Ivy Bookshop

Maylis de Kerangal in conversation with Derek Schilling
2025-03-05 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York) | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Bird in Hand is thrilled to host author Maylis de Kerangal for a conversation with Professor Derek Schilling as part of her March 2025 residency at Johns Hopkins University, entitled Les Ponts des arts.
Author Maylis de Kerangal (b. 1967) won France’s coveted Prix Médicis in 2010 for her breakout novel The Bridge, a choral narrative about the building of a suspension bridge. In the runaway success The Heart (2014), now translated into more than thirty languages, she explored how an organ transplant fashions a complex web of relationships in the wake of tragedy.
Unfolding in atypical settings from the Trans-Siberian railway (Eastbound) to a hydraulic power station (Seyvoz) and decorative artists’ studios (Painting Time), her fictions ask how work and the workplace affect the senses, communication, and human action.
Marking the anniversary of the Frances Scott Key Bridge tragedy, the residency Le Pont des arts is made possible with the generous assistance of the French Embassy in the United States.
RSVP Here!

Tori Amos: Book Launch for TORI AND THE MUSES
2025-03-04 19:00 - 20:30 | Church of the Redeemer, 5603 N Charles St., Baltimore, MD, 21210
Are you a Tori Amos fan, ready to create the next generation of Tori Amos fans? The Ivy is thrilled to welcome Tori Amos back to Baltimore (where she lived as a child, and won a scholarship to the Peabody Institute at age 5) for the launch of her debut children’s book, Tori and the Muses! Join us at Baltimore’s Church of the Redeemer for a presentation and Q&A , followed by a photo opportunity.
Tickets are required, and each ticket comes with a signed copy of Tori and the Muses, available for pickup at the event.
Click here for tickets!
Tori and the Muses is a thoughtful and sprightly tale of young Tori navigating the magical world of inspiration in all its forms, and learning to share it with those around her. It’s illustrated by Demelsa Haughton, who has illustrated countless picture books including Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales, giving it the same timeless feel.
Tori Amos is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, pianist, composer, and New York Times bestselling author of 2020’s Resistance: A Songwriter’s Story of Hope, Change, and Courage and 2005’s Piece by Piece. She has released sixteen studio albums, including her latest, Ocean to Ocean, in 2021. This is her first book for children.

Curtis Sittenfeld: SHOW DON'T TELL at The University of Baltimore
2025-02-26 19:00 - 20:00 | Wright Theater, University of Baltimore, 21 W. Mt. Royal Ave, Baltimore, MD, 21223
Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times bestselling author of Romantic Comedy, Rodham, Prep, and others, celebrates her brand new collection of short stories, Show Don’t Tell, at the Wright Theater at University of Baltimore! Sittenfeld will be in conversation with Professor Marion Winik, and the presentation will be followed by a reception sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences.
Show Don’t Tell is a funny, fiercely intelligent, and moving collection exploring marriage, friendship, fame, and artistic ambition—including a story that revisits the main character from Curtis Sittenfeld’s iconic novel Prep.
You can read more about it or order it here.
Click here to RSVP for the event!
We are over the moon that Curtis is visiting Baltimore– one day after the publication of this new book– and hope you will join us for this one-of-a-kind evening.
Curtis Sittenfeld is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels including Rodham, Eligible, Prep, American Wife, and Sisterland, as well as the collection You Think It, I’ll Say It. Her novels have been translated into thirty languages. In addition, her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Washington Post Magazine, Esquire, and The Best American Short Stories, for which she has also been the guest editor. Her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, and Vanity Fair, and on public radio’s This American Life.

