Tempestt Hazel is a curator, writer, and co-founder of Sixty Inches From Center, a publishing platform and archival project focused on the Midwest. She is a winner of a 2025 Rabkin Prize. You can read her full bio here. 

We invited Tempestt to have a conversation about her work. The interview is accompanied by a newly commissioned portrait of Tempestt in her Chicago living room, where she often writes, with her dog, Humphrey.

The interview has been gently edited for length and clarity. 

Mentioned in this episode:

• Sixty Inches From Center

• Margaret Burroughs 

• Noah Davis exhibit, Hammer Museum (2025)

• Midwest Arts Writers Convening

• Luz Magdaleno Flores

• Christina Nafziger

• Nadia John

• Chicago Reader

• Performance Response Journal

• Newcity

• Chicago Artist Writers

• AirGo Radio

• The Triibe

• South Side Weekly

• Contratiempo

• Lumpen Magazine

• Pigment International

• The Space in Which to Place Meexhibit by Jeffrey Gibson (2025), The Broad Museum

• “Thick: They say you are what you eat. Does how you eat what you eat matter too?” by Corey Smith, Rachel Lindsay (Sixty Inches from Center, May 2025)

• A.J. McClenon 

• David Hammons Concerto in Black and Blue exhibit at Hauser & Wirth, 2025 (and post-exhibit catalogue)

• “A New David Hammons Book Will Challenge You, Scold You, Flirt with You” by TK Smith (Art in America, May 2025)

• Hilton Als

• Chicago’s Critic Table

• Adrienne Brown

This episode of the Rabkin Interviews was produced by the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, an artist-endowed foundation based in Portland, Maine. The interview was conducted by Mary Louise Schumacher, a journalist and the executive director of the Rabkin Foundation. The portraits were made by artist-photographer Kevin J. Miyazaki. The production team for the Rabkin Interviews also includes Cindy Eggert Johnson, producer; Johnathon Olsen, editor; with research and copyediting by Katie Avila Loughmiller and Karen Samelson. Music is by Flint, HaHaHa, Ariel Shalom, and Just for Kicks. The Rabkin Prize is awarded through a nomination process, and an independent jury selects the winners.