Guild Literary Complex at 25

The balloons gave it away: this was a party. A feel-good celebration. Heartfelt congratulations for a milestone. Pats on the back.

When you see balloons, you look for the open bar. The chicken. The DJ. The cake.

Where there are balloons, cake cannot be far away.

And there was booze, there was chicken, and there was cake--but for that, as always, you had to wait.

The Guild Literary Complex started 25 years ago, when the iconic bookstore expanded into a space it called “The Annex,” wild with fresh ideas, intent on preserving and spreading love for books and all things literary. The bookstore didn’t survive, but the nonprofit offshoot is alive and well, and many of its contributors, from the foundation to the ceiling, showed up for the party last Thursday night, May 15, at the Biograph Theater.

The Guild has had only five directors in its history, starting with Michael Warr and continuing on through the current head John Rich. Each of the five, in turn, took the microphone to share stories of their tenure and in so doing provide a chronological history of the organization. All were articulate, funny, humble, a reflection of the kind of organization this is, has been.

After Michael Warr, to whom the majority of the Guild Complex’s identity was attached, there was Julie Parson-Nesbitt, who had to prove the organization was more than its founder and face. Then Ellen Placey Wadey, one of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame’s illustrious board members and a major behind-the-scenes force in our thriving literary community. Then Kimberly Dixon-Mays.

You heard about the genesis, those meetings in the annex with David Hernandez where, you got the feeling, spit flew and arms waved. You heard about the struggles—11th-hour cash infusions to keep the doors open. You heard about the memorable events, like Steve Earle and Tony Fizpatrick and Michael Ondaatje taking the stage together.

And you also heard the names of 25 Chicago artists whom the Guild Complex revealed as their stars of the future.

“We knew we wanted to mark our birthday with a way to look forward, and focused our attention on making the list of 25 Writers to Watch,” said John, who as current director spoke last.

Writers familiar and not waved their hands in acknowledgement, inspired no doubt to be part of the illustrious list. Writers like Bill Hillmann and Megan Stielstra, both tireless champions of pet literary movements (Windy City Story Slam and 2nd Story) who’ve recently published well-received books. Writers like Kathleen Rooney and Nnedi Okorafor, who have been racking up literary praise for a long time now. Writers like Eric May and Gwendolyn Mitchell, veteran authors and laborers for some of our finest cultural institutions. Writers like Kristina Colon and Jacob Saenz, relative newcomers already finding a lot of fans. As is the hallmark of the Guild Literary Complex, the diversity was remarkable: young and old, male and female, black and white, Latino and Arab.

The Guild Literary Complex is not an incredibly well-funded concern, a reality we know all too intimately here at the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. Money is important—you need at least some of it to even get by. But without much of that, you need help—volunteers, interns, low-paid contract workers. Accomplished Chicagoans willing to accept a share of the load.

You need energy.

Energy fueled this party, as I’m sure it’s fueled the organization for a quarter century. And inspiration fueled the energy—the idea that what they had done, what they were doing, mattered. A lot of the writers on the 25 List took part in the celebration. So did all the directors. Board members like president Michael Puican, vice-president Reg Gibbons, Bayo Ojikutu and Rosellen Brown were there, names that could very well be part of a list of our great authors, in Chicago or anywhere.

By the time the cake made its way to the Biograph Theater’s second-floor event space, the crowd had thinned. Some of us were still drinking, others dancing, and dusk had settled over Lincoln Ave, dimming the view of the Guild Bookstore’s former location, now a flower shop. Chicago is always in motion, and sometimes I find it hard to remember things as they were. Last week, I was looking out at Millennium Park and couldn’t for the life of me patch together an image of what was there before The Bean.

Peering over a taxicab, I tried to reassemble the Lincoln Ave. of my early 20s, the way it might have been when the Guild Bookstore was thriving and the people at this party were plotting how to ignite a new bomb off the old wick. Three Lagunitas IPAs weren’t helping my memory. I remembered a record store and a consignment shop and maybe a lot more parking, but the different times in that same place blurred together.

But it didn’t matter. Unlike so many dearly departed Chicago institutions, the Guild Bookstore—a left-leaning place where happened all manner of literary advocacy, from fighting for writer grants to trumpeting tiny journals--is not a ghost. It’s the mother and the father and the fat uncle of a baby that’s all grown up but very far from extinction.

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Donald G. Evans is the founder and executive director of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. He is the author of the novel Good Money After Bad and short story collection An Off-White Christmas, as well as the editor of the anthology Cubbie Blues: 100 Years of Waiting Till Next Year. He is the Chicago editor of the Great Lakes Cultural Review. He serves on the American Writers Museum's Chicago Literary Council and the committee that selects the Harold Washington Literary Award.

donaldgevans@hotmail.com