Day: Saturday September 19th

  • THE KNOTTED PATH OF BECOMING: STORIES THAT TEST THE HUMAN SPIRIT

    Why do we avoid topics that could bring us closer together with a wider understanding? We sidestep the hard, uncomfortable issues out of politeness, awkwardness, or fear—but they’re the very subjects that build connections, heal deep wounds, and move the needle in important ways. We open this session with The Moth-like storytelling that includes author Phill Branch’s tale, the shame of failing at boyhood, and what it means “to feel ruined from the start.” Three storytellers will share testimonies of heartbreak, the courage in navigating difficult conversations, and the resilience of the human spirit.

    Branch knows well the power of humor in broaching heavy subjects. In praise of Branch’s book The Double Dutch Fuss, Roy Wood, Jr. (The Man of Many Fathers) notes: “When wielded responsibly, humor can heal and also educate. Phill exhibits this ability with great profundity as he shows us how fathers shape us even when they don’t know how to love us well.” Diana Veiga—whose one-woman show I’m Just Doing My Job premiered at the Capital Fringe Festival in 2022—reveals how working at the public library is already a tough job – now add a tougher customer, mix in a difficult conversation, and stir. Heather Moyer joins us representing Mortified, a multi-modal storytelling show produced by Alexandra Hewett, where brave adults share embarrassing things they created as kids (old diaries, letters, lyrics & more) in front of total strangers. Moyer is a communications professional and one of the founding members of the Baltimore Improv Group. Jess Solomon serves as moderator in conversation with Branch to discuss difficult conversations with equal parts insight, depth, and humor. She is a Baltimore-based organization development practitioner and comedian who spends her days in boardrooms and her nights on stage.

    https://www.themoth.org/stories/if-the-suit-fits

  • FUNNY LADIES OF COMEDY: STARS OF COMIC FICTION TALK SHOP

    Three acclaimed women authors talk about their latest books, the craft of humor, and the role of comic fiction in the current social and political landscape. What makes something funny? Why is humor important? How does absurdity function both as entertainment and as a form of commentary on serious matters? The books under discussion range widely in focus, from the world of literary event planning to the interior lives of the social media generation to the surreal landscape of the afterlife. This meeting of great comic minds promises to be inspiring, profound, and laugh-out-loud funny. Novelist Susan Coll, whose newly published novel, Word Salad, “is a moving, thoughtful exploration of the complicated nature of grief and the power that books have to help us find ourselves when we’re lost,” writes national bestseller Grant Grinder. Coll is the events advisor at Politics and Prose Bookstore. Amy Fusselman‘s latest book, Cloud Six, which Literary Hub named A Most Anticipated Book of the Year, is a comic novel about an unfortunate couple navigating the lowest tier of heaven. Baltimore’s Sydney Rende’s short story collection has been called “an invaluable tip-sheet to the way we live now, I Could Be Famous captures perfectly the hazards of young womanhood in a world where everyone is desperate to be looked at, but wary of being seen.” (Jonathan Dee, author of Pulitzer Prize Finalist The Privileges). Betsy Boyd, director of Creative Writing and Publishing Arts MFA program at the University of Baltimore, joins us as moderator. Her fiction has been published in Kenyon Review, American Short Fiction, Five Points, and StoryQuarterly.

  • Some of What You Seek May Be Found Here

    A full throated day of poetry & prose readings from minds on the go.

  • Poetry As a Tool For Conservation

    An ecolit and poety panel to inspire action.

    As climate change and capitalist extraction continue to reshape our landscapes, declining species and habitat stand as both warning and possibility. This discussion explores how ecopoetry and eco lit fiction and nonfiction can deepen our relationship with the natural world and inspire real-world conservation efforts.

  • Jenn M. Jackson Presents “the Narrative of Sojourner Truth” in conversation w/Alanah Nichole Davis

  • Ibram X. Kendi presents “Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age” in conversation w/D. Watkins

    The acclaimed author of How to Be an Antiracist and the National Book Award winner Stamped from the Beginning charts how “great replacement theory” has become a dominant political idea of our time and ushered in an antidemocratic age.

    Recall the words chanted in Charlottesville, Virginia: “You will not replace us!” Recall the string of mass shooters across the globe—in Oslo, Christchurch, Buffalo, El Paso, and Pittsburgh—who claimed their crimes were a defense against “White genocide.” Recall business and media figures cultivating anxiety and furor over demographic change. These incidents only scratch the surface: Popular and ruling politicians in every region of the world have expressed some version of great replacement theory, eroding democratic norms in the name of preventing demographic change.

    The term was coined in 2011 by a French novelist who argued that Black and Brown immigrants were “invading” Europe, brought by shadowy elites to “replace” the White population. From there, politicians and theorists in the United States and elsewhere repackaged it as a story of “globalists” welcoming “migrant criminals” and promoting diversity to take away the jobs, cultures, electoral power, and very lives of White people. Over time, great replacement theory has expanded those under threat to include citizens, men, Jews, Christians, heterosexuals, and ethnic majorities in countries as distinct as Russia, El Salvador, Brazil, Italy, and India, all targeted with the message that they are facing an existential attack that only a strongman can prevent.

