Director of Communications and Publications
Position located in WIcker Park neighborhood accessible by CTA Blue Line Division exit

Young Chicago Authors currently seeks an energetic, thoughtful and committed individual for a full time position in communications and teaching through creative writing, blogging and journalism. The position’s primary responsibilities will be to provide:

-Oversight and management of YCA Communications and Publications budget lines
-Editorial and Curatorial oversight of all YCA publications in collaboration with the Artistic Director and Director of
Programs

-Co-ordination and management of editorial boards:
-Say What online and Say What “salon” publication – youth editorial board(s)
-YCA Anthology publication – teaching artist and youth editorial board

-Responsibility for managing all YCA communications and social media
-Facebook, Twitter, YouTube channels
-PR initiatives and projects
-Marketing initiatives, projects and events
-Collaborate with YCA media partners on publicizing and marketing YCA events and projects including the LTAB
festival
-Creative guerilla marketing strategy and team for projects and events
-Managing freelance designers, production and dissemination of all materials
-Website
-Overseeing the integration of Say What online into the YCA website
-Responsible for regular website updates
-Oversee general website maintenance

-Management of Communications and Marketing internships
-Management of Publications Teaching Artist(s) and apprenticeships
-Collaboration with Artistic Director and Programs Director on creating the YCA curriculum and Professional
Development training sessions
-Evaluation and assessment of youth editorial board, online publication and hardcopy publications
-Collaboration with Director of Programs and Artistic Director on curating New Journalism workshop series and The
Get Down Sessions
-Collaboration with Program Director and Artistic Director on producing and editing hard copy publications
-Collaboration with schools and Community Liason on fees for service opportunities

Context

Young Chicago Authors (YCA) is a 20-year-old nonprofit organization which provides cultural engagement opportunities and artistic mentorship to teens through writing, spoken word and journalism. YCA has worked with thousands of young people in school and after-school settings, delivering workshops, residencies, summer institutes and performances. Operating under the guiding principle that “everyone is from somewhere and has a story to share,” YCA draws from realist portraiture, hip hop, popular culture and the tradition of oral history to provide young people with the tools and platform to tell their authentic stories. Core to our mission is to provide public platforms for the written word through the established youth publication Say What, our in-house publicshing projects, open-mic and festival events. From weekend creative writing intensives to Louder Than A Bomb, the largest teen poetry festival and slam in the country, YCA brings students into a uniquely vibrant and citywide community that transcends cultural and socioeconomic boundaries.

Today, YCA sustains a thriving community of students, educators and teaching artists. We directly serve 3000 primarily low-income and under-served teens through our annual programming and reach a live audience of more than 4500 individuals through the culminating festival. As we enter our 21st year, YCA has a citywide reputation of engaging youth in a civic dialogue about their collective identity and its place in cultural discourse. We are on the brink of a growing national and international profile through the screenings of the award-winning Louder Than A Bomb documentary.

With our continued growth and development, YCA is particularly focused on developing tech-savvy writing programs, expanding and integrating our online publication with YCA’s website and continuing the growth of our strong presence within social networks.

Desired Job Qualifications

The desired candidate will have a degree or equivalent professional experience in Marketing, Journalism, Publishing, Communications or Public/Media Relations, English or a related field. You will also have experience in non-profit arts administration and project management. You will have a key interest in working with young people, specifically teens, through writing workshops, literary displays and the communication arts. Knowledge in the use of Survey Monkey, email marketing systems such as Constant Contact, Facebook, Twitter, website content management systems, database systems and Photoshop is also a plus.

You will be interested in using Social Media as a community organizing tool for our organization and a place where young authors’ work can find a platform and be disseminated. You will be interested in and enthusiastic about contributing to the vision of the organization and create strategic projects and programs that engage youth in writing, the telling of stories and news literacy. You’ll find enticing ways to funnel the content of this work onto our online publication and our website.

The position comes with individual health benefits.

You will also have:

-Budget construction and management proficiency
-Flexibility and the ability to work in a fast-paced environment
-Strong writing skills
-Strong analytical and critical thinking skills
-Strong interpersonal relations skills
-Strong organizational skills and ability to participate in and lead integrated planning
-A solid work ethic
-Experience in Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint, Excel)
-Knowledge of html and basic web-related skills

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Check the Method is a two-week summer writing intensive led by YCA Artistic Director Kevin Coval and YCA Artist-in-Residence Roger Bonair-Agard for students aged 15-24 and educators of all ages. The student week will be July 23rd through July 27th while the educator week will be July 30th through August 3rd. The sessions will run 10AM-3PM every day at Young Chicago Authors offices with special cultural activities around the city. Registration costs $250 for students and $500 for teachers, with limited scholarships available.

