National Book Award Winner Headlines 11th Annual CityLit Festival

This Saturday, April 12, get ready to celebrate the Baltimore literary arts in a big way! The 11th annual CityLit Festival takes place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Enoch Pratt Free Library Central Library, 400 Cathedral Street in downtown Baltimore.

This year, the headliner is the 2013 National Book Award winner James McBride. Past participant in the festival have been Edward P. Jones, Junot Diaz, Stanley Plumly, and George Saunders.

The event will include a multitude of programs from readings to lectures, and the literary market place will be in the main hall all day.

I’ll be there with copies of Tracks: A Novel in stories, Flightless Goose, and information about the next Lit & Art at the Watermark.

Learn more at the CityLit Festival Facebook Page!
www.facebook.com/pages/CityLit-Project/216742435019875

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