Ivy Bookshop

Bruce Snider: Book Launch for BLOOD HARMONY (with James Arthur)
2025-11-15 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Bird in Hand invites you to the book launch for Bruce Snider and his newest collection, Blood Harmony!
Snider is an accomplished author of 4 poetry collections and a faculty member in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. He’s known for his originality, his musicality, his thoughtful, nuanced depictions of family relationships– and more generally his writing and teaching that helps students of all kinds connect deeply with poetry. This latest collection tells the story of two brothers torn apart by opioid addiction in a timely, and also highly specific, tale of selfishness and sacrifice, guilt and resentment, hope and despair.
We hope you’ll join us to hear more from the collection as Bruce Snider and fellow Baltimore-based poet James Arthur read alongside one another.
RSVP here
Order BLOOD HARMONY here
Bruce Snider is the author of four poetry collections, Blood Harmony (University of Wisconsin Press, Fall 2025), Fruit, (University of Wisconsin Press, Spring 2020); Paradise, Indiana (Pleiades Press, 2013); and The Year We Studied Women (University of Wisconsin Press, 2003). He is co-editor of The Poem’s Country: Place & Poetic Practice (Pleiades Press, 2018). His poems and essays have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, Harvard Review, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Poetry, Threepenny Review, UTNE, and ZYZZYVA, among others. His awards include a 2023 NEA fellowship, a James A. Michener Fellowship, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, the Jenny McKean Writer-in-Washington award, the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Prize, the Felix Pollack Prize in Poetry, the Four Lakes Prize in Poetry, as well residencies from Yaddo, the Millay Colony, the Amy Clampitt House, the James Merrill House, VCCA, and the Bogliasco Foundation. He lives in Baltimore and teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.
Canadian-American poet James Arthur is the author of The Suicide’s Son (Véhicule Press 2019) and Charms Against Lightning (Copper Canyon Press, 2012.) His poems have also appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The New York Review of Books, The American Poetry Review, The New Republic, and The London Review of Books. He has received the Amy Lowell Travelling Poetry Scholarship, a Hodder Fellowship, a Stegner Fellowship, a Discovery/The Nation Prize, a Fulbright Scholarship to Northern Ireland, and a Visiting Fellowship at Exeter College, Oxford. Arthur lives in Baltimore, where he teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.

Holiday Kickoff Children's Book Signing with Ellen Oh, Dan Santat, and Laurel Snyder
2025-11-15 11:00 - 13:00 | The Ivy Bookshop, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209, United States
3 of our favorite children’s authors will be signing books at The Ivy on November 15th from 11-1, and you’re invited! Come find a copy of your favorite book by Dan Santat, Laurel Snyder, or Ellen Oh and have it signed as a holiday present. Or discover something new to love. We’ll be ready with the gift wrapping.
Books will be available for purchase at the event.
RSVP here!
Ellen Oh is the award-winning author of the middle grade and young adult novels The House Next Door, The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee, Haru, Zombie Dog Hero, Finding Junie Kim, and the Spirit Hunters trilogy. She is also the editor of the anthologies You Are Here, On the Block, and Flying Lessons & Other Stories. Ellen is also a founding member of We Need Diverse Books, the groundbreaking, grassroots non-profit organization.
Dan Santat is the National Book Award-winning author of A First Time for Everything, the Caldecott Medal-winning creator of The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend, and the New York Times–bestselling book After the Fall (How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again). Dan is the author and illustrator of over a hundred books for young people. His latest works include The Misfits middle grade series (written by Lisa Yee), Don’t Trust Fish (by Neil Sharpson), and The Day the Books Disappeared (by Joanna Ho and Caroline Kusin Pritchard).
Laurel Snyder is the author of numerous critically acclaimed novels for children including The Witch of Woodland, Orphan Island, and My Jasper June. Laurel is also the author of the Charlie & Mouse series for early readers, as well as numerous picture books including Endlessly Ever After, Hungry Jim, and Swan, The Life and Dance of Anna Pavlova. Her books have won the Theodore Seuss Geisel Medal, the Sydney Taylor Medal, the Orbis Pictus Honor, the E.B White Readaloud Honor, the Golden Kite Honor, and have been long-listed for the National Book Award.

Jane Leavy with Kevin Brown: MAKE ME COMMISSIONER
2025-11-14 18:00 - 19:30 | The Ivy Bookshop, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209, United States
Come on out to the Ivy Bookshop for an evening with New York Times bestselling biographer and lifelong baseball devotee Jane Leavy, and Orioles broadcaster Kevin Brown! You’ll have the chance to hear from both speakers about Leavy’s new book Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong with Baseball and How to Fix It, have your book signed, and enjoy some refreshments.
Make Me Commissioner takes readers on an epic journey through the game that baseball has become– a heartfelt manifesto that’s perfect for lovers of the sport.
This event is presented in partnership with the Baltimore Babe Ruth Chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research.
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Click here to order a copy of the book! If you’re not able to attend the event but would like your book signed for pickup or shipping after the event, please make a note of this in the order comments.
Jane Leavy is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created,The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy, and the comic novel Squeeze Play, which Entertainment Weekly called“the best novel ever written about baseball.” She was a staff writer at The Washington Post from 1979 to 1988, first in the Sports section, then writing for the Style section. She covered baseball, tennis, and the Olympics. She has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, and is anthologized in The Great American Sports Page: A Century of Classic Columns and Driven to Write.
Kevin Noble Brown is an American journalist and broadcaster for the Baltimore Orioles. He is also a play-by-play commentator for several college sports with ESPN.

The Banner Book Club November Meeting: Featuring Martha S. Jones, THE TROUBLE OF COLOR
2025-11-12 18:00 - 19:00 | Spark Public Space, The Power Plant, 4th Floor, 621 E. Pratt St., Baltimore, Maryland, 21202
The November gathering of the Banner Book Club will feature a special in-person visit from historian Martha S. Jones, to discuss her recent memoir The Trouble of Color.

The Banner Book Club features a gathering at The Banner offices with a journalist where you can share in the thoughtful conversation and questions on your favorite books.
The Banner Book Club is your chance to connect with fellow readers, explore Baltimore’s literary heritage, and engage with the trusted journalism that drives positive change in Maryland.
The Trouble of Color is “A lyrical, deeply felt meditation on the most fundamental matters of identity, belonging, and family.”
Martha S. Jones is the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University.
Register here to be a part of the Banner Book Club!
Click here to order The Trouble of Color!