Vital Perspectives on Healthcare and Science, featuring Aaron Vansintjan and Vijay Kolinjivadi, authors of THE SUSTAINABILITY CLASS (with Nicole Labruto)
2025-02-26 18:00 - 19:30 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Bird in Hand Coffee and Books hosts the latest edition of this engaging series. 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. This event is co-sponsored by the JHU Program in Environmental Science & Studies.
For this event, we welcome Aaron Vansintjan and Vijay Kolinjivadi, co-authors of The Sustainability Class: How to Take Back Our Future from Lifestyle Environmentalists. In this groundbreaking book, they present an original argument that environmental sustainability has been co-opted by the urban elite, and provide examples from around the world of ways we can save our planet. As the introduction states, “caring for the environment means reclaiming ecology for everyone.”
Nicole Labruto, assistant research professor in the Department of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University, will moderate this conversation with Aaron and Vijay. 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!
Purchase The Sustainability Class here!
RSVP here!
Vijay teaches solidarity economics at the School for Community and Public Affairs, Concordia University. Aaron is Policy Manager at Food Secure Canada and co-author of The Future Is Degrowth, published by Verso Books. Both Aaron and Vijay are editors of Uneven Earth, and have been published in Time Magazine, Al Jazeera, Newsweek, The Guardian, and The Conversation. They live in Montreal.
Nicole Labruto is an assistant research professor in the Department of Anthropology. She received her BA in Anthropology and Philosophy from Mount Holyoke College, her MA in Cultural Anthropology from the New School for Social Research, and her PhD in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, during which she was a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellow. She is also the recipient of fellowships from the Social Science Research Council and the Fulbright Foundation. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Johns Hopkins University and an Anthropologist-in-Residence at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). She is a member of the Curatorial Circle of the Ecological Design Collective.

Humanities in the Village with Christopher Cannon: THE OXFORD CHAUCER (in conversation with Sharon Achinstein)
2025-02-24 18:30 - 20:00 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
You’re invited to February’s 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.
February’s event features Christopher Cannon, co-editor of The Oxford Chaucer, a new scholarly-yet-accessible set that combines complete coverage of Chaucer’s works with reader-friendly access to individual texts. Sharon Achinstein will join as Chris’ interlocutor.
Audience Q&A after the reading—all are welcome! And while you’re there, pick up some recommended titles from Bird in Hand, and enjoy the offerings of nighttime beverages.
Purchase The Oxford Chaucer here!
RSVP here!
Christopher Cannon is Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of English and Classics at Johns Hopkins University. He was educated at Harvard and has taught previously at UCLA, Oxford (as a Fellow of St Edmund Hall), Cambridge (as a Fellow of Girton College), and New York University. He works primarily on writings in Middle English from 1100–1500 and, in particular, on the emergence of ‘English literature’ as a meaningful category in this period.
In her research and teaching, Professor Achinstein has explored the intersection of literature and political communication in the early modern period, specifically focused on questions of toleration, religious dissent, and women’s participation. Form and ideology are two abiding concerns. Her two monographs, Milton and the Revolutionary Reader (1994) and Literature and Dissent in Milton’s England (2003) and two edited collections, Milton and Toleration (2007) and Literature, Gender and the English Revolution (1994), placed works of literature in relation to the emerging public sphere and challenges to political and religious authority. Building on her scholarship on Milton, she has queried the history of the discipline of Renaissance literary studies, exploring how the economic pressures and values of the post-war University in the USA shaped the study of renaissance literature.
Her most recent research faces the history of marriage towards literature, law, politics, and theology, directions pursued in work on her edition of Milton’s writings on divorce (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). Through this project, Achinstein’s current work engages in debates over secularism, gender, sexuality and human right in early modernity.
She is the recipient of ACLS and NEH Fellowships, has held a Folger fellowship, as well as British Academy and Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) Fellowships.

