Join Bridge and the Chicago Public Library in a daylong celebration of poetry. Bridge will be tabling with the other poetry publishers. The schedule of events is as follows:

Poetry Fest Events

Saturday, April 29th - Harold Washington Library

9:30am - Poetry Vendors Area Opens:

James Gordan - Independent Publisher

Bridge Art NFP

After Hours Press

Free Spirit Media

Columbia College

Poetry Center

10am - Poems While You Wait (Lobby Activity)

10am - Haiku Fest with Regina Harris

10am - Song of Myself Poetry Display

11am - Business of Poetry Panel with Mariah Scott, Eros The Prince of Poetry & Jennifer Brown-Banks

11am - Writing the Everyday with Mina Kahn

11:30 - Poetry Book Tasting with Jeff

12pm - Gwendolyn Brooks' "Blacks" Workshop with Tara Betts

12pm - After Hours Press Reading

1pm - Poetry and Social Justice Panel with David Masciotra, avery r. young, H. Melt & Janine Harrison

1pm - 40 Love Poems Workshop

1pm - Rengay Poetry Workshop with Poets and Patrons

2pm - Chicago Poet Laureate Keynote Address

3pm - 24th Annual Poetry Fest Open Mic with Caroline Watson

Bridge Video Announces “Multiple Bodies” Video Art Exhibition in Partnership with Indiana University, Bloomington

Bridge Video, a division of Bridge Art NFP, the registered Illinois 501 (c) 3 not for profit organization that publishes the Bridge Journal, the weekly online Bridge magazine at bridge-chicago.org, today announces a partnership with Indiana University Bloomington’s Sidney and Lois Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design. Together, we will produce “Multiple Bodies,” a special programming category of our upcoming Bridge Video streaming service showcasing digital art area student works.

TREATMENTS: CATALOG AND ARTIST’S BOOK

Bridge Books, a division of Bridge Art NFP, the registered Illinois 501 (c) 3 not for profit organization that publishes the Bridge Journal, and the weekly online Bridge magazine at bridge-chicago.org, today announces its contract agreement to publish the catalog and essays of the "Treatments" photographic series by artist Mat Rappaport, made to accompany the exhibition at Material, Chicago, April 16 - May 14, 2023. Essay by Michael Workman. Poetry by Rachel J. Webster with an essay by Lauren Weibe.

In Partnership with Open Books, Bridge Launches “Open Readings” Live Lit Series and Open Mic

The first edition of the new Bridge Open Readings series and Open Mic will take place at the Open Books Pilsen store, 905 W. 19th St. on Saturday, February 18th from 2-4pm. Readings and open mics will be recorded and archived in the Bridge Live Readings Archive (free account required to access).

NEWS: Bridge Books to Co-Present “From Healing to Action” with Chicago Torture Justice Memorials

Bridge is a proud "co-presenting partner" of the Illinois Humanities Council @ilhumanities program “From Healing to Action” on January 26th at the Chicago Torture Justice Center to present an evening of art, storytelling, and community presented by Illinois Humanities, Chicago Torture Justice Memorials (CTJM), and the Chicago Torture Justice Center in Woodlawn. Learn about the history of police torture in Chicago and the movement for healing and reparations from those at its forefront with a short screening of CTJM’s Narrating the Struggle for Justice for Police Torture Survivors, a healing exercise led by artist and educator Patrica Nguyen, and a reception with screen printing provided by PO Box Collective, collaborative quilt-making with artist and activist Dorothy Burge, and food by Celebrations by Us.

NEWS: Bridge Books Announces Acquisition of StepSister Press

Bridge Books, a division of Bridge Art NFP, the registered Illinois 501 (c) 3 not for profit organization that publishes the Bridge Journal, the weekly online Bridge magazine at bridge-chicago.org, and that recently announced the launch of its Bridge Books Division, today announces the acquisition of the Chicago-based StepSister Press. Founded by artist-turned-translator Annie Heckman, the press will continue to exist and operate as a stand-alone imprint within the newly founded Bridge Books division, and continue to fulfill orders for its full slate of titles. A new homepage for the press has been launched at bridge-books.org.

Bridge Books will manage all StepSister existing titles, ensuring that current titles will enjoy full continuity for orders and fulfillment. In addition, a number of new and legacy projects already slated for publication will move ahead, including publication of the annual journal of the Museum and Exhibition Studies graduate program under the leadership of professor Therese Quinn.

Bridge welcomes new Visual Art section Editor Laura Kina (@laura.kina). Laura Kina is a queer, mixed-race Uchinanchu artist-scholar and breast cancer survivor whose artistic and scholarly projects address Asian American and Okinawan diasporic art. She is a Vincent de Paul Professor at The Art School at DePaul University. Kina was born in Riverside, CA (Cahuilla, Tongva, Luiseño, Serrano territory), grew up in Poulsbo, WA (Suquamish and Port Gamble S’Klallam territory), and is based in Chicago (traditional lands of the Three Fires Confederacy — Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Odawa nations as well as the Ho-Chunk, Myaamia, Menominee, Illinois Confederacy, and Peoria).

Bridge, Zephyr & SITE/less win City of Chicago Planning & Development Grant for $70,911 in Facility Improvements.

