MAKE Lit Announces the 13th Annual Lit & Luz Festival in Chicago
November 8–14, 2026
Renowned writers and artists from Mexico and Chicago will gather for a week of cross-cultural, multilingual programming at venues throughout the city.
Chicago (September 14, 2026) The 13th annual Lit & Luz Festival of Language, Literature, and Art Chicago is happening from November 8th to 14th of 2026. This one-of-a-kind, cross-cultural, multilingual festival, organized by MAKE Lit, brings together renowned writers, visual artists, performers, and musicians from Mexico and Chicago for a week-long series of public programming at venues throughout Chicago, including the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago (MCA), the National Museum of Mexican Art, Hyde Park Art Center, HayMarket House, Pilsen Community Books, University of Chicago, among others.
In the words of past participants:
Lit & Luz was truly a unique experience. Collaborating with a writer from a different culture was inspiring, encouraging, and challenging. We combined our practices and spoken languages into one cohesive artwork that stretched our thinking beyond ourselves.
Laleh Motlagh, Lit & Luz (2022 - 2023) Collaboration Cohort 2022 -2023
The collaborative quality of Lit & Luz creates new opportunities for reflection and connection, not only between the artists but also with the audience.
Maria Gaspar, Lit & Luz Collaborative Cohort 2025 -2026
Each year, Lit & Luz invites a cohort of 8 writers, artists, and musicians from the US and Mexico—the Collaboration Cohort—to create new, collaborative artworks which debut at the festival’s signature event, the Live Magazine Show. This year’s Chicago iteration is hosted and co-presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) on Friday, November 13th. The multilingual pieces often include storytelling, music, poetry, video art, and extemporaneous performances that explore the relationship among language, artistic disciplines, social issues, and the cultures of the United States and Mexico through this year's theme: “Edge/Borde”.
These works, commissioned by Lit & Luz, will later be presented at the Museo del Chopo in Mexico City on March 6th, 2027.
In the past thirteen years, through the Lit & Luz festival, MAKE Lit has supported the work of more than 260 artists from both countries. To continue this work, MAKE Lit has developed residency partnerships with Hyde Park Art Center and the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, which will each host a Mexico-based visiting artist from this year’s Collaborative Cohort for three weeks this fall. These residencies allow artists to develop new platforms and connect with a broader community, while also fostering stronger collaborations and bonds between the Collaboration Cohort.
The 2026-27 Lit & Luz festival will bring together artists, performers, musicians, poets, and writers from both countries around the theme of “Edge/Borde”. The weeklong festival programming will consider the complexities of official borders, as well as the ways in which soft and hard edges are constructed within cities and regions—and within artistic practices themselves—through language, culture, identity, and policy.
Highlights of the Chicago festival week events include:
Sunday November 8 kick-off live performance showcase featuring original works on the theme of the body and gravity by Bárbara Foulkes (CDMX), Camille Casemier (Chi), and Mauricio López F. (Chi) at the Hyde Park Art Center.
Monday November 9 an artist talk from visiting artist and inaugural Lit & Luz/ National Museum of Mexican Art Resident Rubén Gutiérrez titled “Building Fictions: Art, Cinema, Archives, and Other Ways of Surviving Reality” hosted by the Open Practice Committee at the University of Chicago.
Tuesday November 10 La hora de oro, our annual poetry reading at the Whistler featuring english and spanish readings from artists from Mexico and Chicago.
Wednesday November 11 “Writing with our eyes” a free writing workshop with visiting author Marina Azahua at the Harold Washington Library followed that evening by a panel discussion with Rubén Gutierrez at the National Museum of Mexican Art.
Thursday November 12 the 2026 Lit & Luz Festival Keynote Address from visiting poet Karen Villeda on this year’s festival theme of “Edge/Borde” at the Haymarket House.
Friday November 13 the Live Magazine Show: Cross-cultural experimentations between artists and writers on stage featuring collaborative performance, poetry and storytelling works in English and Spanish from the 2026-27 Collaboration Cohort.
The 2026-2027 Lit & Luz Collaboration Cohort artists are:
Karen Villeda (poet), MX
Accomplished Tlaxcala-based poet and writer with seven poetry collections, four books of essays, and three children's books, including our August Lit & Luz Book Club read, Teoria de cuerdas/String Theory (Cardboard House Press, 2025). Her interests include the relationship between literature and multimedia. She currently holds the position of Secretary of Culture for the State of Tlaxcala.
Bárbara Foulkes (visual artist), MX
An Argentine-Mexican interdisciplinary artist who explores performance, the body, and expanded choreography. Her work connects visual arts, choreography, perception, and relational systems, and she will be a Jackman Goldwasser Resident with the Hyde Park Art Center.
Rubén Gutiérrez (visual artist), MX
A Monterrey and Mexico City-based visual artist whose narrative, performance, and film-based works explore contemporary culture. He also curates international projects and develops concept-driven, multidisciplinary art across diverse creative contexts, and will be our inaugural Lit & Luz/National Museum of Mexican Art Resident!
Marina Azahua (writer), MX
A Mexico-based writer, editor, translator, historian, and anthropologist. The author of several literary nonfiction books. Her work addresses the archive, archival practice, representation, the effects of violence, and their various forms of collective resistance.
Ricardo Gamboa (Writer/ Theater), Chicago
A Chicago-based artist, scholar, and screenwriter, creating radical theater, media, and pedagogy. They are the Founder of Concrete Content, an autonomous theater company known for immersive, socially potent productions, and have a forthcoming book with Haymarket on radical art and social change.
Jennifer Scappettone (Essayist/ Poet), Chicago
A Chicago-based essayist and poet who works at the confluence of the literary, scholarly, visual, and performing arts. Her most recent book and our July Lit & Luz Book Club read is Poetry After Barbarism: The Invention of Motherless Tongues and Resistance to Fascism (Columbia University Press, 2025).
Aram Han Sifuentes (Interdisciplinary Artist), Chicago
A Chicago-based artist who creates participatory projects on protest, voting, citizenship, and immigrant justice. She has exhibited nationally and received awards, including the 3Arts Awards, Joyce Award, and Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship.
Tongji Philip Qian (visual artist), Chicago
A Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist and the co-founder of TPQ Studio. His artistic practice extends the limits of artmaking through conceptual lenses such as speed, labor, internationalism, and immigration.
Debuting new works made in collaboration at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Friday, November 13 at 7 pm, these artists will explore social, geographical, and linguistic limits through tensions at the “edge of space”.
ABOUT MAKE Literary Productions, NFP
Established in 2005, MAKE Lit supports, promotes, and engages contemporary writers, artists, and audiences through publishing, multidisciplinary arts events, and international cultural exchange between the US and Mexico. MAKE founded and produces the international Lit & Luz Festival of Language, Literature and Art, now in its 13th cycle. With a focus on collaboration, each Lit & Luz is themed and consists of two parts: the first takes place in Chicago in the fall, followed by a festival in Mexico City in the early spring. In addition, last year MAKE Lit launched the Lit & Luz Podcast in August 2025—a monthly, bilingual series featuring conversations around creative collaboration with Lit & Luz alumni and community members.
MAKE Literary Productions, NFP, is a 501c3 nonprofit partially supported by the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, Poetry Foundation, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council, Illinois Humanities, and Art Works Fund, as well as the generous support of individual donors.
Media Contact: Sofía Gabriel, Executive Director of MAKE Literary Productions.
director@makemag.org
224 391 04 39
