and small.

Chalking up more than 2,000 engagements in nightclubs, concert halls, libraries, universities -- and on top of the occasional hot dog stand -- Marc continues to entertain and inspire audiences as diverse and eager as any to be found in the realm of fine arts. He has performed at the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian Institute, Galway's Cruit Festival, Denmark's Roskilde Festival, Ausburg's ABC Brecht Festival, and the Queensland Poetry Fest in Australia. He has hosted over 1000 standing room only shows at the Green Mill's original slam and has been featured on CNN, 60 Minutes, and National Public Radio. He narrated the Sourcebooks releases Spoken Word Revolution and Spoken Word Revolution Redux . Marc's volume of poetry Crowdpleaser (Collage Press) and his CDs It's About Time, Quarters in the Juke Box, and Love & Politics are available through his website www.slampapi.com.

Tickets available at the door. Visa/Mastercard/American Express accepted.

Robbie Klein has lived in Chicago since 1984, and has spent her professional career in the arts and the not-for-profit world. For 13 years, she co-owned Klein Art Works, a prominent art gallery. In 1997, she joined Josef Brodsky and Andrew Carroll as the midwest director of the American Poetry & Literacy Project, an organization whose mission was to democratize poetry by giving away hundreds of thousands of books of poetry for free. She founded and ran CHALK (Chicago Art Link for Kids), which at that time was the only children's art school in the city. She was executive director of
Chicago End-of-Life Care Coalition, and served as community affairs director for both Kendall College and the Chicago Art Project. From 2006 - 2010, she served as sr. director of alumni and donor relations at Illinois Institute of Technology, where she ran the Alumni Relations, Stewardship, Events, and Volunteer departments. Robbie joined Art Chicago in November, 2011. She lives in Chicago with her son, Brice.

Robbie Klein's book, Timid Girls, is a limited printing of an edition of nine poems, with images by artist Karim Hamid. It is published by Aureus-Contemporary from Basel, Switzerland.

"Variations on Want" by Francesco Levato

The film "Variations on Want" is based on the text of a book-length project consisting of long sequences composed of linked lyric and prose fragments. The text represents an ongoing inquiry and is collaged from numerous source texts including "The New Physics and Its Evolution" by Lucien Poincare, "Studies in the Psychology of Sex" by Havelock Ellis, pharmaceutical drug inserts, and a Kenmore washer instruction manual by Sears, Roebuck and Co.

The process of its construction involves a series of scans through source material with each level being more reductive than the previous. Visual and textual language from the source are collected, then words, phrases, and imagery are pulled out and arranged. From there the language is further reduced and rearranged, combining elements from many sources into poetic fragments. Those are then linked and further editing occurs to bring about a sense of cohesion in the whole.

"The White Box" by Michael Bassett

A white delivery van filled with little green bags each containing the same mysterious package arrives on a city street for delivery. The distracted driver mistakenly leaves one bag behind. Soon a wry figure, (The Man) removes from the overlooked bag, The White Box, determined to finish its journey.

Set to Antonin Dvorak's String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, Op. 96, The American - II. Lento, The Man moves from a progression of urban landscapes to the sweeping vistas of the public park.

Everywhere The Man goes with The White Box he is greeted with unbridled joy. All of the people he encounters must share with him an important message - and in turn receive his affirmation.

This short original film gives us that one last chance to express our love to someone because we all hold on to the memories and misses in . . .
The White Box.

The film is based on the courageous efforts of Geshe Lobsang Yonten, the now famous Tibetan monk who risked his life to bring a group of children across the Himalayan Mountains to be educated in the language and culture of the Tibetan people.  Many of you were at my home two and a half years ago to help raise funds for the making of this film. Please join us now to celebrate its completion.  The film has been shown at film festivals across all over the world.                            

Elise Paschen is the author of several poetry collections including, most recently, Bestiary (Red Hen Press, 2009) and Infidelities, winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is Germany's most famous and influential poet, philosopher and all-around intellectual – but once upon a time, he was a failed young law student with quashed literary hopes... 

"Love grants in a moment what toil can hardly achieve in an age." --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe