Featured Readers
Hannah Gamble (she/they) is a poet, essayist, screenwriter, and director. Her first book of poems, Your Invitation to a Modest Breakfast, won the National Poetry Series in 2011. In 2014, they received the Ruth Lilly/ Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. Hannah’s second book of poems, The Traditional Feel of the Ballroom, is now available from TrioHousePress. Additionally, Gamble is the writer, director, and executive producer of the Chicago-based webseries Choose Me: An Abortion Story, which was selected for several national and international film festivals, winning several awards including the Award of Excellence for a TV Show from the Montreal Independent Film Festival and a Best Web Series award from the Miami International Film Festival in 2020.
A proud native of the South Side of Chicago, Mayda Del Valle appeared on six episodes of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and was a contributing writer and original cast member of the Tony Award winning Def Poetry Jam on Broadway. She also toured with Norman Lear’s Declare Yourself Spoken Word Tour, a non-profit, non-partisan project created to encourage young voter registration for the 2004 presidential elections. In May of 2009 she was invited to perform at The White House for the President and First Lady. She has been featured in Latina Magazine, The Source, The New York Times and was named by Smithsonian Magazine as one of America’s Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences. Oprah’s “O” Magazine selected her as one of 20 women for their first ever “O Power List”, a group of visionary women making a mark in business, politics, and the arts.