AGHI in Translation, featuring Max Lawton with Will Evans and Jeanne-Marie Jackson: SCHATTENFROH
2025-11-12 17:00 - 19:00 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
The Alexander Grass Humanities Institute at Johns Hopkins and Deep Vellum have recently launched an exciting new partnership focused on bringing the world’s greatest writers into dialogue across academic and public spheres.
Beginning in 2025, the AGHI will support the production, publication, and promotion of one work of literary translation annually with a sustaining grant, a translator residency, and public events on the Johns Hopkins campus. By producing and promoting major works of literary translation, the AGHI and Deep Vellum aim to deepen literary engagement in the city of Baltimore, across the nation, and throughout the world.
The first book to be supported by this partnership is the hotly anticipated Schattenfroh by Michael Lentz, translated from the German by Max Lawton. Heralded as “a literary landmark” and “a novel of titanic ambition” in a starred review from Foreword Reviews, Schattenfroh is an intricate, metaphysical, ambitious “psychogeography of the self” that both disrupts and elevates the 21st century vision of the novel.
Translator Max Lawton will be in residence at Johns Hopkins University this November, and we are delighted to invite you to this kickoff event where he will speak in conversation with Will Evans, the founder and publisher of Deep Vellum. Dr. Jeanne-Marie Jackson will moderate the conversation.
Order SCHATTENFROH here!
RSVP here!
Max Lawton is a writer, musician, and translator. He is currently working in close collaboration with Vladimir Sorokin to publish all of his untranslated works in English. Apart from what has already been published, three more books are forthcoming from NYRB Classics and four more are forthcoming from Dalkey Archive. Max is also currently working on translations of works by Michael Lentz, Antonio Moresco, Stefano D’Arrigo, Alberto Laiseca, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Eduard Limonov, and Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Max is the author of two novels, The Abode and Progress, as well as a collection of short stories, The World. His translations have appeared in The New Yorker, n+1, Harper’s, The Baffler, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Joyland. He lives in Los Angeles, where, when he isn’t writing, he plays heavy metal and noise music.
Will Evans is Deep Vellum’s founder and publisher.
Jeanne-Marie Jackson received her PhD in Comparative Literature from Yale University in 2012, and joined the Johns Hopkins faculty in 2014. Her work attends to questions of comparative method, literature and philosophy, and interpretive scale, mainly but not only in the framework of African literature and intellectual history. In 2021, she was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow.
Jackson’s most recent book is The African Novel of Ideas: Philosophy and Individualism in the Age of Global Writing (Princeton 2021), which reads African fiction in tandem with African philosophy to craft a story of how the novel form has negotiated between liberal selfhood and liberal critique.

Hot L Poets Series, ft. Rick Hilles & Samyak Shertok
2025-11-09 16:00 - 17:30 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Sunday November 9, 2025 at 4pm, The HOT L Poets Series continues with poets Rick Hilles & Samyak Shertok! We’re moving to Bird in Hand Coffee & Books at 11 E. 33rd St. to be indoors for the cooler season.
The reading includes an open mic so bring a poem (1 poem, 3 min. or less).
Now in our 7th year, the reading series is sponsored by Smartish Pace and Baltimore Poets Theatre. Hosts: Clare Banks, David Yezzi, Stephen Reichert, and Dan Todd.

RSVP here!

Rick Hilles, a recipient of the Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Scholarship, a Fulbright, and a Whiting Writers Award, is the author of several poetry collections, most recently My Roberto Clemente (C&R Press). His poems, translations, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Harper’s, Kenyon Review, Literary Imagination, Michigan Quarterly Review, Narrative, Poetry, Salmagundi, Smartish Pace, and Southern Review, among many other places. He teaches in the MFA Program at Vanderbilt University.
Samyak Shertok’s debut collection, No Rhododendron (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025), was selected by Kimiko Hahn for the 2024 AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. His poems appear in The Cincinnati Review, Gettysburg Review, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, POETRY, Shenandoah, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. A finalist for the National Poetry Series, the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, and the Jake Adam York Prize, he has been awarded the Robert and Adele Schiff Award for Poetry, the Gulf Coast Prize in Poetry, and the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize. Originally from Nepal, he is an assistant professor at Mississippi State University. For more, please visit samyakshertok.com.

Emmeline Clein with Dr. Angela Guarda: DEAD WEIGHT
2025-11-07 18:00 - 19:30 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Bird in Hand hosts a conversation between Emmeline Clein, author of the “fiercely compassionate” book on the dark underbelly of Western beauty standards, Dead Weight, and psychiatrist Dr. Angela Guarda.
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Click here to order the book!
Dead Weight draws on a kaleidoscopic array of sources–from cult classic films like Jennifer’s Body to the aughts-era Tumblrverse, the writing of Simone Weil, Chris Kraus, and Anne Boyer to the medieval canon of anorexic saints–and calls for a feminism that doesn’t compel women to shrink their bodies to increase their value, urging radical acceptance of all our appetites instead: for food, connection, and love.
It’s a book that is boldly interdisciplinary, and we’re excited that this conversation will reflect that spirit, bringing together an established medical professional in the field with the author herself. We look forward to seeing you there.
EMMELINE CLEIN is the author of Dead Weight: Essays on Hunger and Harm (Knopf, 2024) and Toxic (Choo Press, 2022). Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, The Yale Review, The Nation, and The Washington Post, among other outlets. She received her MFA from Columbia University’s School of the Arts; she lives in New York.
DR. ANGELA GUARDA is the Stephen and Jean Robinson Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Director of the Eating Disorders Program at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She attended Johns Hopkins undergraduate, obtained her medical degree from the University of Maryland and completed residency in Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins. Her clinical research interests include weight restoration and behavioral treatment for anorexia nervosa as well as ethical issues in the treatment of severe and chronic anorexia. Her translational research has focused on the pathophysiology of eating disorders including predisposing, precipitating and sustaining factors. Dr Guarda has been named annually in Castle Connolly’s “America’s Top Doctors” for eating disorders since 2009 and has been interviewed by NPR, New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal on topics related to eating disorders.

