Turning Point: An Evening with Spoken Word

Music, refreshment and visual art included for your pleasure. 

$15 at the door

Hosted by Lee Melchior

Join us for an early-spring evening of spoken word art bound together with a theme. Since April is poetry month, we’ll feature pieces from poets and storytellers with true, personal stories. And we’ll save time for an open mic. So bring us your one-sentence stories on “Turning Point.” Come laugh and reflect with us.

Featuring:

Jonathan Euseppi is a storyteller, stand-up comedian, and improviser who performs his personal form of comedy all over Chicago. He has been seen at the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival as well as the long running showcase, Chicago Underground Comedy. He most recently completed a successful run of his one man show "Grief is Horny" at the iO Theater. You can regularly catch him improvising with the iO Harold team, Big Tobacco.

John Hahn is thrilled and honored to join the powerful poets on stage here at the Ice House Gallery. Recently retired from Northside College Preparatory High School, where he taught English, coached the Academic Decathlon Team, and led educational tours of the UK and EU during spring breaks, John is grateful to all who have encouraged him and introduced him to this community of writers! John has presented stories and a poem at Rhino Poetry in Evanston, First Person Live, Pour One Out, This Much is True and other Chicago storytelling venues.

Maya Marshall is an editor and a poet. She is co-founder of the revision journal underbellymag.com. Marshall has earned fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, Callaloo, Cave Canem, the Community of Writers, and The Watering Hole. She serves as a senior editor for [PANK] and works as a manuscript editor for Haymarket Books. Her poems have appeared in RHINO, Potomac Review, South Carolina Review, Blackbird and various other publications. She lives in Chicago.

Anna McKinley, poet. A recently retired non-profit communications manager with a sense of humor that grows more warped with age, Anna McKinley started writing poetry when she was five. While her writing voice has always kept her breathing through life’s holy chaos, Anna learned the most about the craft of producing poetry from the late Mark Perlberg, a Chicago poet who believed in her, which is everything.

Johnny Price, better known as DJ J.P.GUNNz, is a professional DJ. He has performed around the world for over 20 years, mastering all sides of the art form from turntablism to party rocking. Every Sunday at 5:30 pm, Johnny hosts a 2-hour, virtual live radio broadcast, mixing styles of old school soul, funk hip-hop and house music. He is currently spinning in Chicago nightclubs and giving back to his community by teaching “The Art of DJing” classes in local youth centers. Check it out at www.jpgunnz.com

Victoria Reeves Writer, Storyteller and Creativity Coach, loves to ponder 3 questions. Who are you? Why are you here? What is the story you came to tell? Most afternoons you can find her sipping on an espresso, playing with words and happily contemplating the meaning of life. Her funny and reflective stories open the discourse on potential, identity, border hopping, creativity and living on the edge. She has performed at the Moth, Story Lab, This Much is True, Is This a Thing?, Do Not Submit, Inspired! Live Lit, Louder than a Mom and the Evanston Storytelling Festival.

Scott Whitehair is a storyteller, teacher, and producer in Chicago, IL. He is the producer of This Much Is True, the city's longest running personal narrative series, creator of Story Lab Chicago, which has put over 600 new tellers on stage since 2011, and director of Do Not Submit, a grassroots network of storytelling open mics spread across Chicagoland. He teaches a perpetually sold out independent class, coaches individuals, businesses, and non-profits, and performs anywhere someone will listen.

Lee Melchior, host, started telling stories as a kid growing up in the Mississippi River Valley, then as a peace activist who immigrated to Canada, an inn keeper on Saba in the Dutch Caribbean and later as a communication consultant in New York and Chicago. She has appeared as a storyteller at Story Sessions at City Winery, Truth or Lie Reading Series, Homewood Stories, The Moth, The Back Room in Oak Park and This Much is True. She hosts three shows: Do Not Submit Open Mic in Edgewater, Chimera Loft in Evanston and the Story Rug at Evanston Farmers’ Market.