Eric Puchner book launch for DREAM STATE (with Danielle Evans)
2025-02-22 18:00 - 19:30 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Bird in Hand is thrilled to host the launch event for Eric Puchner’s “thrillingly ambitious” new novel, DREAM STATE! Danielle Evans, author of THE OFFICE OF HISTORICAL CORRECTIONS, will join him in conversation about this novel of friends and family, humor and heart. Set in a rapidly warming Montana, it’s both a love letter and an elegy to the American West, and an ode to the power of friendship, the weird weather of marriage, and the beauty of impermanence.
Following the conversation, stick around for refreshments and the chance to have your book signed. We hope you can join us.
Purchase DREAM STATE here!
RSVP here!
ERIC PUCHNER is the author of the story collection Music Through the Floor, a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award; the novel Model Home, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award in Fiction; and a second short story collection, Last Day on Earth. His short stories and personal essays have appeared in GQ, Granta, Tin House, Best American Short Stories, and more. He has received an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is an associate professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and lives in Baltimore with his wife, the novelist Katharine Noel, and their two children.
DANIELLE EVANS is the author of two short story collections, The Office of Historical Corrections and Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. Her first collection won the PEN American Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Hurston-Wright award for fiction, and the Paterson Prize for fiction; her second won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and was a finalist for The Aspen Prize, The Story Prize, The Chautauqua Prize, and The Los Angeles Times Book prize for fiction. She has also been awarded The New Literary Project Oates Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a US Artists Fellowship. Her stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies including four editions of The Best American Short Stories. She is an Associate Professor in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.

Lindsay Hameroff: NEVER PLANNED ON YOU (with Laura Hankin)
2025-02-21 18:00 - 19:30 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Bird in Hand invites you to an evening of Baltimore romance with Lindsay Hameroff, author of NEVER PLANNED ON YOU! This “glittering, laugh-out-loud second chance romance” centers around an unexpected pair who finds each other amidst their individual decisions to move back to their hometown of Baltimore.
With Laura Hankin, author of the recently released ONE-STAR ROMANCE, joining Lindsay in conversation, this evening is sure to be a sweet way to round off Valentine’s month.
Purchase NEVER PLANNED ON YOU here!
RSVP here!
LINDSAY HAMEROFF is a writer, humorist, and former English teacher raised in Baltimore, MD and based in Harrisburg, PA. Her writing has been featured in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Belladonna, Weekly Humorist, and other outlets. She also co-edits Frazzled, a parenting humor site. She is the author of Till There Was You, her debut novel.
LAURA HANKIN is the author of One-Star Romance, Happy & You Know It, A Special Place for Women, and The Daydreams. Her musical comedy has been featured in publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post, and she is developing projects for film and TV. She lives in Washington DC, where she once fell off a treadmill twice in one day.

Marianna Busching: Relaunch of FALSE AWAKENING Medical Mystery Trilogy (with Buddy Terry)
2025-02-20 18:00 - 19:30 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Bird in Hand is delighted to host the relaunch of Marianna Busching’s trilogy of medical mysteries: False Awakening, False Medusa, and False Panacea! This event is the culmination of her collaboration with photographer and videographer Buddy Terry (who also happens to be your frequent barista at Bird in Hand). A retired opera singer, Busching reveals in this trilogy an ability to investigate, with great focus and energy, questions of medicine through fiction: questions of illness that elude diagnosis, and questions of medical ethics and trust in medical professionals. We hope you will join us to be a part of this one-of-a-kind celebration and conversation.
Click here to RSVP!
Marianna Busching is a retired opera singer, having performed in Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center and around the world. She taught voice at Peabody Conservatory for twenty-four years and still sings occasionally as soloist at the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Baltimore
She has written all her life, starting at age ten when she began filling her school notebooks with stories of fairy princesses and myhical beasts. When her three children were in school, she wrote and sold stories to romance magazines. Then, as she says, she was hijacked by music.
After she retired, she wrote the book Images for Better Singing: A Visual Approach to Vocal Technique. This book received a rave review from the National Association of Teachers of Singing in Journal of Voice which said that “reading this book is like attending a fine master class.”
She has had around thirty poems published and has won the Guy Owen Award from the Southern Poetry Review. She also has a trilogy of medical mysteries and has just completed her fourth medical mystery book. Another project is publishing a chapbook of Chirstian-based poems titled From Earth’s Floor. Her fifth mystery novel is already begun.

