The Lit & Luz Festival of Language, Literature and Art (Lit & Luz) brings together writers, visual artists and musicians from Mexico and the United States in an effort to foster cultural exchange. The artistic results of these cross-cultural experiences, from poetry to photography and everything in between, are then presented through a series of bilingual performances. The festival is first presented in the US and will be reset for a presentation in Mexico next winter, featuring the same group of collaborative guests.
In Chicago, the ninth edition of the festival kicks off at noon on October 31 with a virtual speech by California-based poet Anthony Cody. The festivities continue that evening with an artist talk at the Logan Center for the Arts, featuring guest Balam Bartolomé with Esteban King, while at The Insect Asylum is the Halloween edition Favorite poems with Kathleen Rooney, Robin Myers, Yolanda Segura, Kailah Peters, and Olivia Maciel, among other readers. The festival runs through November 5 with a closing party at the Art Department of Chicago. Among the events are readings, workshops and artist talks (some offer a virtual option) at venues across the city. The festival’s signature celebration, Live Magazine Showwhich features the final performances created by the collaborative duo, formed by one artist from the US and the other from Mexico, takes place at the Logan Center for the Arts on Thursday, November 3.
The festival of light and light
10/31-11/5, various locations, most events free and all ages. For complete schedule, details and locations, go to litluz.org.
Lit & Luz 2022 includes Mexican authors Dolores Dorantes, Mariana Oliver and Segura, as well as visual artists Bartolomé, Aura Arreola and Héctor Jiménez Castillo. Chicago-based collaborators include authors Marty McConnell, Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué, and Antonio Díaz Oliva (ADO), along with visual artists Victoria Martinez, Amber Ginsburg, Laleh Motlagh, and musician Andy Slater.
The Lit & Luz Festival is produced by MAKE Literary Productions, a non-profit organization founded in 2009 following the success of its founding literary magazine. I DOwhich was first published in 2004. The Chicago-based publication “seeks to broaden the discussion of what it means to make something new out of a reality that may seem all too familiar, even tired, on the surface .
I DO issue 13, titled “Intercambio/Exchange”, was the magazine’s first bilingual publication and featured Latin American writers. The bilingual events that were organized that year (2012) to go along with the publication of the magazine brought to light the need for translated literature. The case highlights the importance of creating a bilingual exchange of literature given the strength of the Spanish language and culture in the US
With the help of the MacArthur Foundation, in 2014 the Lit & Luz Festival of Language, Literature and Art was officially formed. Since then, Lit & Luz founder and managing director Sarah Dodson says “nearly 50 writers, artists and musicians have traveled to Chicago for Lit & Luz Festival events, which are created in partnership with local arts organizations and universities.”
“Revision” is the theme for this year’s iteration. Miguel Jiménez, founder and director of the Lit & Luz Book Club, explains this concept as “an opportunity to think not only how the pandemic affected our artistic practices and lives in the ‘early days’, but how it ‘revised’ the way how we. access to art, community and inclusion. With so much happening in early 2020 and moving forward, we collectively took a deeper look at issues such as access and inclusion.”
Jiménez, who was born and raised in Back of the Yards, has always had a passion for Latino literature, music and art and for sharing the work of artists he feels should be seen, read or heard. After college, where he studied creative writing and literature (DePauw University and CSU Fresno), he returned to Chicago and began working with the Chicago Artists Coalition, eventually becoming an editor for the organization’s newsletter. Chicago Artists News.
At some point, Jiménez’s passion for literature led him to the newly formed author-focused festival, Lit & Luz. He says, “I’ve been to these festivals before I was a part of it [Lit & Luz] the team. There were writers at the festival that I never thought I would see. For example, before Valeria Luiselli was the writer-superstar that she is now, I knew her work. But I never imagined that I would see her one day because her work was not translated. She wrote only in Spanish. I remember, when I saw it, I was like, ‘No way! Who brought it? Why is she here?’ And not only her, but also her partner Álvaro Enrigue. I was a big fan of his, and that was before one of their books was translated. I was amazed.”
He started telling his friends about the festival and soon realized that many were unaware of the events, so Jiménez did what anyone with a passion for literature should do. He approached Dodson with the idea of forming a book club. Jiménez proposed that reading the work of a writer who would later be featured in the festival could entice more people to participate since they would already be familiar with their work.
The Lit & Luz Book Club was formed in 2018 and partnered with local bookstores to carry books by authors featured in the festival. The book club is currently partnered with City Lit Books in Logan Square, Pilsen Community Books in Pilsen, and Exile in Bookville in the Fine Arts Building downtown.
In 2020, Lit & Luz had to return to a virtual model due to the restrictions of COVID-19 and things went better than expected.
“It was a really great experience because we were able to reach new audiences in other parts of the world, and maybe audiences that wouldn’t have been able to attend. The same applies to the audience that has never heard of the festival or HAVE heard about it, but have not been able to participate. It brought many people together virtually. Part of the festival is also the book club, which is organized only in Chicago and because it was virtual, we had more participants. People joined from Mexico and parts of Mexico where we never get to organize the festival, like Chiapas and Oaxaca,” says Jiménez.
Although Lit & Luz continues to be an event focused on literature, it is also much more than that.
Jiménez explains, “It’s always done more. It’s still grounded in literature, but it’s also finding the intersections between literature, music, and visual art and other forms of artistic expression. More and more, we have more visual artists, more sound artists and artists in other mediums like dance. There are also multidisciplinary artists who actually work with all of them. It’s like this endless intersection of all these different mediums.”
The function of this year’s Lit & Luz seminars. . .
- Julio Enriquez-Ornelasthe author of Shit boysand the editor of Critical Narrative from Borderlands
- of course yolandaa poet from Queretaro who wrote a number of possible circumstances surrounding a working-class Mexican woman, for/so/for AND rooms that for now have light and open to the landscape
- Mariana Oliveran essayist from Mexico City who won an award for their book, migratory birds
- Robin Myersa poet whose collection of works includes the rest / next, Amalgam / ConflationsAND Tener / Duke
- Golden Painsthe author of Copy/Copy and executive director of Mujer Migrante
As book bans across the U.S. scorch the work of often unheard voices, programming that fosters artistic exchange, like the Lit & Luz Festival, is imperative. They strengthen literary endeavors and encourage the sharing of cross-cultural experiences, creating seemingly endless reciprocity.
