Lit & Luz Podcast
The Lit & Luz Podcast features intimate conversations between past participants of the acclaimed Lit & Luz Festival and the festival's artistic collaborators. Through dialogues in English, Spanish, and Spanglish, renowned writers and visual artists from Chicago and Mexico explore the creative process and the transformative power of cross-cultural artistic collaboration. Perfect for creatives and cultural enthusiasts alike, each episode of the Lit & Luz Podcast explores how collaboration across languages, mediums, and borders generates new artistic possibilities, celebrating the festival's mission of creating accessible cultural programming that brings diverse communities together. From translation challenges to bilingual performances, these conversations illuminate how art transcends borders and builds bridges between communities.
Check out our debut episode featuring Mexico City-based visual artist and writer Verónica Gerber Bicecci, and stay tuned for upcoming episodes, featuring Israel Martinez (2019-20 Collaboration Cohort), interviewed by Antonio Díaz Oliva (2023-24 Cohort) and Aura Arreola (2023-24 Cohort ), interviewed by Lit & Luz Co-Artistic Director, Esteban King.
Lit & Luz Podcast Episode 1, released August 1, 2025
“Genius But We Can't Publish This: Verónica Gerber Bicecci on Beautiful Rejections”
Host Kamilah Foreman speaks with Mexican visual artist and writer Verónica Gerber Bicecci, whose unconventional books such as The Company (trans. Christina MacSweeney) and Tercera Persona blur the lines between drawing and storytelling. Veronica traces her artistic evolution from childhood sketches to discovering how Venn diagrams could unlock complex concepts, developing what she calls a "visual artist who writes" identity.
The conversation reveals how her psychoanalyst parents' influence shaped her obsession with schematics, and the challenges of creating art that resists traditional formats. Most movingly, she describes her breakthrough collaboration with choreographer Michel Rodriguez Cintra at Lit & Luz, where combining her migration drawings with his dance pushed her into performance for the first time. This partnership gave her lasting confidence to explore new creative territories, exemplifying how Lit & Luz fosters unexpected artistic connections.