Vital Perspectives on Healthcare and Science, featuring Meagan Allen with Lawrence Principe: The Sciences of Roger Bacon’s Opus Maius
2025-11-06 18:00 - 20:00 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
The Vital Perspectives on Healthcare and Science series engages with some of the most pressing public health issues of our time, in a regular public forum catalyzed by a book.
For the November event, we are delighted to welcome Dr. Meagan S. Allen to share her new book The Sciences of Roger Bacon’s Opus Maius, which offers insight into Bacon’s understanding of the role of science in society and the study and practice of science in the later Middle Ages. Written at the request of Pope Clement IV (d. 1268), the Opus maius contains English Franciscan and polymath Roger Bacon’s plans for educational and ecclesiastical reform through the study of arts and sciences, which Bacon saw as having been neglected in the curricula of the major European universities. In writing the Opus maius, Bacon wanted to demonstrate that not only were the sciences a solid foundation for learning theology, but they could also improve society and help mankind attain salvation.
Dr. Lawrence M. Principe will join Dr. Allen in conversation. This event is open to the public, and we encourage you to come even if it’s your first time joining for this event series!
Books will be available for purchase at the event.
RSVP here!
Meagan S. Allen is a historian of science, specializing in the medical alchemy of the later Middle Ages. Her research interests lie at the intersection of alchemy, pharmacology, and theology, especially in the writings of the thirteenth-century polymath Roger Bacon. She is the author of Roger Bacon and the Incorruptible Human: Alchemy, Pharmacology, and the Desire to Prolong Life (2023), which examines Bacon’s desire to use alchemy to create a medicine that would extend human life by centuries. Allen is currently Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of the History of Science and Technology at Johns Hopkins University, USA.
Dr. Lawrence M. Principe is Drew Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University. Professor Principe earned a B.S. in Chemistry and a B.A. in Liberal Studies from the University of Delaware. He also holds two doctorates: a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Indiana University, Bloomington, and a Ph.D. in the History of Science from Johns Hopkins University. In 1999, the Carnegie Foundation chose Professor Principe as the Maryland Professor of the Year, and in 1998 he received the Templeton Foundation’s award for courses dealing with science and religion. Johns Hopkins has repeatedly recognized Professor Principe’s teaching achievements. He has won its Distinguished Faculty Award, the Excellence in Teaching Award, and the George Owen Teaching Award. In 2004, Professor Principe was awarded the first Francis Bacon Prize by the California Institute of Technology, awarded to an outstanding scholar whose work has had substantial impact on the history of science, the history of technology, or historically-engaged philosophy of science. Professor Principe has published numerous papers and is the author or coauthor of three books, including The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle and His Alchemical Quest.

Anthony Thomas Lombardi with Edgar Kunz: murmurations
2025-11-05 18:00 - 20:00 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Imagine Amy Winehouse never died but instead got sober. You’ve entered the world of Anthony Thomas Lombardi’s poetry collection murmurations. This remarkable book navigates the fractured intersections between addiction and grief, class and community, where the lyrical lives in the blasphemous and our invocations summon ghosts instead of saints.
Join us for a reading with Anthony Thomas Lombardi and Edgar Kunz in celebration of a beautiful collection that resists loneliness.
Books will be available for purchase at the event.
RSVP here!
ANTHONY THOMAS LOMBARDI is the author of murmurations (YesYes Books, 2025), a Poetry Project 2021–2022 Emerge-Surface-Be Fellow, and a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, among other accolades. He is the founder and director of Word is Bond, a community-centered benefit reading series partnered with Brooklyn Poets that raises funds for transnational relief efforts and mutual aid organizations; has taught or continues to teach with Borough of Manhattan Community College, Paris College of Art, Brooklyn Poets, Florida State University, Polyphony Lit’s apprenticeship programming, and community programming throughout New York City; and currently serves as a poetry editor for Sundog Lit. His work has appeared in Best New Poets, Guernica, Black Warrior Review, Nashville Review, Narrative Magazine, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn with his cat, Dilla.
EDGAR KUNZ is the author of two books: Fixer (Ecco, 2023), a New York Times Editors’ Choice Book, and Tap Out (Ecco, 2019). He has been a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, and a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Recent poems appear in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, American Poetry Review, and Poetry. He lives in Baltimore where he teaches at Goucher College and in the Newport MFA.

Michael Loughran with Jeannie Vanasco: WINDOWER
2025-11-04 18:00 - 20:00 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
The best memoirs are not just an account of a single life, but a guide to how to live. Michael Loughran gives us this gift in Windower, a memoir of grief, an account of the years before and after losing his wife to suicide, a document of love’s impossible forms. It’s a vital book about being human amid loss, about how to go on in this devastating and beautiful world.
Memoirist Jeannie Vanasco will join Michael in conversation in a perfect pairing– Jeannie’s new memoir, A Silent Treatment, explores the loneliness and isolation of silence as punishment, and where love lives amidst it. Mark your calendars for a night of reflection and insight.
RSVP here
Order WINDOWER here
Michael Loughran’s work has appeared in Boston Review, Indiana Review, Harvard Review, Tin House, and elsewhere. He lives in Philadelphia and teaches at the Community College of Philadelphia. Windower is his first book.
Jeannie Vanasco is the author of the memoirs A Silent Treatment, Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl, and The Glass Eye. She lives in Baltimore and is an associate professor of English at Towson University.

Annie Marhefka with Ashley Elizabeth: Strangers We Know By Heart
2025-11-02 17:00 - 19:00 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Bird in Hand is celebrating the release of Annie Marhefka’s chapbook, Strangers We Know By Heart, published by Garden Party Collective in September! Annie is an incredible engine of community around writing in Baltimore via her work as the Executive Director of Yellow Arrow Publishing, and many other initiatives, so it is especially fitting that this collection is a series of love letters to strangers.
She’ll be joined by Ashley Elizabeth, winner of the 2024 Garden Party Collective Chapbook Contest, and the author who selected Annie Marhefka’s chapbook as the winner of the same contest in 2025. Please join us to celebrate this exciting lineage!
Books wil be available for purchase at the event.
RSVP here
Annie Marhefka is a writer in Baltimore, Maryland; she is the recipient of the 2024 Eunice Williams Nonfiction Prize, has been featured on The Slowdown Show, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Annie is the Executive Director at Yellow Arrow Publishing, a Baltimore-based nonprofit empowering women-identifying writers. Annie has received support from the Maryland State Arts Council, Gullkistan Center for the Arts, Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing, and Tin House. She has a BA in creative writing from Washington College and an MBA, and is an MFA candidate at the University of Baltimore where she was Co-Managing Editor of Welter. Her collection, Strangers We Know By Heart, is available from Garden Party Collective. When Annie is not writing, she is usually trying to find her way back to the water. Follow Annie on Instagram @anniemarhefka and at anniemarhefka.com.
Ashley Elizabeth (she/her) is a Pushcart-nominated writer and winner of the 2024 Garden Party Collective Chapbook Contest. Individual poems and essays have appeared in SWWIM, The Hellebore, Rigorous, and Sage Cigarettes, among others. Ashley is the author of A Family Thing (Redacted Books/ELJ Editions, 2024) and chapbooks red line, CHARM(ed), black has every right to be angry, and you were supposed to be a friend. When she isn’t teaching, reading, or working on her next poetry or essay collections, Ashley works as Chapbook Editor at Sundress Publications and Workshop Coordinator for fifth wheel press. She lives on the original land of the Piscataway (Baltimore, MD) with her partner and their cats.