Mugs & Kisses Mini Market Pop Up with Homewood Studios
2025-02-13 17:00 - 20:00 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
‘Twas the night before Valentine’s Day and all the through the house, no one was home except for the mouse….. because everyone was at Bird in Hand enjoying drinks, books, & ceramic goods! Join us on the 13th from 5-8pm for a special collaborative event with Homewood Studios: a collection of independent ceramic artists located in Greenmount. This mini market pop-up is the perfect place to buy a last minute gift for that special someone in your life…. even if that special someone is yourself! Xoxo
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Hot L Poets Series: Featuring Eric D. Goodman & Tramaine Suubi
2025-02-09 16:00 - 18:00 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Sunday February 9, 2025 at 4pm, The HOT L Poets Series continues at Bird in Hand Charles Village (Baltimore) with poets Eric D. Goodman & Tramaine Suubi! The reading includes an open mic so bring a poem (1 poem, 3 min. or less). In our 7th year, the reading series is sponsored by Smartish Pace and Baltimore Poets Theatre. Hosts: Clare Banks, David Yezzi, Stephen Reichert Art and Traci Lynn.
Click here to RSVP!
Eric D. Goodman is author of Faraway Tables (Yorkshire Publishing, 2024), Wrecks and Ruins (Loyola University’s Apprentice House Press, 2022), The Color of Jadeite (Apprentice House Press, 2020), Setting the Family Free (Apprentice House, 2019), Womb: a novel in utero (Merge Publishing, 2017), Tracks: A Novel in Stories (Atticus, 2011), and Flightless Goose (Writer’s Lair, 2008). He’s published over a hundred short stories, articles, and travel stories. Goodman’s recent poetry has been featured in more than twenty publications, including Gargoyle Magazine and The Main Street Rag. Learn more about his work at www.EricDGoodman.com.
Tramaine Suubi is a multilingual writer from Kampala, and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has published creative writing in sixteen literary anthologies, magazines, journals, and reviews, including the new issue of Smartish Pace. She is the author of the full-length poetry collection, phases. Her forthcoming book is also a full-length poetry collection, stages. Both books are published by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins. Suubi serves as the managing editor of Writivism. She works towards the total liberation of all oppressed people by any means necessary. Learn more about her work at www.tramainesuubi.com.

Darby Baham: FALLING FOR THE COMPETITION (with Erika Cartledge)
2025-02-08 18:00 - 19:30 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Come out for a romance meets fashion conversation between author Darby Baham and Maryland-based stylist, Erika Cartledge… and find out what style suits your best date night vibes! We’re celebrating the newest book in Darby’s Friendship Chronicles series with an activity to discover new layers of your personal style and an author talk and Q&A.
Bring your galentines or make a new one there– we can’t wait to see you!
Purchase Falling for the Competition here!
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Darby Baham is an author and storyteller on a mission to make women like herself feel seen and believe that love is possible for them, yes them. The former Times Picayune and Washington Post contributor often uses her doubts, hopes, and fears to connect with her readers and inform the themes in her Harlequin romance series, The Friendship Chronicles. The fifth book in the series, Falling for the Competition, was released in November 2024, continuing her love letter to female friendships and offering an intimate look into the dynamic love lives of Black women.
Erika Cartledge is a personal stylist and entrepreneur with over a decade of experience helping individuals elevate their style and confidence. As the Founder and CEO of The YCS Styling Agency, she is passionate about making personal styling accessible and empowering clients to show up as their best selves with style that fits their life and goals. Based in the DC metro area, she balances her entrepreneurial work with family life while continuing to elevate women, leaders, and organizations through style and strategy.

IvyKids Sweetheart Saturday
2025-02-08 09:00 - 10:00 | The Ivy Bookshop, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209, United States
For February’s Ivy Kids event, join us for our annual Valentine’s Event: cute crafts, sweet treats, and fun for the whole family to kick off your Saturday!
Bring the friends you love– human or stuffed animal, grown up or kid– and spend the morning crafting and reading with our booksellers.

Click here to RSVP!

First Friday Comedy: Jamar Taylor, Nafisa, Salem Cromwell, Conner McCrone
2025-02-07 18:00 - 20:00 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
It’s comedy night at Bird in Hand! Come for the featured comics, stay for the open mic. All ticket sales go back to the featured comedians.
This month brings us 4 featured comedians: Jamar Taylor, Nafisa, Salem Cromwell, Conner McCrone. Plus our host: Satarah Fisher.

