"A Good Read Under the Big Top of a Fine Craftsman's Imagination"

We're back to setting the endorsements free.

You may know Baltimore renaissance man Rafael Alvarez as the author of Basilio Boullosa Stars in the Fountain of Highlandtown, as a storyteller for The Baltimore Sun, or as a writer and producer for the hit series The Wire. 

Here  is what the cartographer of Baltimore, Rafael Alvarez, had to say about Setting the Family Free:

“After nearly 150 years of “The Greatest Show on Earth,” Ringling Brothers locked up the lion and tiger and camel and kangaroo cages for good not too long ago. Where did the animals go? Here, in Eric D. Goodman's latest literary circus, a good read under the Big Top of a fine craftsman's imagination. Step right up.”

Rafael Alvarez, 
author of Basilio Boullosa Stars in the Fountain of Highlandtown 

Pre-order your copy of Setting the Family Free today at Amazon or directly from Apprentice House!

Join Rafael Alvarez and Friends at The Ivy’s Bird in Hand

The next “Readings with Ralphie” event takes place on Tuesday, March 6 at 7 p.m. at The Ivy Bookshop’s Bird in Hand location, 11 E 33RD Street in Baltimore. Rafael will be joined by Jeff Richards, Mike Sporge, and myself. I’ll be reading from Womb: a novel in utero.

The event is free and open to the public. Books, food, and light fare will be for sale.

Want to learn more? Here’s the official write-up from The Ivy Bookshop’s website:

Readings with Ralphie, hosted by Rafael Alvarez, is the first Tuesday of each month. A lifelong Baltimorean, Alvarez worked as a City Desk reporter for the Baltimore Sun for twenty years, specializing in the folklore of city neighborhoods. In 2001 he left to work as a laborer on cable ships and soon after began writing for HBO’s police drama, The Wire.

Rafael will be joined by Eric D. Goodman, Jeff Richards and Mike Sproge.

 Eric D. Goodman is the author of Womb: A Novel in Utero, Tracks: A Novel in Stories, which won the 2011 Gold Medal for Best Fiction in the Mid-Atlantic Region from the Independent Publishers Book Awards, and Flightless Goose. He regularly reads his fiction on Baltimore’s WYPR and at book festivals and literary events. He is co-founder and curator of Baltimore's longest-running literary reading series, the Lit and Art Reading Series. Eric lives in Baltimore with his wife and two children, where he writes about trains, wombs, and animals gone wild, among other things.

 Jeff Richards, author of Open Country: A Civil War Novel in Stories, has published his short stories, essays, and cowboy poetry in numerous publications including Prick of the Spindle, The Broadkill Review, Pinch, New South, Gargoyle, and Southern Humanities Review and in several anthologies. A graduate of the Hollins Writing Program, he was the fiction editor and a board member of the Washington Review and taught English literature and creative writing for many years at George Washington University. Richards has worked as a dishwasher, door-to-door salesmen, farm worker, wilderness counselor, newspaper carrier, radio reporter, a busboy; and he has hitchhiked across the country five times. He is a native of Washington, D.C. where he still lives with his family, a mile from a Civil War battlefield.

Learn more at http://www.theivybookshop.com/upcomingevent/4162