NEWS: Bridge Announces the Launch of Bridge Books

In planning by members of the core artistic collective and affirmed by the Bridge Board of Directors at their recent annual meeting, plans for the launch of Bridge Books were set in motion.

“It’s an exciting time to be working here at Bridge. In development since 2018, the announcement of Bridge Books comes with a slate of fascinating titles, projects and partnerships launching in 2023,” says Bridge Executive Director Michael Workman. “Along with these come the capacity for additional plans to expand the reach of our not for profit programming to new audiences, customize development of our own independent media distribution networks, and integrate it all with other media channels also currently in development, including our alternative streaming service, Bridge Video, our Audio and Sound Art archives and new series of special projects, some also years in development.”

NEWS: Bridge Announces “Mat Rappaport: Treatments, 2019/2023” at Material Gallery, April 29-May 7, 2023

“In 2019, my partner was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. As I accompanied her to consultations, tests, and treatments I found myself considering the spaces in which the clinical met the individual. The hallways, waiting areas, and examination rooms were a pastiche of industrial wall coatings, clinical equipment, and artworks. In particular I was struck by the artworks that had been selected for display, often copies of well-known master works and pastoral scenes, placed into nearly identical serial cubicles. These visual spaces were meant to distract and calm and yet, I could only reflect on the fact that that was their purpose. All this while contemplating the unimaginable.”

Please note: despite hundreds of staff hours applying for dozens of funding support opportunities since the program launch in 2018, no new support has been awarded the Assembly Zones program, either from local, state, federal or private sources. Without continued funding to prototype and develop the necessary technology for this effort, the program can no longer move forward.

We continue to believe deeply in the urgency and necessity of the Assembly Zones program, but as of Fall 2022, until sufficient new support is acquired to continue, development efforts on the initiative will be discontinued. Those wishing to reach out with new capital opportunities can email us at bridge.editors1@gmail.com.

The long-running Bridge Movement Matters series, which investigates work at the intersection of dance, art, performance, politics, policy and issues related to the body, is launching a new periodic performance series this October 18. Bridge has hosted a variety of Movement Matters programming now for seven years, including artist's roundtables, symposia and panels, but this will be our first outing as a performance series. Curated by Michael Workman and Juliann Wang, we hope you will come show your support for the series launch, which seeks to define new intersecting spaces between dance, movement and performance art.

With the release of Bridge V22N1, Bridge welcomes new Fiction section Editor Meghan Lamb. Lamb is the author of COWARD (2022), Failure to Thrive (2021) All of Your Most Private Places (2020) and Silk Flowers (2017). She served as the Philip Roth Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell University, and teaches creative writing through the University of Chicago, Story Studio, and GrubStreet. Her work has appeared in Quarterly West, DIAGRAM, Redivider, and Passages North, among other publications. She runs the shadow text reading series Significant Others, a project dedicated to elevating new books and the “behind-the scenes” texts that inspired them.

With the release of Bridge V22N1, Bridge welcomes new Couture section Editor Kristin Mariani. Her practice is an ongoing conversation between design and art; acknowledging the slippery distinctions between the two disciplines, her investigations unfold in this unstable territory. Through the craft of making clothes, Kristin deploys aesthetic strategies, skill-based knowledge, and text to probe the historical, material, and labor-oriented underpinnings encapsulated in any effort to clothe a person. For her project Yes/On featured in the Couture section, she addresses intimacy, care, language and boundaries, questioning how the production of gender is figured through fashion, place, and labor.

SAVE THE DATE! and PLEASE RSVP TO join us at the release of the Bridge Journal's new Volume 22, Number 1 on Tuesday, October 18 from 4-7pm at Guild Row Social Club, 3130 N. Rockwell.

Copies of the Bridge Journal V22N1 will be available for purchase and for subscription at the event.

Save the date for the first lecture in a series at The Richard H. Driehaus Museum, where Bridge Journal Editor-in-chief Michael Workman will trace the avant-garde lineages of the Bridge Journal going back more than a century, as well as, as the museum states: “the evolution of artists’ publications and manifestos. Using the Driehaus Museum exhibition, PAN: Prints of Avant-Garde Europe 1895-1900 and William H. Bradley and The Chap-Book from the Collection of Richard H. Driehaus, as a starting point, Workman will take us through decades of intriguing and sometimes revolutionary visual, literary and social history.”

Save the date for the first lecture in a series at The Richard H. Driehaus Museum, where Bridge Journal Editor-in-chief Michael Workman will trace the avant-garde lineages of the Bridge Journal going back more than a century, as well as, as the museum states: “the evolution of artists’ publications and manifestos. Using the Driehaus Museum exhibition, PAN: Prints of Avant-Garde Europe 1895-1900 and William H. Bradley and The Chap-Book from the Collection of Richard H. Driehaus, as a starting point, Workman will take us through decades of intriguing and sometimes revolutionary visual, literary and social history.”

SOURCE RECURSIONS will showcase an exhibition of works drawing from and integrating the visual elements of our essays in the Bridge Journal, Volume 21, N1. Focusing on and deliberating the history of these elements as they relate to specific architectural, dance and movement art histories discussed in the volume.

SOURCE RECURSIONS will showcase an exhibition of works drawing from and integrating the visual elements of our essays in the Bridge Journal, Volume 21, N1. Focusing on and deliberating the history of these elements as they relate to specific architectural, dance and movement art histories discussed in the volume.