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We are united as working writers. We labor at writing, often without pay, and many of us labor at other jobs. This poetry reading focuses on labor and labor organizing—organizing that is inclusive of issues such as race, gender, and national origin in the workplace and larger community—which is necessary for winning the pay and conditions that would allow us to creatively thrive. The poems explore oppression in workplaces such as higher ed and factories as well as the solidarity of collective resistance.

Jennifer Karmin has published, performed, exhibited, taught, and experimented with language across the U.S., Cuba, Japan, Kenya, and Europe. As a founding curator of the Red Rover Series, she has often led ensembles of poets improvising together at festivals, artist-run spaces, and on city streets. Widely published in anthologies, journals and handmade editions, her books include the text-sound epic Aaaaaaaaaaalice and The Sexual Organs of the IRS a collaboration with Bernadette Mayer. Since 2000 she has worked with immigrants and refugees at Truman College, using creative writing to support literacy in Chicago. She is a union steward and co- established a housing cooperative in Humboldt Park.

Paul Martinez Pompa's first book, My Kill Adore Him, was selected for the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize. His most recent book, Domestic Corpse, was published on Match Factory Editions. His poetry has been widely anthologized and was commissioned for a Chicago Public Radio project called "In Verse," which aimed to explore the emotional weight of gun violence. He is a Canto Mundo fellow and currently edits for Packingtown Review.

Dawn Tefft’s first full-length poetry book, Once Upon a Riot, came out through Match Factory Editions in June 2025. Dawn’s chapbooks include Gosling (Anhinga Press), Fist (Dancing Girl Press), and Field Trip to My Mother and Other Exotic Locations (Mudlark). Her poems appear in Bennington Review, Denver Quarterly, and Fence. She volunteers as an editor for Packingtown Review and as a Lead Organizer for the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC), and works as a union representative in Chicago.

Chicago-based transnational writer and musician Snežana Žabić is the author of the short story collection U jednom životu, the hybrid memoir Broken Records, and the poetry collections Po(jest)zija/Po(eat)ry (co-written with Ivana Percl), The Breath Capital, and Concrete Is More Beautiful Disfigured and Stained. She plays guitar, writes songs, and sings in Rent Party, everyone’s favorite feminist garage folk band, and recently she's joined Heart on the Eyes, a feminist indie torch pop sensation in the making. She teaches writing and literature as a part of the contingent academic workforce and has been a proud union member of UIC GEO, SEIU Faculty Forward, and UIC United Faculty.