Literary Night 2020

On August 7, 2020 we had planned to host the 2nd annual Literary Night, a celebration of Baltimore area authors, writers, small presses, and literary organizations as part of the Highlandtown First Friday Art Walk in partnership with Highlandtown Main Street, Highlandtown Arts District, and Southeast CDC. Check out highlights from 2019 here and here and here.

This year, since we are unable to gather in person, we’ve opted to share information on each of the literary organizations and authors who had planned to join us below. Please take a moment to learn about the vibrant literary scene right here in Baltimore and support them by reading their publications or spreading the word about what they do.

We’ve also organized a virtual reading with a wonderful group of local writers, which you can watch here: A Celebration of Local Authors.

Thank you for supporting our mission and the voices all around Baltimore!

Literary Organizations

Zora’s Den

Zora's Den Writers' Group is a sisterhood of Black women writers. 

https://www.facebook.com/ZorasDen/?ref=page_internal

Roots & Raíces

Roots and Raíces is a platform for artists, musicians, and activists to highlight, support, and celebrate immigrants in Baltimore through the arts and civic engagement. We also curate a rotating selection of artwork from local artists on our website in our online market and at our bi-annual EL MERCADO in Baltimore, MD.

Attracting over 2,000 visitors in our events, Roots & Raíces is becoming a recognizable platform in Baltimore. Although our events are diverse in programming, at the core of our work we embed civic action opportunities for the community to support immigrant communities both in Baltimore and nationwide. In addition to our events, we also have worked on a regular basis with over 58 students from 5 different high schools in developing their skills in art, design, event production, and advocacy.

Through our media platforms we collectively have over 3,000 impressions with our posts, stories, and promotions on a weekly basis.The success of work is best seen and heard from our community members who participate and attend our events and programming. We have received an abundance of positive feedback from the community. This work would not be possible without the generous support of our past funders.

https://www.rootsraices.org/about-us/

Revolutionary Summer

A Revolutionary Summer is an intensive critical reading and writing program dedicated to shifting harmful narratives about Black women and girls through both the meaningful study and creation of art and the deliberate application of self-inquiry. We exist to keep Black girls whole, to balance the scales, to offer up a Nobel Laureate, radical painter, love song, and afro picked to perfection for every stupid, shallow representation of her. A Revolutionary Summer validates Black girl language and Black girl thought, Black girl hair and Black girl thighs. It traces, analyzes, justifies, and celebrates Black girl herstory. It contributes forcefully, unapologetically to a sound and solid Black girl future. 

https://www.arevolutionarysummer.com/home

Mason Jar Press

Mason Jar Press has been publishing handmade, limited-run chapbooks and full-length books since 2014. The Press is dedicated to finding new and exciting work by writers that push the bounds of literary norms. While the work Mason Jar seeks to publish is meant to challenge status quos, both literary and culturally, it must also have significant merit in both those realms.

masonjarpress.xyz

Lines + Stars

Lines + Stars is a Baltimore-based literary journal and small press. We publish seasonal online issues, annual poetry chapbooks, broadsides, and other projects.

www.linesandstars.com

Ligeia Magazine

Ligeia is a literary magazine based out of Baltimore. Ligeia publishes poetry, short fiction, nonfiction, artwork, and interviews in quarterly issues. We support and contribute to a global writing community—but we also plan to build a local network of lit lovers.

https://www.ligeiamagazine.com/

The Inner Loop

The Inner Loop is a literary reading series and network for writers in Washington, D.C. that aims to create a space for both emerging and established writers to connect with their community and to transform the written word into a shared experience through the act of reading aloud.

www.theinnerlooplit.org

Enoch Pratt

Public Library

prattlibrary.org

Dewmore Baltimore

Dew More seeks to foster civic engagement with historically marginalized peoples through innovative art-focused programming and community organizing via purposeful partnerships with community organizations, schools, and governmental agencies that foster empowerment, capacity for change, and community development.

Our Vision: Dew More aims to leave individuals and communities in a more actualized, engaged, and connected condition.

Dewmorebaltimore.org 

Baltimore Stories

Baltimore Stories is the creative collaboration of local literary and visual artists. Writer Kerry Graham will read vignettes about her experiences teaching high school English. Each short but impactful story is accompanied by either the artwork of painter Joann Dewwealth-O'Brien or photographer Rachel Shifreen. The visual art, inspired by the vignettes, reveals glimpses of each artist's individual impression of Baltimore. Follow them at: www.facebook.com/artistswithadayjob/

An Evening of

Vintage Smut

Baltimore's Randiest Reading Series

www.facebook.com/EveningofVintageSmut

Authors

Linda Gail Francis is a Baltimore-based poet who has always enjoyed words, whether they are flying through the air or sitting still on the page. Following earlier experiences as a waitress, teacher, and radio host, she has worked for many years as an editor. Her poems illuminate the startling richness to be found in ordinary experience and imagination. Linda is the author of the chapbook Coming Across: Poems and Lunch, available on Amazon.

Edward Swing is a writer of stories, software developer, avid gamer, and otaku. He has been a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, learned taekwondo, traveled both within the United States and internationally, and studied diverse topics including astronomy, mythology, and mathematics. He lives with his wife, three children, and several pampered cats.

wordsbyedward.com

Courtney LeBlanc is the author of Beautiful & Full of Monsters (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), chapbooks All in the Family (Bottlecap Press) and The Violence Within (Flutter Press). She has her MBA from University of Baltimore and her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. She loves nail polish, wine, and tattoos. Read her publications on her blog: www.wordperv.com. Follow her on twitter: @wordperv, and IG: @wordperv79. 

www.courtneyleblanc.com 

Cheryl Woodruff-Brooks, MBA/MA is an author who completed her first book, Chicken Bone Beach: A Pictorial History of Atlantic City’s Missouri Avenue Beach (Sunbury Press) in 2017, which was nominated for a 2017 Literary Award with the Schomburg Center in New York City, used in classrooms at Purdue University and referenced in The Oxford Handbook of American Folklore and Folklife Studies. Cheryl’s second book, Golden Beauty Boss is a biography about an African-American entrepreneur who became a self-made millionaire in the 1940s. 

cherylwb.com

Amanda McCormick is an experiential performer & writer whose work has appeared in a variety of forms & mediums over the past two decades. She is the founder of Ink Press Productions in Baltimore where she explores publishing as its own artistic medium and means to connect. She received her MFA from University of Baltimore where she now teaches. Amanda is the author of several books including & THE GREEN, a feminist retelling of growth and loss, taken from the source text Sir Gawain & the Green Knight, and AMANDA, a project of poetry that deals with the physical, experienced, and internalized selfhood of the artist-human who navigates society and the natural world in a slant framework of love and existence.

inkpressproductions.com