“Speak the unhearable, and show the invisible.”
—Martin Wong

Responding to the work of Martin Wong, “Speak the Unhearable” is a queer-crip performance ritual by the echo-deviant poet Noa Micaela Fields and alphabet artist Nat Pyper engaging the limits of language at the edge of hearing.

From intentionally misspelled and distorted calligraphy-inspired texts to the American Sign Language fingerspelling scripts he painted above graffiti-covered buildings, Wong treated language as a mutable material across his varied practice—a trickster toeing the line between what is meant and what is understood. Taking these investigations as a point of departure, this performance gossips with ghosts and cruises language’s shifting embodiments. Like an ethereal game of telephone, Fields’s poems embrace the glitch of mishearing as a portal for transformation, remixing the mouthfeel of found language into her own captionless life. Access mischief ensues when Pyper selectively captions her poetry in the Martin Wong font from their archival typography project A Queer Year of Love Letters: Alphabets Against Erasure.

Meet us in the erogenous zone of the ears for an ill-advised séance of dead letters thrashing in crisscrossed miscommunication, replete with campy wearables, 8-ball fortune-telling, deaf clubbing, and other poetic misadventures.

In collaboration with the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, a reading featuring Chicago disabled writers Tsehaye Geralyn Hébert, Noa Micaela Fields, and Riva Lehrer.

What is the event of Literature? From poetry readings to roundtables, book launches to broadsides, the literary arts have always been invested in bringing the page to the public. However, as much as literature itself has been, and continues to be, a site of experimentation and transformation, the structures of the events that are designed to hold them have remained remarkably unchanged. How do we bring community interests and response back into the centerfold of the literary arts? Featuring Joss Barton, Noa Micaela Fields, Kay Gabriel, Daniel Borzutzky, Kai Ihns, Brett Swenson, Alyssa Moore, J. Kent, Timothy Ashley Leo, Jan Brugger, Stefania Gomez, Ali gali, Phoebe Pan, ANnie Howard, River Ngu, and James Garwood-Cole. Organized by Smith Yarberry.

Join us for a reading celebrating new book releases by Poetry Foundation staff and friends, including Caroline Cabrera, Rob Macaisa Colgate, Aaron Fagan, Noa Micaela Fields in collaboration with Jared Brown, I.S. Jones, and Adrian Matejka.

Get to know some of the people behind the Poetry Foundation’s programs, including Poetry magazine! This event is part of the Poetry Foundation’s spring 2026 season, No One Can Afford To Lose Love.

The Guild Complex’s 35 Writers to Watch list celebrates the Guild’s 35+ years of innovative programming by featuring local writers whose careers represent the future of the literary arts in Chicago, and whose work reflects the spirit and values of the Guild Complex today.

Join us in the Catacombs at Epiphany Center for the Arts for an exciting party and social to celebrate these authors, enjoy music, refreshments, fellowship, and the opportunity to rub elbows with emerging literary icons you’ll be proud to say you knew when.

Please join the English department & the Poetry & Poetics cluster, as part of the UNSETTLING SOUND event series, for a Performance-In-Conversation with the poet Noa Fields and the poet and performer JJJJJerome Ellis.

This year, our event series is "Unsettling Sound." Unsettling Sound foregrounds the entanglement between poetics and sound to explore the integral, esoteric, and, occasionally, uncomfortable manner in which sound contributes to and develops expressive meaning. Defining sound as vibrational and only sometimes including audio, we track the vibrations and resonances between text-based and non-text-based arts. Unsettling Sound asks: What is the sound of poetry? What makes poetry sound? What are the new and vanguard interventions in the dark matter between language and sonority? Shepherding together inquiries into text, music, translation, embodiment, performance, and materialities, Unsettling Sound stewards the development of poetic practices in sounding and listening, critically and creatively, in both orthodox and unorthodox ways.

