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J.W. Basilo is a guy who never learned how to shut up. As a writer, performer, and musician, his work lives at the intersection of the poignant and perverse, the hilarious and heartbreaking. Basilo hosts and curates the weekly Busted Mouth Radio Hour, a live radio show and accompanying podcast. His stage act, a mash-up of music, poetry, comedy and storytelling, has earned him as a sought-after performing artist working in Chicago, where is he is a regular contributor to shows like Paper Machete, The Blackout Diaries, Fruit Salad, This Much is True, and Write Club. Basilo is a National and Individual World Poetry Slam finalist, Pushcart Prize nominee, and former Artistic Director and founder of Chicago Slam Works Ensemble Theatre. His work has appeared in local and national TV and radio, in numerous literary journals, and in hundreds of theaters, dive bars, prisons, and comedy clubs across the world. In 2015 Basilo was named to Newcity’s LIT 50, a yearly list of Chicago’s most notable literary figures. All things considered, he’s doing pretty well for a guy who failed Creative Writing in high school.