Keith “Blu” Warfield, Kush Thompson, Young Chicago Authors Teaching Artists Corps.

Young Chicago Authors transforms the lives of young people by cultivating their voices through writing, publication, and performance education.

YOUNG CHICAGO AUTHORS (YCA), founded in 1991, is a not-for-profit organization that engages
youth in the act of telling their own stories through the exploration of writing forms such as: spoken word, investigative and verse journalism, playwriting, fiction, and realist portraiture. Over the last two decades, YCA has expanded its programs to include rigorous engagement with thousands of young people via school residencies of in-class curriculum instruction, after-school coaching, and year-round workshops that are held at YCA’s Wicker Park Headquarters on evenings during the week and daytime on weekends. At the core of this work is galvanizing youth communities as civically engaged and culturally literate citizens, focusing on essential developmental skills through Literary Arts, publication, and performance education.

All of YCA’s annual programming is celebrated in the culmination of Louder Than A Bomb (LTAB), the world’s largest youth poetry slam, now a month-long festival showcasing writers and performance. Presently, YCA directly serves more than 10,000 teens each year across 120 different
Chicagoland zip codes, letting them know that their stories are essential while sharing tools and approaches for how to contribute their narratives to the city-wide and national conversations about youth, culture, and society.