    In Chain of Ideas, internationally bestselling author Ibram X. Kendi offers an unsettling but indispensable global history of how great replacement theory brought humanity into this authoritarian age—and how we can free ourselves from it.

  • Sheree Renee Thomas presents “Ring Shout on Saturn” & “The Tongue I Dream In” in conversation w/B. Sharise Moore & Lawrence Brown

    Ring Shout on Saturn: In Ring Shout on Saturn (Third Man Books | June), following last year’s Mojorhythm, Thomas delivers book two in her three book sequence of short stories,The Root and Sky Series. 

    Prepare to be transported on a cosmic journey where ancient African Diasporic wisdom meets expansive Afrofuturist visions. From a prophet building a starship from salvaged dreams on a Martian farm to children breaking generational curses through powerful moonsongs, these tales explore themes of transformation, survival, and the enduring quest for liberation. Alien sisters navigate human complexities and river spirits offer profound wisdom, all set to an ancient beat that transcends time and space. 

    Pulsing with Hoodoo, music, and myth, this collection resonates with the profound rhythms of existence, proving that true freedom knows no bounds—not even the cold void of space.

    The Tongue I Dream In: This book of poems, stories, and essays draws together examples illustrating a mind immersed in Black legends and white myths, and in the growing realization of our place in the world and time, and in irresistible pull of the future: starships, floods, dancers twinned by crystal-filled caverns, and iridescent crops of living retribution. In her interview, Thomas explores the intricate intersections of poetry and activism and underscores the way she inhabits them. Taste with this book’s tongue the salty sweetness of her world.

  • Kim Phillips-Fein presents “A COUNTRY OF LORDS” IN CONVERSATION W/LESTER SPENCE

    A Pulitzer-finalist historian charts a 250-year-old intellectual and political tradition—the conviction that all Americans are NOT created equal.

    The story of American history is often told as a hard-won march toward the promise of equality, derived from Thomas Jefferson’s famous proclamation that “all men are created equal.”

    But this inspiring story obscures a parallel tradition: an enduring and organized argument against equality itself. Again and again, influential Americans have asserted a fundamental inequality among human beings, arguing that the social, economic, and racial hierarchies in which some groups of people rule over others are not only natural but good.

    In Country of Lords acclaimed historian Kim Phillips-Fein traces this argument for inequality through six vivid archetypes. She discusses the natural aristocrats, such as John Adams, who feared the tumult of too much democracy; the social Darwinists, led by Yale professor William Graham Sumner, who blamed the poor for their own miseries; those who preached a gospel of production, including Henry Ford, who wanted an industrial hierarchy in which the “best” people ruled over compliant inferiors; utilitarian racists who advocated for eugenics and a racial hierarchy; meritocrats like Harvard psychologist Richard Hernstein who described an economic caste system based on “intelligence” in his co-authored book, The Bell Curve; and most recently, technocrats who seem to see themselves as superior because they are closest to the machines destined to outstrip and supplant fallible flesh-and-blood humanity.

    The anti-egalitarian lineage Phillips-Fein traces is both clear and deeply unsettling. It challenges readers to think about the fragility of the ideal of equality and to reckon with the disturbing arguments of those who have campaigned against it over the past two and a half centuries. Country of Lords is essential reading for anyone trying to make sense of the widening gap between the nation we claim to be and the nation we are becoming.

  • Drag Story Hour

  • Austin McCoy presents “Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age: The Music, Culture, and World De La Soul Made” in conversation w/Skiz Fernando

    For fans of Dilla Time and The Chronicles of DOOM, a culturally connected celebration of the groundbreaking hip-hop group De La Soul, and how they changed the look, sound, and feel of Black America.

    Music artists and trends come and go, but every once in a while, a moment arrives that genuinely changes everything. In 1988, De La Soul, three young men from Amityville, Long Island, did exactly that. Their always innovative work pulled inspiration from artists of the past and popularized cutting-edge music sampling techniques to blend jazz, R&B, and rap as they created a sound unlike any the world had heard before.

    But the De La Soul experience didn’t end there. These weren’t just musicians—they were game-changers in so many ways. From the way they dressed, to the words they spoke, to the day-glo colors of their breakout 3 Feet and Rising, De La Soul rejected convention, refused to be talked back into the box, and left the door open for everyone behind them.

    Now, in Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age, West Virginia University history professor Austin McCoy explores how De La Soul not only defined a new era of hip-hop, but also American and Black culture at the same time. Through his eyes, ears, and well-studied recall of ‘80s, ‘90s, and 2000s America, McCoy takes us on a journey through the world this innovative musical act made.

    One of the few hip-hop groups of their era to stay together long term, De La Soul lived astonishing highs and lows, from forming the Native Tongues collective to influential fights with their publishers to assert the artist’s right to control their creations. And after a lifetime left out of music’s digital revolution, in 2023 they finally hit streaming services just as it lost founding member David Jolicoeur too soon to see his work reach a brand-new generation of fans.

    Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age will connect with DLS fans, ‘80s babies, and students of the rap game alike, in a beautifully rendered and deeply researched tome that places this group atop the pedestal it deserves.