Kevin was introduced to Young Chicago Authors during one particular summer in the Windy City. He was already teaching at alternative high schools in Chicago and was asked to do the same at Young Chicago Authors. Its mission is to transform the lives of young people by cultivating their voices through writing, publication, and performance education. Hanging out at radically inclusive parties as a late teenager gave him a vision of how he hoped cultural space would be and a blueprint for what he imagined it to be going forward. He grew up going to house parties and hip hop sets interacting with people that pretty much mirrored people in the city. “I was pretty much always that white kid, which I wore like a shield of honor. I was proud of that. But I also wanted to recreate some of what I felt at those house parties. As I got more entrenched in traditional poetry communities, I was always sickened by its elitism, racism and white supremacy of what they thought poetry was,” stressed Coval.
LTAB developed from a regular crew of teachers and teaching artists within Young Chicago Authors called the Writing Teachers Collective. The group consisted of writers conducting creative writing workshops in schools and classroom teachers wanting to use a new poetic as a method to reengage students through education. Those writers and teachers reached all sides of the city with success, but they soon realized that because Chicago was so segregated, none of the students had the opportunity to hear one another. In 2001, around the time that the twin towers fell in New York City, Chicago was trying to pass a gang loitering ordinance which would lock up kids of color for hanging out in groups of more than one. It was a fearful moment for the teachers and they responded by creating a gathering of young people rooted in hip hop culture. It started with a handful of poetry teams in the basement of the Chopin Theatre (on Chicago’s near west side) in front of a packed house. The event was such a big hit that participants wanted to partake in more.
LTAB is a radically diverse crew of people that tell stories from all across the city. Enlivens the cultural space and is one of the only platforms in Chicago that looks like the city itself. But he feels much of the cultural space in Chicago reflects the urban planning of segregated Chicago. “From my experience culture actually works counter to that. The desire to use stories and poems to create a different kind of cultural space really brings people together intentionally,” Coval said.
The youth poetry festival brings people together in ways that other events don’t. It allows people to gather in a room to hear one another yielding robust conversations that cross boundaries normally not crossed. Others get to hear what’s truly going on in neighborhoods across the city from those that live it everyday, instead of watching a three minute story that is a microcosm of what the media portrays. LTAB allows young people to value and understand their own voice, which can trickle down to their own community.