Join us at 6pm to hear the featured comedians, or at 7pm for the free open mic! Drinks (alcoholic and non) and snacks will be available at the Bird Bar.

RSVP here!

Reading + Hair Salon hosted by Suzanne Gold of HAIR CLUB
2025-02-06 18:00 - 19:30 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Join us for a reading and Hair Salon event hosted by Suzanne Gold of HAIR CLUB ! Suzanne is the inaugural Writer in Residence with the University Writing Program at Johns Hopkins. She will read an essay-in-progress and then facilitate a Hair Salon, a community-led conversation swirling around the subject of hair in culture. Hair Salons traverse the many resonances that hair might have across creative practice, pop culture, literature, art, and personal hair maintenance, to expand hair’s symbolic implications in daily life. We look forward to hearing your hair stories!
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Suzanne Gold is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and educator based in Baltimore, MD. She lectures on the sacred space of hair across culture and religion, gay hair and respectability politics, and the global hair market for HAIR CLUB, and teaches Art History at Baltimore School for the Arts. She manages the substack Pull out your own Hair, which features essays and autoethnographic writing about hair in art and culture, and which was recognized as a Substack notable newsletter in July 2023. HAIR CLUB’s Hair Salon events, an ongoing series of international conversations, were featured as a case study for socially-engaged art historical praxis in the volume Socially Engaged Art History and Beyond (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021). In 2018-2019, Suzanne presented HAIR CLUB’s work and research at the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Modern Art Salon Series (Salon 33: Hair) in NYC, and the Baltimore Jewelry Center (Baltimore, MD). Her first book of poems and illustrations, ALLTALK, was published by Meekling Press (Chicago, IL) in 2022. She is currently the inaugural Writer in Residence at the University Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University. www.suzanne-gold.com

Bird in Hand presents... with JHU Medicine, Science, and the Humanities: Vital Perspectives on Healthcare and Science, featuring Julia Cummiskey (with Dr. Svea Closser)
2025-02-05 18:00 - 19:30 | 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 first event in February, we are delighted to welcome Julia Cummiskey to share her book Virus Research in Twentieth-Century Uganda: Between Local and Global. This book, which presents the stories of scientists at the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI), a biomedical center founded in 1936, challenges assumptions about global health as an enterprise dominated by researchers based in the Global North and recenters the history of biomedicine in Africa. She will be joined in conversation by Dr. Svea Closser, associate professor in International Health: Social and Behavioral Interventions.
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!
Purchase Virus Research in Twentieth-Century Uganda: Between Local and Global here!
RSVP here!
Julia Cummiskey earned her MPH from Columbia University in 2007 and her PhD in the History of Medicine from Johns Hopkins University in 2017.
From her website: “My current project explores the changing ideas about health communication in modern East Africa from top-down organized campaigns to commercial product promotion and informal channels for spreading information and misinformation. Tentatively titled Selling Health, this book will explore the different forms of communication that have been used to shape the Africans’ behaviors and consumption of products intended to (or purporting to) improve health in the 20th and 21st centuries. Combining history of medicine, African history, and business history, this project will examine the strategies used by pharmaceutical companies, makers of medical devices, providers of medical services, and public health marketing campaigns to promote the consumption of goods and services in the name of health. To understand how recent developments in social marketing and health communication fit into the longer history of efforts to improve the health of people in the Global South, I investigate how different parties have attempted to “sell” health and products, services, or behavior changes that increase health, to people in East Africa at different times in modern history. These campaigns shed light on changing ideas about health, gender, race, and class, among other things. Ultimately, the project will interrogate different imaginations of what constituted healthy life in Africa, who had the authority to define it, who was responsible for delivering it, and who had the opportunity to attain it in different places and moments in time. My work combines archival practices, oral histories, and participant observation and I am especially interested in collaborative projects with anthropologists, public health practitioners, historians, and other researchers, especially those based in Africa.”