Hands on Holiday with the Waldorf School: Lantern Walk
2025-11-01 09:00 - 10:00 | The Ivy Bookshop, Garden, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209, United States
Join the Waldorf School of Baltimore on the covered patio for a festive and fun seasonal celebration!
This program is best for children up to age 7 and will include songs, story time and a special holiday craft lead by one of Waldorf’s early childhood teachers.
A Lantern Walk is a favorite fall tradition in Waldorf Schools. It is designed to help children to celebrate their inner light within as we head into the shorter days and longer nights of winter.
Families are welcome to sit on a blanket brought from home, or enjoy one of the picnic tables on Ivy’s expansive wooded grounds to create their craft following our story and songs. Dress for the weather, this is an outdoor gathering.
Your registration provides a warm drink and everything needed to create your own lantern.
Guests who participate in Hands on Holiday: Lantern Walk will receive an invitation to join the Waldorf Schools evening lantern walk the following week – as well as information on how to organize your own neighborhood walk at home!
Click here for tickets!

Boys Reading Books Book Club
2025-10-30 19:00 - 20:00 | The Ivy Bookshop, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209, United States
Announcing Boys Reading Books: a fiction book club open to men and non-binary people!
Proving men read novels too and encouraging more to do so.
Next Meeting: Thursday, October 30th at 7pm at The Ivy Bookshop.
This month’s pick: Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino.
Led by The Ivy’s own bookseller Richard Dixon. Contact rich@theivybookshop.com for more information.

Fall Concert Series: Sam Carullo, Percussionist
2025-10-28 18:00 - 19:00 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Bird in Hand hosts local percussionist Sam Carullo for a solo concert during our fall concert series! Experience our full menu of cocktails and coffee for this happy hour concert. Doors open at 5:45, concert begins at 6:00. This concert series is free, but cash donations will be accepted at the door to directly support the work of these local artists.
RSVP Here!
American percussionist Sam Carullo is a passionate performer recognized for his enchanting lyricism and effortless virtuosity. His concerts have been applauded for their intriguing programming, mesmerizing and dazzling interpretations, and execution of the highest order. As a contemporary percussionist and advocate for the creation of new music, Carullo is actively commissioning and working with composers to create new works for percussion. His recent projects in that regard include a piece for solo marimba and electronics by Nathaniel Parks and four new works for percussion quartet by Baltimore based composer’s guild, The CNSNC Collective.
While an active performer in several genres of music, Carullo is most at home in solo and chamber music. As a soloist, Carullo’s concerts take him to libraries and retirement communities just as often as the stage. One of his missions as a performer is to increase accessibility to percussion and can often be found giving free concerts in nontraditional venues. Carullo also serves as one half of Duo Lumiere, a marimba and flute duo with flautist Elizabeth Stern. Together, Carullo and Stern are seeking to redefine the marimba and flute genre with their pairing of breathtaking arrangements of classic repertoire with newer works, including several written for and commissioned by the duo. Carullo has been recognized multiple times as a recital competition winner, concerto competition winner, as well as the grand prize winner of the Great Plains International Marimba Competition – Duo Division in 2019.
Carullo is the Professor of Percussion at Lebanon Valley College, and is in the final phases of his doctoral degree at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, where he studies under marimba virtuoso and legendary pedagogue Robert van Sice. He is also pursuing a Masters in Musicology as part of his doctoral studies. He holds his Bachelor’s degree from Belmont University, where he studied with Dr. Christopher Norton, and his Master’s degree from the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, studying under Robert van Sice.

Humanities in the Village, ft. Gisela Heffes and Lysley Tenorio: CROCODILES AT NIGHT
2025-10-27 18:30 - 20:30 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Presenting Humanities in the Village, an event series in partnership with the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute at Johns Hopkins University, which aims to make scholarship publicly accessible.
For this October edition, we are thrilled to welcome Gisela Heffes in celebration of her new novel CROCODILES AT NIGHT, out this year from Deep Vellum Press. Lysley Tenorio will join Heffes in conversation about this philosophical, heartfelt story exploring familial ties, memories and images of places that are no longer the same, the vagaries of the medical system, and social critique. It presents an unfeigned, excruciating view of death and how it affects all who experience it.
Whether it’s your first time at the series or you’ve been attending for years, we hope you’ll join us to usher this exciting new book into the world!
Click here to RSVP!
Order CROCODILES AT NIGHT here
Gisela Heffes is a Professor of Latin American Literature and Culture at Johns Hopkins University as well as a writer, ecocritic, and public intellectual with a particular focus on literature, media, and the environment in Latin America. She is the author of several novels, including Ischia (Deep Vellum, 2023). She currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Lysley Tenorio is the author of Monstress, named a book of the year by The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Son of Good Fortune, winner of the New American Voices Award from the Institute for Immigration Research. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Ploughshares, Zoetrope: All-Story, The New York Times, and NPR, and has been adapted for the stage in San Francisco and New York City. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and the Rome Prize from The American Academy of Arts and Letters and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bogliasco Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center.

Autumn Festival at The Ivy Bookshop
2025-10-26 10:00 - 13:00 | The Ivy Bookshop, Back Patio, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209
Fall is sweet at The Ivy Bookshop! Join us on the back patio for books, pumpkin painting, fall activities, face painting, local art, and more!

Featuring a special Fall nature craft with the Waldorf School of Baltimore.

