Upon walking through an arch of colorful balloons at the entrance to the 2025 Wonder of Words (WOW) Literary Festival, attendees were greeted with an array of sights and sounds under the bright lights of Dr. Conrad Worrill Track & Field Center, an indoor facility of the Chicago Park District. Children dunked basketballs into miniature hoops, sat for face-painting sessions and played with balloon animals. Teens danced to music curated by DJ Donnell and DJ London. Families created art projects together and perused selections of free books available to take home.
These activities and more were on offer at the fourth iteration of the annual festival, located in the Pullman neighborhood on Chicago’s far South Side and organized by Burst Into Books, a nonprofit founded by Jurema Gorham. Local talent from the Windy City Ramblers, Chicago Shakespeare Theater and the Jesse White Tumblers gave live performances throughout the day, while booths featured a variety of local authors, bookstores and community groups. Children’s author Lesa Cline-Ransome and illustrators James E. Ransome and London Ladd participated in a panel discussion on the main stage, signed copies of their books and led writing and illustrating workshops. The day’s events concluded with a conversation with poet, educator and New York Times bestselling author Kwame Alexander.
Da Book Joint, a Black-owned bookstore in the South Shore neighborhood, participated in the festival for the first time this year. Courtney Woods, who co-owns the store with her mother, shared a few thoughts on the experience. “It’s really inspiring to see [Burst Into Books] really put so much heart and love and care and dedication and hard work into a festival like this, that celebrates Black writers, Black illustrators and just Black people as a whole,” Woods said.
The WOW Literary Festival is a summer staple of the year-round programming of Burst Into Books, which provides culturally responsive literature and literacy resources to youth from six months through 18 years of age, aiming to encourage a love of reading, foster self-expression and support families through a holistic approach. Gorham, an education professional and lifelong South Side resident, founded the organization in 2018, after observing a lack of diverse literary programs available in the area for her young son.
“A big part of the importance of reading and access to books is something that I’ve seen on two folds; the voice you find in reading and also the way you get to see the world through reading is just unmatched for children,” Gorham said in an interview with Sixty Inches from Center. “For me, the arts, particularly reading, is what allowed me to know that there’s something bigger that’s outside of myself. … But not every child has that access or has that opportunity.”
Students of color often don’t see their own identities and experiences represented in the literature taught in classrooms, Gorham noted. “For me, as a teacher and a mom, I just knew that to be very important. I wanted my son to, yes, be a lover of reading, but I wanted him to be a lover of reading because he also understood his story matters. And your story matters because you see yourself as the characters,” she said.
After Gorham recruited other parents and teachers interested in the same goals, the group’s first youth book club began to meet at the school where she worked. Since 2018, Burst Into Books has expanded to feature guest author visits, adult book clubs, book giveaways, art workshops, online resources and partnerships with local schools and libraries. To date, the organization has reached more than 20,000 young readers and distributed more than 60,000 books. In July 2024, it marked a significant milestone with the opening of Burst Into Books Community Arts Space in the West Roseland neighborhood, a multipurpose venue that hosts live events, a free library and a bookstore primarily featuring authors of color.
Highlighting BIPOC authors is a central part of the WOW Literary Festival’s mission, and Gorham works to secure prominent guests to headline the event each year. “I think that [it] is pretty cool to have a child be in the same room with their favorite illustrator and author, in conversation, doing workshops with them and being able to talk about the story behind the story,” she said. “I know from teaching [that] kids want to know the ‘why.’”
For Lesa Cline-Ransome, one of this year’s guest authors, the “why” behind her books is driven by curiosity, especially about lesser-known stories from Black history. “When I was a young girl, I used to love to read Little House on the Prairie,” Cline-Ransome shared during the festival’s panel discussion. “I always loved those stories, but I also wondered whether [there were] any Black pioneers. I never saw myself in Laura Ingalls Wilder, but I wanted to know more about the other people who may have been there. What were their stories like? So, that curiosity of trying to find out more, particularly about Black pioneers, led me to the story of One Big Open Sky, which is the story of an 11-year-old girl traveling with her family and nine other Black families, in an all-Black wagon company, and leaving Mississippi and going to Nebraska in 1879.”
Early in her career, her interest in writing about Black history met with resistance from some editors in the publishing industry, who gave excuses such as, “This person isn’t well known enough,” or “I’m not sure that’s the type of story we want to tell,” Cline-Ransome recalled. She also has found it difficult to access primary sources about her subjects, due to a lack of documentation and, in some cases, deliberate erasure from the historical record. Despite these challenges, she perseveres in this work, motivated by a strong belief in “the right to have our voices [heard] and our stories told.” “Just being so upset that people didn’t value our history made me continue writing stories from our history,” she said.
Such projects seem especially urgent in 2025, when funding cuts and rollbacks of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are impacting libraries and arts organizations across the United States. Burst Into Books currently doesn’t receive any federal funding, so it hasn’t been directly affected by funding cuts, but Gorham has observed colleagues in other states navigating these challenges.
“I think the biggest thing, for our families and people we work with, is just continually showing that our stories matter and using these [developments] as conversation points versus looking at it as an attack,” said Gorham. “This year’s theme for the festival is ‘Against All Odds,’ and we thought about that because it’s important for kids to understand the power of dreaming beyond what’s happening. In our course of history, there’s always going to be challenges and attacks, but knowing you have the ability to rise above those — I think that children and adults still need to believe that to be true.”
“I believe that this is when what we do is that much more important,” Gorham added. “I’m actually thinking about how we can be louder, because I think it matters for people to understand, just because there’s opposition doesn’t mean you’re silenced. This means you need to actually speak more.”
About the Author: Emily McClanathan is a freelance arts journalist and critic based in Chicago, primarily covering theater, books, and music. Her work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader, American Theatre, Playbill, INTO, and more.
About the Photographer: EdVetté Wilson Jones is a Chicago-born artist, photographer, poet, performer, and storyteller. During their childhood years living at the Cabrini Green housing projects, EdVetté was introduced to acting through the work of Chicago theater legends and veterans Jackie Taylor, actress and founder of Black Ensemble Theater, and the late Patrick Henry, founder of Free Street Theater. From there, EdVetté’s practice grew to include not only acting, but screenwriting, storytelling, poetry, journalism, fashion, and more. To learn more about their work, visit their website at edvette.com.