Stephen J. Campbell: LEONARDO DA VINCI: AN UNTRACEABLE LIFE (with Elizabeth Cropper)
2025-02-04 18:00 - 19:30 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
To what extent does a historical figure become a myth over time? In this original and provocative book, Stephen Campbell examines the strangeness of Leonardo da Vinci’s words and works, and considers how our image of the Renaissance’s most famous artist is a modern myth.
It is a book that begs for conversation. We are fortunate that Campbell, Professor in the Department of the History of Art at Johns Hopkins University, will join with Elizabeth Cropper, former Dean of the National Gallery of Art’s Center for Advance Study in the Visual Arts, to celebrate the book on its publication date with this event.
Purchase the book here!
RSVP here!
Stephen J. Campbell is the Henry and Elizabeth Wiesenfeld Professor in the Department of the History of Art at Johns Hopkins University. His books include Andrea Mantegna: Humanist Aesthetics, Faith, and the Force of Images and The Endless Periphery: Toward a Geopolitics of Art in Lorenzo Lotto’s Italy.
Elizabeth Cropper was the Dean of the National Gallery of Art’s Center for Advance Study in the Visual Arts (The Center) from 2000 to 2020.

Ruth Franklin: THE MANY LIVES OF ANNE FRANK
2025-02-01 18:00 - 19:30 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Acclaimed biographer Ruth Franklin visits Bird in Hand to discuss her fresh vantage point on the life of Anne Frank in this much-anticipated event! Comprehensively researched but experimental in spirit, The Many Lives of Anne Frank chronicles and interprets Anne’s life as a Jew in Amsterdam during World War II while also telling the story of the diary—its multiple drafts, its discovery, its reception, and its message for today’s world.
Writing alongside Anne rather than over her, Franklin reveals how Anne has been understood and misunderstood, both as a person and as an idea, and opens up new avenues for interpreting her life and writing in today’s hyperpolarized world.
Preorder The Many Lives of Anne Frank here!
RSVP here!
Ruth Franklin is the author of A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction, a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, and of Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Naomi Shihab Nye and Marion Winik: I KNOW ABOUT A THOUSAND THINGS (with Emma Snyder)
2025-01-31 18:00 - 19:30 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Bird in Hand is honored to welcome beloved poet Naomi Shihab Nye, and Baltimore’s own Marion Winik in an event for their co-edited volume I Know About a Thousand Things: The Writings of Ann Alejandro of Uvalde, Texas.
This volume is both a work of high intellect and a work of deep love, created in memory of a shared correspondent: Ann Alejandro. Struggling for 30 years with chronic illness at her ranch outside Uvalde, Texas, Ann Alejandro was a writer of transporting natural talent and prolificity. Though she would have loved to be widely read and appreciated, she was too modest to scale the walls of the publishing world. Thus her chosen form was the letter and her audience close friends and family, including Naomi Nye and Marion Winik. For decades, her often lengthy missives continued to delight her correspondents, blending observation, storytelling, humor, praise, and accounts of her deep attachment to the land and animals that surrounded her in the rural Southwest.
Before Ann’s death in 2019 at the age of 64, Naomi and Marion promised her they would pull together a book from thousands of pages left in their care. They selected the very best of Ann Alejandro, added commentary, and organized the material into chapters with titles like Faith, Motherhood, Land, Snakes, Pain, and Love.
The volume is an extraordinary collection of writing put together by two longtime literary friends in tribute to a third. It includes an introduction by Nye and and an afterword by Winik, as well as a photo gallery of Ann’s life. Emma Snyder, owner of Bird in Hand Coffee & Books and the Ivy Bookshop, will join the co-editors in conversation.
Click here to read “Actually, This Book is a Person,” Liz Hazen’s Q&A with Winik and Nye for the Baltimore Fishbowl.
Purchase I Know About a Thousand Things here!
RSVP Here!
NAOMI SHIHAB NYE has served as Young People’s Poet Laureate of the United States and poetry editor for the New York Times Magazine and the Texas Observer. She has written or edited more than thirty books and has worked as a visiting writer all her life. She received Lifetime Achievement awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, the National Books Critics Circle, and the Arab-American National Museum.
MARION WINIK is the author of The Big Book of the Dead, First Comes Love, and other books. Her essays have recently been published in Agni and The Hopkins Review. She reviews books for numerous publications and hosts The Weekly Reader podcast on NPR. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Baltimore and was a commentator on All Things Considered for 15 years.
Emma Snyder is the owner of The Ivy Bookshop and Bird in Hand Coffee & Books in Baltimore, Maryland. The former Executive Director of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, she holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Wisconsin. A native of Baltimore, she’s delighted to be back home and surrounded by books.