Drop by any time from 10-1 in your coziest fall outfit to enjoy this all-ages event.

RSVP here!

Megan Lovely and Michael Caballes with Eric Jackson, Denzel Mitchell Jr., and Susan Walther: Story Seeds: Growing Home at the Farmers Market
2025-10-25 18:00 - 20:00 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
You’re invited to a party about the 32nd Street Farmers Market! Bird in Hand is thrilled to launch Story Seeds: Growing Home at the Farmers Market, the result of a thoughtful, years-long project by author Megan Lovely and photographer Michael Caballes. After a morning at the market, the authors will join us at Bird in Hand, just a few blocks up the street, for a conversation with influential figures in Baltimore farming and farmers markets: Eric Jackson, Denzel Mitchell Jr., and Susan Walther.
Since Lovely’s inaugural Story Seeds stand in October 2021, Lovely has gathered more than 200 stories from vendors, farmers, and community members at the 32nd Street Farmers Market through her interactive storytelling practice. These stories, more than twenty hours of recorded interviews, and photographs are woven together in multi-vocal vignettes, demonstrating how, as Baltimore Heritage executive director Johns Hopkins writes, “a market on a parking lot can bring a neighborhood together.”
Books will be available for purchase with signed copies available. A combined 15% of all copies sold will be donated to Baltimore-based nonprofits including the 32nd Street Farmers Market, Black Yield Institute, and Farm Alliance of Baltimore. In addition to selling books, Lovely and Caballes will have original photographs on display; the Story Seeds board documenting the hundreds of stories gathered; and interactive storytelling exercises prompting marketgoers to reflect on their own reasons for showing up at the market.
We can’t wait to see you there!
Books will be available at the event.
RSVP here
Megan Lovely is a social practice artist and educator. With her community-engaged arts practice, Recipes for Community, she aims to create space for intentional communion and reflection on the ingredients that make up our communities. Visit: recipesforcommunity.com
Michael Caballes is a food service professional and freelance photographer, specializing in small business startups. Visit: kuhaphotography.com
Eric Jackson is an organizer, educator, and filmmaker, humbly serving as the visionary and a co-founder of Black Yield Institute, committed to building a movement toward Black Land and Food Sovereignty in Baltimore. Currently, he and his team are committed to a 1.25 acre urban agriculture operation and building a cooperatively-owned grocery store in South Baltimore, while also conducting Black-led research, facilitating political education, and organizing an action network.
Denzel Mitchell Jr. brings a fusion of leadership, varied professional experience, and a deep-rooted connection to agriculture. Raised a country boy with cowboy roots in Oklahoma, Denzel’s journey into farming began early, sparking his interest and commitment to food, consumption, production and sovereignty. Denzel was a founding organizer and member farmer of the Farm Alliance. In November 2012, he completed Future Harvest-CASA’s Beginning Farmer Training Program. Soon after, he (alongside a farmer friend, a chef, and a food historian) brought a nearly-forgotten heirloom pepper variety, Baltimore’s Fish Pepper, back to the Chesapeake foodshed’s culinary palette.
Susan Walther is the former secretary of the 32nd Street Farmers Market. She is an avid weekly Market shopper and continues to be delighted with its locally grown produce and ongoing support of entrepreneurial opportunities. A former museum publication designer, she enjoys promoting events at the Market, to encourage greater community participation with its vendors.

IvyKids Saturday: Halloween Party at The Shops at Kenilworth
2025-10-25 12:00 - 14:00 | The Shops At Kenilworth, 800 Kenilworth Drive, Towson, MD, 21204, United States
You’re invited to a very sweet Halloween party for the whole family, at The Ivy Bookshop’s location at The Shops at Kenilworth!
RSVP here!
Join us at noon on October 25th for:

A special storytime with Tracy Gold, author of Trick or Treat, Bugs to Eat and Hide and Seek, Nuts to Eat
Themed crafts, including button making with the Waldorf School of Baltimore
Free Halloween face painting hosted by Kenilworth Mall, which will last from 12-2pm

The Ivy Bookshop at The Shops at Kenilworth is located on the first level of the mall, across from Italian Gardens.
Tracy C. Gold loves writing about families and nature. She is an author, freelance editor, and mom living in Baltimore, Maryland. Her published and forthcoming picture books include “Everyone’s Sleepy but the Baby,” “Call Your Mother,” “Trick or Treat, Bugs to Eat,” and “Hide and Seek, Nuts to Eat.” She also writes short stories, essays, novels, and poems. Her work has been published in several magazines and anthologies. Tracy earned her M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts at the University of Baltimore and earned her B.A. in English from Duke University. When she’s not writing or editing, she’s playing with her kid or hanging out with horses and dogs. You can find out more about Tracy at tracycgold.com, by following her on Threads, Bluesky, and Instagram at @tracycgold, or by liking her Facebook page.
Fun fact: Tracy loves horses, though dogs are a close runner-up for her favorite animal. Over the years, Tracy has helped train many rescued horses and retired racehorses for new careers.

Moira Egan and Allison Wilkins Bakken: THE FURIES
2025-10-24 18:00 - 20:00 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Join us at Bird in Hand for an evening of powerful poetry as Moira Egan and Allison Wilkins Bakken share work from their latest collections.
Allison Wilkins’ manuscript House of Broken Tables won the 2025 Donna Wolf Palacio Poetry Prize, and Moira Egan’s The Furies comes out on the date of this event! Highlighting the value of solidarity and collective strength among women, they bring to life women in myths from Arachne to Echo, from Medusa and Mary Magdalene to the female characters of The Odyssey. Egan deploys exuberant wordplay and traditional poetic forms to subvert the patriarchal canon. At the heart of the book is a profound exploration of voice, not least the ongoing silencing of women’s voices: she blends righteous anger with grief, ultimately finding hope in the transformative power of language.
Join us!
RSVP here
Order THE FURIES here
Moira Egan has published five books of poetry in the United States and four in Italy, including Amore e morte, a bilingual collection of new and selected poems. Her work has been featured in journals and anthologies on four continents. Also a prize-winning translator, she lives in Rome with her husband, Damiano Abeni.
Allison Wilkins is the author of Girl Who (2014) and her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in Sierra Magazine, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Superstition Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Michigan Quarterly Review and elsewhere. She lives and teaches in Pennsylvania and each summer serves as assistant director for Writing Workshops in Greece: Thessaloniki and Thasos. She is the recipient of the 2025 Donna Wolf Palacio Poetry Prize for her manuscript “House of Broken Tables.”