To register online, click here!

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we invite you to help us create public spaces where young people can tell their story. you can do this in many ways. of course, you can donate to the non-profit organization, Young Chicago Authors that puts on Louder Than A Bomb every year. (there is a button over to your right & please read the post below)

we also hope you will COME to the 12th Annual Louder Than A Bomb in Chicago, Feb 18-March 10. you can participate in many ways: start a team at your school, bring students and young people, be a great audience member, connect us to the local high schools in your neighborhood or town.

& we hope you will consider STARTING a LOUDER THAN A BOMB in your city and/or state. Young Chicago Authors can HELP YOU. please email our National Outreach Coordinator Anna Festa at: annarfesta@gmail.com.

we believe the work we are doing at YCA and LTAB is helping to change the culture of Chicago bringing young people together across borders they are typically kept from crossing and re-engaging students in the process of their own education. please join us in this work.

stay in touch at facebook.com/louderthanabomb & facebook.com/YoungChicagoAuthors. & twitter.com/YoungChicagoAuthors.

we look forward to hearing from you.
sincerely,
kevin coval
poet. artistic director of Young Chicago Authors
co-founder of Louder Than A Bomb

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At Young Chicago Authors we believe in young people as the innovators of art and culture. Through writing and the telling of their stories we are training and encouraging them to be in conversation with the rest of the city, country and world.  We think young people should be seen and heard which is why we make opportunities, cultural spaces and forums for them to gather, meet, speak with and listen to one another.

Chicago is the city of neighborhoods. It is our strength and our divide.  Our response is to intentionally organize young people from every neighborhood into central spaces to write and tell their stories.  Afterall, the true story of Chicago is told through the conversations of its communities.

This is why Young Chicago Authors exists and why we ask you to support our work.  In doing so, you are contributing to how and where these stories emerge.

For every $10 dollars you contribute, we are able to engage two more young people at Louder Than A Bomb, Young Chicago Authors’ youth poetry festival.

For every $100 you give, 10 young people are able to attend a workshop series, finding the training to tell their stories in their own voice.

For every $200 you donate, an experienced teaching artist can visit a new school, introducing our work to hundreds of students.

With every contribution of any size you help us meet our goals of:

• directly engaging 2,000 young people annually in our training
• cultivating an audience of 12,000 to hear their stories
• producing the online new journalism publication for and by youth: Say What
• running multiple workshops at our space for young people from across the city
• employing a vast cadre of professional and emerging teaching artists dedicated to bringing the highest quality of writing into the classrooms
• curating an anthology of the best of our students’ writing
• growing the audio archive of youth spoken word, in partnership with Chicago Public Media, accessed by media outlets across the globe

This will happen with your investment. Please use the “Donate” button at the top right of this page to make your donation with a credit card or you can mail your donation to Young Chicago Authors, 1180 N. Milwaukee Ave., 2nd Floor, Chicago, IL  60642.

Yours,

Kevin Coval, Artistic Director                Rebecca Hunter, Executive Director

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Special thanks to the following people and organizations for making it such a great evening: Rick Kogan, Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, Greg Jacobs, Jon Siskel, Lamar Jorden, She’Kira McKnight, Rosie O’Donnell, The Alec Baldwin Foundation, Debbi Welch, Cliff Bregstone, Bunches (a flower shop), Peter Fidler, Larry Giddings, Goldwasser Family, Anne & Ori Gottlieb, Ann & Robert Graham, Jewel Grocery, Carol Jones, Mariano’s Fresh Market, Our Towne Renovation, Inc., Trader Joe’s, Urban Gateways Center for Arts Education, You’re Invited, and Michael Zeddies.

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The kick-off event,  English Class Heretics: Louder Than A Bomb In Concert, will take place on August 5 & 6 at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater. This concert will feature some of the “best of” performances from the past few years of LTAB, along with some dynamic new pieces. This performance is an important first step in furthering the longevity of our students and promoting poets onstage. For more information on the show you can visit http://www.victorygardens.org/onstage/ltab.php.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

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