Celebrate the finalists in the 2022 Poetry Contest with the Enoch Pratt Free Library and Little Patuxent Review! The three finalists, Maryland's Poet Laureate, and LPR’s head editor read. Caitlin Wilson, the winner of the 2022 Poetry Contest, is a Maryland poet. She holds an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her writing has appeared in ENTROPY, filling Station, Iron Horse Literary Review, McNeese Review, RHINO, Rogue Agent, and Wildness. She was a 2021 Sewanee Writer’s Conference...

Join us for a reading by Lori Jakiela, who won the 2021 Wicked Woman Poetry Prize for her manuscript, How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen?, and the contest judge, Nancy Naomi Carlson. Lori Jakiela is the author of the memoir Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe (2016), which received the 2016 Saroyan Prize from Stanford University. She is also the author of the memoirs Miss New York Has Everything, The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious, and Portrait of the Artist as a Bingo Worker, as...

Poets Sylvia Dianne “Ladi Di” Beverly, Patrick Washington, Diane Wilbon Parks, and Hiram Larew with Cliff Bernier on harmonica present and discuss poems, music, and artwork about America’s history of slavery. This powerful, all-too-timely 60-minute program reimagines the voices and legacy of those enslaved at the historic Woodlawn Plantation Estate in Fairfax, VA. Sylvia Dianne Beverly is an internationally acclaimed poet, presenting poetry in London, England, at the Lewisham Theatre. A...

Celebrate the finalists in the 2021 Poetry Contest with the Enoch Pratt Free Library and Little Patuxent Review! The three finalists, another contributor to the summer issue, and LPR’s head editor read. Steven Hollies, the winner of the 2021 Poetry Contest, is a Rockville native living mostly inside his head, a 2019 graduate of Howard Community College, and a drop-out from many other times and places. He enjoys playing volleyball, guitar, hooky, jokes, games, with words, around, along, it...

Leslie Gray Streeter is in conversation with Melanie Hood-Wilson about her book, Black Widow. Looking at widowhood through the prism of race, mixed marriage, and aging, Black Widow: A Sad-Funny Journey Through Grief for People Who Normally Avoid Books with Words Like "Journey" in the Title redefines the stages of grief, from coffin shopping to day-drinking, to being a grown-ass woman crying for your mommy, to breaking up and making up with God, to facing the fact that life goes on even after...

Presented in partnership with the Reginald F. Lewis Museum. Annette Gordon-Reed is in conversation with Lawrence Jackson about her new book, On Juneteenth. In ON JUNETEENTH, Gordon-Reed combines her own scholarship with a personal and intimate reflection of an overlooked holiday that has suddenly taken on new significance in a post-George Floyd world. As Gordon-Reed writes, “It is staggering that there is no date commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.” Yet, Texas—the last...

Join us for a virtual reading by Virginia Crawford, E. Doyle-Gillespie, Meg Eden, Brian Gilmore, Joseph Harrison, Christine Higgins, and Michael Salcman, seven local poets with recent books. Virginia Crawford, author of questions for water (Apprentice House Press, 2021), is a long-time teaching artist with the Maryland State Arts Council. She has co-edited two anthologies: Poetry Baltimore, poems about a city and Voices Fly, An Anthology of Exercises and Poems from the Maryland State Arts...

Alec MacGillis is in conversation with Jesse J. Holland about his new book, Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America . Alec MacGillis is a senior reporter at ProPublica. MacGillis previously reported for The New Republic, The Washington Post, and the Baltimore Sun. He won the 2016 Robin Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting, the 2017 Polk Award for National Reporting, and the 2017 Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic, New...

Presented in partnership with AARP Maryland. Justin Fenton is in conversation with Clarence Davis about his book, We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops, and Corruption. In this urgent book, award-winning investigative journalist Justin Fenton distills hundreds of interviews, thousands of court documents, and countless hours of video footage to present the definitive account of the entire scandal of the Gun Trace Task Force. The result is an astounding, riveting feat of reportage...

Audrey Clare Farley is in conversation with Carrie Callaghan about her work and her newest book, The Unfit Heiress. For readers of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and The Phantom of Fifth Avenue, The Unfit Heiress: The Tragic Life and Scandalous Sterilization of Ann Cooper Hewitt is a page-turning drama of fortunes, eugenics and women's reproductive rights framed by the sordid court battle between Ann Cooper Hewitt and her socialite mother. Audrey Clare Farley is a writer, book...

Presented in partnership with CityLit Project. Morgan Jerkins is in conversation with Teri Henderson about her work. In this talk, Jerkins discusses her literary journey, culminating in the release of her newest work, Caul Baby. Following the critical and popular success of her first two books of nonfiction, New York Times bestselling author Morgan Jerkins returns with her electrifying fiction debut, Caul Baby, a family saga filled with secrets, betrayal, intrigue, and magic. Desperate to...

Join us for readings and discussion inspired by the Washington Writers' Publishing House's new anthology, This Is What America Looks Like: Poetry and Fiction from DC, Maryland, and Virginia, 111 works by 100 writers. Editor Kathleen Wheaton describes this anthology as "a picture of our time, our shared losses, our shared life."The event features a panel of writers representing the anthology.Poet Sarah Browning’s books are Killing Summer and Whiskey in the Garden of Eden. She co-founded and...