Andrew Morton: WINSTON AND THE WINDSORS (at Whitehall Mill)
2025-10-22 19:00 - 21:00 | Heritage Room at Whitehall MIll, 3300 Clipper Mill Rd., Baltimore, MD, 21211
Baltimore gave Andrew Morton a warm welcome when he visited in 2022 for The Queen: Her Life, and now we look forward to a reprise for his new biography of Winston Churchill, Winston and the Windsors: How Churchill Shaped a Royal Dynasty!
This event will be hosted at the Heritage Room at Whitehall Mill– a former distribution site for Penguin Books, now a beautiful events venue. Come mingle and have a drink from the bar before hearing from the author about this groundbreaking story: the riveting hot-and-cold relationship between the House of Windsor and Winston Churchill.
From the Churchill family’s intricate relationship with the Crown, to Winston’s initially begrudging but ultimately fruitful partnership with George VI, to his enduring fondness for Queen Elizabeth II, this fascinating narrative biography sheds new light on the ways the Crown not only shaped Winston Churchill’s career, but the ways in which Churchill shepherded the monarchy into the modern era.
Tickets are required, and come with 1 book per ticket. They can be purchased at this link.
Enjoy complementary valet, a drink from the Bird in Hand bar, and 10% off your tab at True Chesapeake with your ticket to make it a night on the town. After the talk, you’ll have the chance to meet the author and have your book signed. Join us for a royally fun night out!
Andrew Morton is a leading authority on modern celebrity and royalty. His biography Diana: Her True Story changed the way the world looked at the British royal family. Since then, he has gone on to write New York Times and Sunday Times bestsellers on Monica Lewinsky, Madonna, David and Victoria Beckham, Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie, and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. The winner of numerous awards, he divides his time between London and Los Angeles.

The Banner Book Club October Meeting: Featuring Laura Lippman, MURDER TAKES A VACATION
2025-10-22 18:00 - 19:00 | Spark Public Space, The Power Plant, 4th Floor, 621 E. Pratt St., Baltimore, Maryland, 21202
The October gathering of the Banner Book Club will feature a special in-person visit from highly acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Laura Lippman, to discuss her recent novel Murder Takes A Vacation.

The Banner Book Club features a gathering at The Banner offices with a journalist where you can share in the thoughtful conversation and questions on your favorite books.
The Banner Book Club is your chance to connect with fellow readers, explore Baltimore’s literary heritage, and engage with the trusted journalism that drives positive change in Maryland.
Register here to be a part of the Banner Book Club!
Click here to order Murder Takes a Vacation!

Leigh Vinocur with Sloane Brown: NEVER LET THEM SEE YOU SWEAT
2025-10-21 18:00 - 20:00 | The Ivy Bookshop, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209, United States
Leigh Vinocur’s Never Let Them See You Sweat: How Science Can Help Us Harness Stress for Success blends her unique professional background as emergency physician and TV medical analyst. Get ready to learn how to harness stress for success with insight, personal stories, and laughs from a medical doctor who shows the science behind the advice and methods.
Sloane Brown, society and style reporter for The Baltimore Sun, will join Leigh Vinocur in conversation, for an evening focused on advice and guidance to assist other women through daily stress and challenging times.
RSVP here
Order NEVER LET THEM SEE YOU SWEAT here
Dr. Leigh Vinocur, MD, MS, FACEP, is a board-certified emergency physician, an award-winning medical advisor, and national spokesperson and Fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians (FACEP). Dr. Leigh began her medical career as a pioneering woman in urology, as one of the first female residents accepted in her program. As an emergency physician, she has served in both academic and corporate medical leadership roles, including Chief Medical Director overseeing more than 100 medical providers caring for more than 150,000 patients annually throughout the Mid-Atlantic region.
As the Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Ananda Medical Practice and Consulting, she is a highly sought-after medical cannabis expert and advisor for patients and the industry, focusing her work on education and training in medical cannabis science and therapeutics. Dr. Leigh was also appointed by the Governor of Maryland to the state’s newly formed Cannabis Public Health Advisory Council.
Dr. Leigh has become one of the go-to medical analysts including regular appearances on The TODAY Show, the Fox News Channel, CNN and the Nancy Grace Show, HLN Prime News, Inside Edition, as well as ABC News and the CBS Early Show. She has contributed monthly health columns for the Examiner, Savvy Auntie, Huffington Post, and has been profiled in More and Family Circle magazines. She also writes the popular “Ask Dr. Leigh” column in the Hearst publication, GreenState, where she answers readers’ cannabis-related questions.
Sloane Brown’s media career covers the gamut: TV anchor/reporter, radio disc jockey/news director; beginning in Monterey/Carmel, California, then Salt Lake City, Utah, before coming to Maryland. In Baltimore, Sloane has been a news anchor for WMAR TV, news director for Lite 102 Radio, TV host on MPT TV, and arts/entertainment reporter and film critic for Fox45 and Washington DC’s WJLA TV. Currently, Sloane covers Baltimore’s social and style scene for The Baltimore Sun, a role she has held for over two decades – https://www.baltimoresun.com/tag/baltimore-scene-sloane-brown/
In conjunction with that, Sloane also appears on Fox45’s “BMORE Lifestyle” every Friday to review the week’s social events and preview what’s coming up. From 2016 to 2024, Sloane launched and ran Baltimore Snap, which further explored Baltimore’s social and style landscape – http://baltimoresnap.com/
In June 2020, Sloane began a partnership with The Maryland Daily Record, Lehigh Valley Business and Central Penn Business Journal, hosting a monthly video interview series, “Off The Record” – https://thedailyrecord.com/category/business/video-series/off-the-record-with-sloane-brown/ – as well as moderating webinars, featuring leaders in Maryland and Pennsylvania’s business, government, and nonprofit communities.