Humanities in the Village at Bird in Hand: Jennifer Stager and Leila Easa: PUBLIC FEMINISM IN TIMES OF CRISIS (with Dora Malech)
2025-01-27 18:30 - 20:00 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
You’re invited to the first 2025 event of 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.
January’s event features Jennifer Stager and Leila Easa, co-authors of Public Feminism in Times of Crisis: From Sappho’s Fragments to Viral Hashtags. This volume examines the public practice of feminism in the age of social media from a moment of acute crisis: the Trump years and the Covid-19 pandemic. But Easa and Stager also locate the foundations of public feminism in history, journeying through broad swatches of time looking for connections between the centuries through art and literature and culture.
It’s a book of great breadth and depth, and we’re glad that Dora Malech, Professor in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, will join the authors in conversation.
Audience Q&A after the reading—all are welcome! And while you’re there, pick up some recommended titles from Bird in Hand, and enjoy the offerings of nighttime beverages.
Preorder Public Feminism in Times of Crisis Here!
RSVP Here!
Leila Easa is professor in the English department at City College of San Francisco.
Jennifer Stager is assistant professor of history of art at Johns Hopkins University and author of Seeing Color in Classical Art: Theories, Practice, and Reception from Antiquity to the Present.
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 a professor in Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and the editor in chief of The Hopkins Review.

New date! SCENE SEEN: Book signing party with Micah E. Wood and Christopher Chester
2025-01-26 19:00 - 21:00 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Join us to celebrate SCENE SEEN, the incredible new art book documenting Baltimore’s music scene from 2016-2024, including portraits of 85 bands taken over those 8 years. Daoure Diongue will kick off the evening with a performance of experimental ambient jazz. Then, stay for a Q&A with photographer Micah E. Wood and designer Christopher Chester, moderated by photographer Devin Allen.
Stop by to enjoy the music, meet and greet with the authors, pick up a signed copy, and spend some time in good company!

RSVP Here

Ralph Hubbell, translator of WAITING FOR THE FEAR (with Eric Puchner)
2025-01-22 18:00 - 19:30 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Bird in Hand is thrilled to feature Ralph Hubbell, translator of the new classic from the New York Review of Books: Waiting for the Fear by Turkish author Oğuz Atay.
Waiting for the Fear collects short stories about people on the margins, from story peddlers to beggars, by one of Turkey’s most innovative fiction writers. A giant of modern Turkish literature, Oğuz Atay remains largely untranslated into English. First published in 1975, Waiting for the Fear is Atay’s only collection of short stories, praised by the Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk for having transformed the art of short fiction.
We’re thrilled that Eric Puchner will join Ralph Hubbell in conversation to discuss the short stories and the questions of translation in the context of this exciting project.
Purchase Waiting for the Fear here!
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Ralph Hubbell is the translator of Oğuz Atay’s story collection Waiting for the Fear (NYRB Classics). Other translations of his, from the Turkish, have appeared in Words Without Borders, the Markaz Review, the Dial, Asymptote, and elsewhere, while his fiction and essays have appeared in the Sun Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books and Tin House’s Lost & Found. He holds an MFA from Johns Hopkins University, where he currently works as the senior program coordinator in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures.
Eric Puchner is the author of a new novel, Dream State, forthcoming in April 2025. His previous books include the novel Model Home, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and two collections of stories, Last Day on Earth and Music Through the Floor. His fiction and personal essays have appeared in GQ, Granta, McSweeney’s, Tin House, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and The Best American Short Stories 2012 and 2017. He has received a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. An associate professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, he lives in Baltimore with his wife, the novelist Katharine Noel, and their two children.