Celebrate a next generation of writers with us who’ve recently come out with new books. This showcase aims to highlight local writers and their new/upcoming work. Join us for a community reading featuring local Chicago writers: Meredith Nnoka, Noa Micaela Fields, Meghan Malachi, Lisa Low, Noel Quiñones, Kameryn Carter, and Natasha Mijares.

Zurdo..! is Nat Pyper's new science fiction fantasy about a loser looking for a lost Vaginal Davis film in a post-literate world, published by specific.place, 2026. Book launch with readings by Silas Chen, Noa Micaela Fields, and Nat Pyper.

Noa Micaela Fields reads with press-mates at Nightboat Books's off-site AWP event. Other readers include: Aditi Machado, Antonio Ochoa, Aurora Mattia, Azad Sharma, Brian Teare, Chia-Lun Chang, Cyree Jarelle Johnson, Dior J. Stephens, Emily Lee Luan, imogen smith, Kimberly Alidio, Mónica de la Torre, Miranda Mellis, Soham Patel, Tisa Bryant, Valerie Hsiung, Wo Chan, and Yongyu Chen.

In Noa Micaela Fields’s and mace dent johnson’s poetry, sound is primal; it takes precedence over meaning, choreographing our thought patterns, sometimes in stark divergence from logic and reason. Both poets foreground the iterative, transformative force of words as they bleed into one another. Meaning is reconfigured across syntactically devious arrangements. We find ourselves dancing, listening, learning language anew through its sonic radiance. This event will also be livestreamed for free on The Poetry Project's YouTube channel.

Nomi's performance for the Monday Night Series at Poetry Project will feature an access projection collaboration by alphabet artist Nat Pyper.

"Meet Me There" is a monthly intergenerational poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction experience curated by trans/genderqueer poet and sound artist Samuel Ace. Writers exploring genre and gender boundaries will be a special focus of this series. February's featured poets are Rickey Laurentiis and Noa Micaela Fields in celebration of their collections, Death of the First Idea and E.

Echodeviant poet Noa Micaela Fields reads with TC Tolbert, Farid Matuk, and Ryan Greene in Tucson. Masks required.

Bring a poem to share! Noa Micaela Fields is the featured reader at this intimate DIY house reading.

The Marathon will unfold over the course of two days and 24 hours, and will feature not only hundreds of poets from our city, region, and beyond, but also live musical performances, screenings of moving-image works, and various surprises. Performances will take place before a live audience, and will also be livestreamed via Crowdcast. Noa Micaela Fields is performing alongside Rosemary Wexler and Stevie Cisneros Hanley around 4pm on Sunday, January 25.

Join us for a book signing and poetry reading at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center celebrating E, the debut collection by Noa Micaela Fields. The evening will feature readings by Fields and special guests, including, féi iká shumarí, imogen smith, and Raquel Gutiérrez.

Join us for the book launch ritual of "enjambment as embodiment as escape art": an evening of ethereal remixes, multimedia performances by collaborators, and euphoric dancing in the "naughty clairvoyant loading zone".

Regina Martinez sets the tone during a selective listening hour, followed by live performances by Maya Nguyen, Ruby Que, Noa Micaela Fields, and Barbiefoot. Stick around for a dance party with DJs girly*** and relaxxX.

7PM Doors + Selective Listening / 8PM Performances / 10PM DANCE PARTY

Join us again at Podlasie Club for our recurring open mic/performance series, TRANSVENGENCE VOL. 10! Our regular show this month brings a special holiday twist with guest performances by Celeste, Noa Micaela Fields (Nomi), and your hostess, Joss Barton.

Fall 2025 reading series at Segue Foundation curated by Nightboat Books, featuring Noa Micaela Fields and Rosamond S. King.

A reading with Noa Micaela Fields in conversation with Roque Raquel Salas Rivera in celebration of the book launch for Algarabía, a Puerto Rican trans epic that blends poetic play and speculative fiction.

A launch reading for Temperance Aghamohammadi's Battalion Shaped Girl, also featuring Noa Micaela, Katana Smith, C Russell Price, and Lemmy Ya'akova.