Join us for Lit and Art This Sunday

Is all of this snow getting you a little stir-crazy? Break your cabin fever and join us for a refreshing afternoon of lit, art, music, wine, and great conversation with some of the most creative people in the region.

Featured readers for this Sunday’s Lit and Art at the Watermark event include Lauren Beth Eisenberg Davis, Sid Gold, Dave Housley, Bill Hughes, Jen Michalski, and Richard Peabody. Live music by singer-songwriter Goodloe Byron. Original art by Manzar. Nitin Jagdish and I will be your hosts for the afternoon.

Readings, live music, original art, open mic, free refreshments — the best excuse to get lit on a Sunday afternoon in Baltimore! Join us for the next event on Sunday, January 31, 2-5 p.m. at The Watermark Gallery, 100 South Charles Street, in the Bank of America building across from Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

Learn more at www.facebook.com/groups/LitAndArt

Words and Wine Benefit Catonsville Library

Don’t miss the next annual Words and Wine Benefit at the Catonsville Library this Friday, October 11 at 7 p.m. at the Catonsville Library. Tickets are $25 and include not only the opportunity to mingle and chat with some of your favorite local authors as you listen to jazz guitar, but also all the wine you can drink and cheese you can eat. (And you can certainly get your money’s worth out of the wine and cheese—and help the library at the same time!)

This year’s authors include Jen Michalski, Rafael Alvarez, Rob Kasper, Dan Toomy, and a host of others. My wife and I will be there with copies of Tracks and Flightless Goose.

Learn more at www.catonsvillelibraryfriends.org

And don’t forget … The next Lit and Art takes place this Sunday, October 13 from 2 to 5 p.m. at Watermark Gallery, 100 S. Charles St., across from Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. See the previous post for more details.

George Saunders Celebrates 10 years of CityLit Fest

The annual CityLit Festival, a favorite spring event in Baltimore, is celebrating 10 years this Saturday. From its very inception, ringmaster Gregg Wilhelm has brought in top names to headline the festival: the likes of Edward P. Jones and Junot Diaz.

This year, the fiction headliner is George Saunders, author the bestselling Pastoralia, set against a warped, hilarious, and terrifyingly recognizable American landscape; CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award; and In Persuasion Nation, one of three finalists for the 2006 STORY Prize for best short story collection of the year. The New York Times Magazine called Saunders's latest collection, Tenth of December, "the best book you'll read this year."

Headlining poets are poets laureate Stanley Plumly of Maryland and Dick Allen of Connecticut read their latest work. Plumly is the author of Orphan Hours and is recipient of the 2010 John William Corrington Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature). Allen is the author of Present Vanishing and recipient of the 2013 New Criterion Poetry Prize, one of the country's most prominent prizes for a book-length collection of poems that pays close attention to form.

Other featured authors include Jen Michalski, Elisabeth Dahl, Nathan Leslie, Tim Wendle, Nik Korpon, and CL Bledsoe. I’ll be on hand as well in the Literary Marketplace.

Join us on April 13, 2013, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in downtown Baltimore, and discover (again) why Baltimore magazine called CityLit Festival "a can't miss event on the city's social scene."

www.citylitproject.org/index.cfm?page=news&newsid=130

Jen Michalski--Alternating Harsh and Tender Stories

This weekend, Baltimore is ripe with festivities. There’s the St. Anthony’s Italian Festival in Little Italy, and HonFest in Hampden. So it seems fitting to have the blub off the day come from a real Baltimore Hon.

Jen Michalski is editor of one of Baltimore’s most popular literary journals, JMWW. She’s also a widely published author in her own write, with two books and hundreds of stories published. Here’s what Jen had to say about Tracks.

“In an age of twitter, microfiction, and small attention spans, the stories in Eric D. Goodman's Tracks are built on narrative fiction and the U.S. rail system, both of which are seemingly pronounced dead every new decade. But like a good meal, these stories of strangers on a train marinate and simmer, creating a flavor that is richer than their parts. Goodman's alternating harsh and tender stories travel the spectrum of human emotion, and his care for his characters is evident from the first page to the last. By the end, we have not only lived through every character, but we are every character.”

Jen Michalski,
author of Close Encounters
and May-September

On your way back from the festivals, check out the latest issue of JMWW, Hon!

http://jmww.150m.com/

Saturday Night Reader

Its Episode Two of Season Four: of the 510 Reading Series — the event that takes place at 5 p.m. on the third Saturday of every month — for the rest of your life.

This weekend’s headliners include Jessica Anya Blau (The Summer of Naked Swim Parties and Drinking Closer to Home), Nik Korpon (Stay God), Pat King (Exit Nothing), and Tara Laskowski (2009 Kathy Fish Fellow and writer-in-residence at SmokeLong Quarterly).

So much good writing (and reading) happening all in one place at one time, Saturday, February 19th, at 5pm, at Minas (815 W. 36th Street, Hampden).

http://510readings.blogspot.com/