On Wednesday June 18, join the Chicago Poetry Center for our annual summer celebration!
In line with CPC’s anti-censorship roots and wrapping up our 50th anniversary year, the headlining poet for our 2025 Summer Poetry Gathering is none other than Martín Espada. Martín is the author of more than twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist, and translator; his book of essays and poems, Zapata’s Disciple (1998), was banned in Tucson as part of the Mexican-American Studies Program outlawed by the state of Arizona.
On this night of community celebration, we will also be presenting CPC’s Gwendolyn Brooks Award for Excellence in Teaching to Leslie Reese, Timothy David Rey, and Joy Young.
Also, don’t miss your chance to bid on amazing items through our in-person-only silent auction!
[UPDATE: As of May 15, we are at capacity for this event. If you would like to attend, please sign up for the waitlist to be notified if/when more tickets become available.]
Doors open at 6 p.m. — Libations and bites, mingling, silent auction
6:30 p.m. — Community open mic in the performance space, community hang time in the lobby and library
7 p.m. — Awards presentation and headliner reading
8 p.m. — Community gathering with book signing, more libations and bites
This event is completely FREE, but pre-registration is required.
Space is limited, register today!
ABOUT OUR FEATURED POET
Martín Espada has published more than twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist, and translator. His latest book of poems Jailbreak of Sparrows was published with Knopf in 2025. His previous book, Floaters, won the National Book Award for Poetry and a Massachusetts Book Award. His poetry collections from W.W. Norton include Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (2016), The Trouble Ball (2011), The Republic of Poetry (2006), Alabanza (2003) and Imagine the Angels of Bread (1996). He is the editor of What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (2019). Espada has received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the PEN/Revson Fellowship, a Letras Boricuas Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. The title poem of his collection Alabanza, about 9/11, has been widely anthologized and performed. His book of essays and poems, Zapata’s Disciple (1998), was banned in Tucson as part of the Mexican-American Studies Program outlawed by the state of Arizona. A former tenant lawyer, Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