The Ivy + Snug Books Present: Diary of a Wimpy Kid #20: Partypooper
2025-10-20 19:00 | Dumbarton Middle School, 300 Dumbarton Rd, Baltimore, MD, 21212
You’re Invited to the Wimpiest Birthday bash ever!
The Ivy Bookshop + Snug Books are teaming up to celebrate the 20th Diary of a Wimpy Kid book with the biggest, funniest, most unforgettable birthday bash…and you’re on the guest list!
Welcome to The Partypooper Show– a laugh-out-loud birthday event where audience members will be selected to join Diary of a Wimpy Kid author (and host!) Jeff Kinney on stage to help save the party spirit!
Expect a family-friendly event loaded with surprises, laugh-out-loud moments and a thrilling countdown to celebrate 300 MILLION Wimpy Kid books now sold worldwide!
Grab your invites today- it’s time to party!
Click here for tickets!
The Details:

1 Ticket Admits 2 people and includes 1 signed copy of Diary of a Wimpy Kid #20: Partypooper, which will be available for pickup at the event.
Additional tickets are available where 1 Ticket Admits 1 person and includes 1 one signed copy of Diary of a Wimpy Kid #20: Partypooper.
Books will come pre-signed. There will be no personalization, books from home, photos or meet and greet with Jeff Kinney.
Doors will open at 6pm.

Keetje Kuipers with James Allen Hall and Cate Lycurgus: Lonely Women Make Good Lovers
2025-10-19 17:00 - 19:00 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Come on out to Bird in Hand to celebrate Keetje Kuipers’ new poetry collection with a festive reading! James Allen Hall and Cate Lycurgus will join Kuipers for a night of poems in the spirit of her new collection, Lonely Women Make Good Lovers– a daring, sexy, embodied, earthy book of love poems.
Engaging a poetics of humility, these unforgettable poems lean into the painful tendernesses of unbridgeable distance. As Kuipers writes, love is a question “defined not by what we / cannot know of the world but what we cannot know of ourselves.” In this queer and complicated new book, astonishingly intimate poems of marriage collide with the fetishization of freedom and the terror of desire, finding compromise in a body reborn through love.
We hope you’ll join us!
RSVP here
Order LONELY WOMEN MAKE GOOD LOVERS here
Keetje Kuipers’ fourth collection of poems is Lonely Women Make Good Lovers. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, and her poems have appeared in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. She lives in Montana and is Editor of Poetry Northwest.
James Allen Hall is the author of three books, most recently a poetry collection, Romantic Comedy (Four Way, 2023), and a collection of lyric essays, I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well (Cleveland State, 2017). They’ve received awards from the Lambda Literary Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Recent work appears in Copper Nickel, Best American Poetry 2025, the 2026 Pushcart Prize anthology, and elsewhere. With the poet Aaron Smith they co-host Breaking Form: A Poetry and Culture Podcast.
Cate Lycurgus’s writing has appeared in Best American Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Orion and elsewhere. Her chapbook Seacliff is forthcoming from Bull City Press in Fall 2025. Cate lives in San Jose, California, where she interviews for 32 Poems and teaches writing.

Commonplay Family Music Class
2025-10-19 10:30 - 11:15 | The Ivy Bookshop, Back Patio, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209
Commonplay provides interactive moments for caregivers to sing, play instruments, dance, and connect with their child. Children will develop confidence and music appreciation through playful exploration. In every class, you will experience live music that is dynamic and imaginative and will encourage everyone to move, sing, and create together. Grab a scarf and play with us!
Sign up for all 6 classes or on a drop-in bases. Register here!

Amber Sparks with Laura Bogart: HAPPY PEOPLE DON'T LIVE HERE
2025-10-18 17:00 - 19:00 | The Ivy Bookshop, Garden, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209, United States
A novel of neighbors, mothers, and ghosts. A misty garden setting. A book event for spooky season.
Join us in a secret location of the gardens behind the Ivy bookshop to hear from Amber Sparks, author of HAPPY PEOPLE DON’T LIVE HERE, as she discusses this story of long-buried secrets, family–chosen or otherwise–and the sometimes dangerous myths we make to keep ours together.
Laura Bogart, author of DON’T YOU KNOW I LOVE YOU, will join Amber in conversation.
RSVP here
Order HAPPY PEOPLE DON’T LIVE HERE here
Amber Sparks is the author of the short story collections And I Do Not Forgive You and The Unfinished World. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, Slate, and elsewhere. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, daughter, and cats.

Laura Bogart is the author of Don’t You Know I Love You (Dzanc 2020). Her work has appeared in Salon, The Guardian, The A.V. Club, The Atlantic, DAME and The Week, among other publications.

Samantha Shea: MARROW and Kerry Cullen: HOUSE OF BETH
2025-10-17 18:00 - 20:00 | The Ivy Bookshop, Back Patio, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209
Both Samantha Browning Shea and Kerry Cullen’s debut novels– MARROW and HOUSE OF BETH– share an addicting, firy quality that helps us experience a sense of mystery and wonder. It’s a perfect pairing to feature in conversation on the Ivy patio on a mid-October evening.
RSVP here!
Tender and intense, witchy and wise, and written in prose that glitters and seethes, MARROW is a gripping novel about the complex bonds between mothers and daughters, about what we must believe in order to imagine a future for ourselves, and what we must let go in order to fully live it.
HOUSE OF BETH is a haunting and seductive tale of a young career woman who slides quickly into the role of stepmother, in a life that may still belong to someone else. “Vivid, addictive, and crackling with life (yes, even the ghost), it asks us to consider how and why we make the lives we make” (Lynn Steger Strong).
Please join us!
Order MARROW here.
Order HOUSE OF BETH here.
Samantha Browning Shea is an author and the vice president of Georges Borchardt, Inc. literary agency. A graduate of Colgate University, Samantha lives in Connecticut with her husband and their two daughters. Marrow is her debut novel.
Kerry Cullen’s debut novel, House of Beth, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her short fiction has been published in The Indiana Review, Prairie Schooner, One Teen Story, and more. She earned her MFA at Columbia University, and she lives in New York.