Do spirits return, and can we communicate with the dead? Baltimore’s Spiritualists thought so, but magicians worked to disprove them. Learn about spirit mediums, the Ouija Board, and Baltimore’s group of amateur magicians, the Demons Club. Presented by Maryland Department librarian Julie Saylor. Q and A with Julie Saylor and Mike Rose. Mike Rose is a local magician, magic historian, and author of Maryland's Ambassador of Magic: Phil Thomas and the Yogi Magic Mart.

Poets Joseph Ross and Michael Torres read from and discuss their new books. Joseph Ross is the author of four books of poetry: Raising King (2020), Ache (2017), Gospel of Dust (2013), and Meeting Bone Man (2012). His poems appear in many places including The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, Poet Lore, Xavier Review, Southern Quarterly, and Drumvoices Revue. He has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations and won the 2012 Pratt Library / Little Patuxent Review Poetry Prize....

CityLit Project joins the Enoch Pratt Free Library in presenting the CityLit Festival - Reimagined: a virtual celebration of the literary arts In an exhilarating tale of colliding worlds, Emily St. John’s The Glass Hotel paints a breathtaking portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives. In Jenny Offill’s funny and urgent Weather, the foreboding sense of doom commands a family and presents a nation in crisis, and how we weather it....

Are you interested in getting your writing published? Do you want tips and tricks on how to become a published author of Africanfuturistic novels or short stories? Or learn how to self-publish in the genre? Then join us for a panel discussion and Q&A on how the genre reflects the societal and cultural struggles of African people and their descendants here and abroad. Come along on a journey to explore how to get this type of work published in a world where black and brown people are...

The event is also part of OSI-Baltimore’s Talking About Race Series. Lawrence T. Brown is in conversation about his book, The Black Butterfly: The Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America. Presented in partnership with AARP Maryland and OSI-Baltimore Fellows Advisory Board. The world gasped in April 2015 as Baltimore erupted and Black Lives Matter activists, incensed by Freddie Gray's brutal death in police custody, shut down highways and marched on city streets. In The Black...

On the anniversary of Lucille Clifton’s passing, join Enoch Pratt Free Library and the Clifton House in a celebration of her generous spirit and writing. Our esteemed featured speaker is Natasha Trethewey. Natasha Trethewey served two terms as the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States (2012-2014). She is the author of five collections of poetry, Monument (2018), which was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award; Thrall (2012); Native Guard (2006), for which she was awarded the Pulitzer...

Join us for a conversation about the life and legacy of Elijah Cummings between Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, book collaborator James Dale, and moderator Dr. Freeman Hrabowski. Presented in partnership with the Reginald F. Lewis Museum. Part memoir, part call to action, We’re Better Than This is the story of our modern-day democracy and the threats that we all must face together, as well as a retrospective on the life and career of one of our country’s most inspirational politicians. We’re...

Carl Phillips reads from his poetry and discusses it with Lia Purpura. Carl Phillips is the author of 15 books of poetry, most recently Pale Colors in a Tall Field (FSG, 2020). His other books include Wild Is the Wind (FSG, 2018), winner of a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, called it “haunting and contemplative as the torch song for which the collection is named.” His selected poems, Quiver of Arrows: Selected Poems 1986-2006, was published by FSG in...

Join us for the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Lecture featuring Eddie Glaude. Presented in partnership with the Reginald F. Lewis Museum and Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts. In the story of Baldwin’s crucible, Glaude suggests, we can find hope and guidance through our own after times, this Trumpian era of shattered promises and white retrenchment. Mixing biography–drawn partially from newly uncovered interviews–with history, memoir, and trenchant analysis of our...

Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections, will be in conversation with Laura van den Berg. Presented in partnership with CityLit Project. Danielle Evans is widely acclaimed for her blisteringly smart voice and x-ray insights into complex human relationships. With The Office of Historical Corrections, Evans zooms in on particular moments and relationships in her characters’ lives in a way that allows them to speak to larger issues of race, culture, and history. She...

This year's program features readings by Evie Shockley and Steven Leyva, and local Cave Canem fellows: Saida Agostini Abdul Ali Teri Cross-DavisHayes DavisRaina FieldsLinda Susan JacksonBettina JuddAlan KingKateema LeeHermine Pinson Hosted by Reginald Harris from Poets House, New York City. Presented in partnership with CityLit Project. Steven Leyva was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and raised in Houston, Texas. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in 2 Bridges Review,...

Join us for a conversation and short tour with C. Fraser Smith. C. Fraser Smith was a reporter for the Jersey Journal and the Providence Journal before his decades-long affiliation with the Baltimore Sun as a reporter and then Sunday op-ed columnist. In addition, while in Baltimore, he became a commentator for WYPR, the Baltimore affiliate of National Public Radio, as well as a weekly columnist for The Daily Record, a regional business newspaper based in Baltimore. The Daily Miracle, A...