Dora Malech: Trying X Trying and Elise Levine: Big of You, with Nate Brown
2025-10-16 18:00 - 20:00 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Join us at Bird in Hand for a special joint book launch for Dora Malech’s new poetry collection, Trying X Trying, and Elise Levine’s new short story collection, Big of You!
We’ll have the pleasure of hearing from both writers in conversation with Nate Brown, and lingering with the ways these collections overlap and diverge thematically– as well as with what poetry and fiction have to teach one another. Both of these collections are interested in turning over familiar phrases and concepts to find the strangeness and freshness underneath. In Big of You, people of all ages (even a millenia!) sift through the midden of their regrets, friendships, and marriages, and seek fresher ways of inhabiting older selves. In Trying × Trying, Dora Malech dissects the language of our times; she turns over the familiar phrases of politics, parenthood, and pandemic to reveal what lies beneath.
We’re looking forward to seeing you for this celebratory night!
RSVP here!
Order TRYING X TRYING here!
Order BIG OF YOU here!
Dora Malech’s most recent book of poetry is Flourish, published by Carnegie Mellon University Press, which will publish her next book of poetry, Trying × Trying, in 2025. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications, including The New Yorker, Poetry, Poetry London, and The Best American Poetry, and her honors include an Amy Clampitt Residency Award, a Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship, and a Writing Residency Fellowship from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. She lives in Baltimore, where she is an associate professor in Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and the editor in chief of The Hopkins Review.
Elise Levine’s newest book is the story collection Big of You. She is also the author of Say This: Two Novellas, the novels Blue Field and Requests and Dedications, and the story collections This Wicked Tongue and Driving Men Mad. Her work has also appeared in publications including Ploughshares, Copper Nickel, and Blackbird, and has been included five times in Best Canadian Stories. Her awards include ones from the Canada Council for the Arts, Yaddo, Ucross, and MacDowell. She lives in Baltimore where she teaches in the MA in writing program at Johns Hopkins University.
Nate Brown’s stories have appeared in One Story, the Iowa Review, Mississippi Review, Five Chapters, Carolina Quarterly and elsewhere, and his essays, reviews, and features have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Rumpus, Electric Literature, Publisher’s Weekly, LitHub, and other publications. He is editor-at-large of the award-winning literary journal American Short Fiction in Austin, TX, and has received fellowships from the Maryland State Arts Council, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Vermont Studio Center, the Ucross Foundation, and multiple work-study scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He has taught creative writing and composition at the University of Wisconsin, through the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, at the George Washington University, Georgetown University, and elsewhere. Currently, he is a senior lecturer in the University Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University and is the 2024-25 Engaged Faculty Scholar of the Practice at JHU’s Center for Social Concern.
He lives in the greatest city in America, Baltimore, MD.

Deesha Philyaw at The University of Baltimore with D. Watkins: THE SECRET LIVES OF CHURCH LADIES
2025-10-15 19:00 - 20:00 | Wright Theater, University of Baltimore, 21 W. Mt. Royal Ave, Baltimore, MD, 21223
Deesha Philyaw visits the University of Baltimore to discuss her much-beloved short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies! The Secret Lives of Church Ladies began making waves when it was published in 2021, and has never stopped.
RSVP here!
It features four generations of characters grappling with who they want to be in the world, caught as they are between the church’s double standards and their own needs and passions. It explores the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good. With their secret longings, new love, and forbidden affairs, these church ladies are as seductive as they want to be, as vulnerable as they need to be, as unfaithful and unrepentant as they care to be, and as free as they deserve to be.
Philyaw will be in conversation with Professor D. Watkins.
You can read more about the book or order it here.
We are over the moon that Deesha is visiting Baltimore, and hope you will join us for this one-of-a-kind evening.
Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, won the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the 2020/2021 Story Prize, and the 2020 LA Times Book Prize: The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. Deesha is a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow, a Baldwin for the Arts Fellow, a United States Artists Fellow, and co-host of two podcasts, Ursa Short Fiction (with Dawnie Walton) and Reckon True Stories (with Kiese Laymon). She is currently at work developing TV shows based on her short fiction.
Deesha’s debut novel, The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman, is forthcoming from Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, in 2026.

D. Watkins is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of The Beast Side, The Cook Up, Where Tomorrows Aren’t Promised, and We Speak for Ourselves—which was Enoch Pratt Free Library’s 2020 One Book Baltimore selection. His newest book, Black Boy Smile, was released in May. Watkins is Editor-at-Large for Salon. He is a writer on the HBO mini-series We Own This City and hosts the show’s companion podcast. Additionally, he was featured in the HBO documentary, The Slow Hustle. His work has been published in the New York Times, Esquire, New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, and other publications. Watkins is a college lecturer at the University of Baltimore, where he earned an MFA in Creative Writing. He also holds a Master of Education degree from Johns Hopkins University. Some of Watkins’ awards include the Johns Hopkins Distinguished Alumnus Award, the BMe Genius Grant for Dynamic Black Leaders, the City Lit Dambach Award for Service to the Literary Arts, the Maryland Library Association’s William Wilson Maryland Author Award, and Ford’s Men of Courage Award for Black Male Storytellers. He was also a finalist for a 2016 Hurston Wright Legacy Award, and The Cook Up was a 2017 Books for a Better Life finalist. He lives in Baltimore, MD with his wife and daughter.

Book Launch for Matthew Norman with Leslie Gray Streeter: GRACE & HENRY'S HOLIDAY MOVIE MARATHON
2025-10-14 18:00 - 20:00 | The Ivy Bookshop, Back Patio, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209
Do you love cozy nights in, holiday movies, and second chances? Have we got the novel for you. We can’t wait to launch Matthew Norman’s latest into the world: Grace & Henry’s Holiday Movie Marathon, to warm your heart right before the weather starts to cool.
The author of Charm City Rocks, All Together Now, and more, brings us a sentimental advertising creative and a blunt, no-nonsense bar owner who find love while binge-watching iconic holiday movies. We’ll fall in love with these characters in turn.
We’re so thrilled that Leslie Gray Streeter, author of Family and Other Calamities and Black Widow, and artisan of writing about grief with humor and heart, will join Matt in conversation. We hope you can join us, too!
RSVP here
Order GRACE & HENRY’S HOLIDAY MOVIE MARATHON here
Matthew Norman lives in Baltimore, Maryland, with his wife and two children and holds an MFA from George Mason University. His previous novels include Charm City Rocks, All Together Now, Last Couple Standing, We’re All Damaged, and Domestic Violets.

Leslie Gray Streeter is an award-winning journalist and columnist for the Baltimore Banner. She is the author of the memoir Black Widow: A Sad-Funny Journey Through Grief for People Who Normally Avoid Books with Words Like “Journey” in the Title, the cohost of the podcast Fine Beats and Cheeses, and a frequent speaker on grief. She is also a slow runner, an amateur vegan cook, and a fan of Law & Order. Leslie lives in Baltimore, Maryland, with her son, Brooks. For more information, visit www.lesliegraystreeter.com.