An Evening of Poetry: Introducing BOOK OF CHANGES by Linda Rabben
2025-01-18 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 with local poets, including Linda Rabben, Liz Hazen, Traci O’Dea, Sam Schmidt, Virginia Crawford, and Steven Leyva! Looking forward to Valentine’s Day, poets will read poems about that holiday. They’ll introduce Linda Rabben’s new collection of poems, BOOK OF CHANGES, which spans 50 years, many incarnations and four continents.
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Virginia Crawford is a long-time teaching artist with the Maryland State Arts Council. In April 2021, Apprentice House Press published her full-length collection of poetry, questions for water. One reviewer said, “her work mines the seam between the personal and the political. Crawford brings her lyrical voice and intimate perspective to the challenges faced by twenty-first century families, America, and the world.” Previously her chapbook Touch was published by Finishing Line Press. She has co-edited two anthologies: Poetry Baltimore, poems about a city, and Voices Fly, An Anthology of Exercises and Poems from the Maryland State Arts Council Artist-in-Residence Program. She has appeared at the CityLit Fest, the Baltimore Book Festival, The Gaithersburg Book Festival and others. She earned degrees in creative writing from Emerson College, Boston, and the University of St. Andrew’s, Scotland. She lives and writes in Baltimore,
Maryland. Website: www.virginiacrawford.com
Elizabeth Hazen is a poet and essayist who has published two collections of poetry and whose work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Epoch, Threepenny Review, Shenandoah, and other journals. She lives in Baltimore with her family. Website: https://elizabethhazen.com.
Steven Leyva was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and raised in Houston, Texas. His poems have appeared in Smartish Pace, Scalawag, Nashville Review, jubilat, The Hopkins Review, Prairie Schooner, and Best American Poetry 2020. He is a Cave Canem fellow and author of the chapbook Low Parish and author of The Understudy’s Handbook which won the Jean Feldman Poetry Prize from Washington Writers Publishing House. His second book of poems, The Opposite of Cruelty, is forthcoming from Blair Publishing in Spring 2025. Steven holds an MFA from the University of Baltimore, where he is an associate professor in the Klein Family School of Communications Design.
Traci O’Dea, a poetry editor for the literary journals Smartish Pace and MOKO: Caribbean Arts & Letters, is the author of two poetry collections: Waving (Assure Press, 2021) and
Restricted Movement (Scotland Street Press, 2021) for which she received a Seed Funding
Grant from Arthouse Jersey. Her work has appeared in Poetry, 32Poems, Unsplendid, The
Fiddlehead, A Room of One’s Own, and other literary journals, as well as the anthology Where I See the Sun: Contemporary Poetry in the Virgin Islands. Website: www.traciodea.com.
Linda Rabben is an author, anthropologist and human rights activist. Book of Changes, her twelfth book, is a collection of her poems spanning 50 years. Her poems also have appeared in Texas Quarterly, Poetry and Audience, Pennsylvania Review, Gallery, Voices, Friends Journal and Practicing Anthropology. She has published eleven nonfiction books about human rights and other subjects, including the social history of stained glass in Baltimore. She is an associate research professor of anthropology at the University of Maryland. Website: https://wordworker.net.
Sam Schmidt‘s books include Suburban Myths (Beothuk Books 2012) and Dark Bird (2024, Galileo Press). For more than a decade he edited and published WordHouse, a newsletter for Maryland writers, and hosted the reading series WordHouse at the Minás Gallery. His work has been published in such journals as Passager, Free State Review, and Gargoyle. He is a two-time recipient of the Maryland State Individual Artist Grant and has a master’s degree in comparative literature from Johns Hopkins University. Website: www.darkbirdpoetry.com.

Drew Lichtenberg, SHAKESPEARE IN THE THEATRE (with James Magruder)
2025-01-16 18:00 - 20:00 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Bird in Hand is thrilled to present an evening of conversation on the history of American theater, led by Drew Lichtenberg Artistic Producer/Resident Dramaturg at Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., and centered around his new book Shakespeare in the Theatre. This new volume is a behind-the-scenes account of the premier classical theatre company in the U.S., and its evolution against the changing social and economic landscape of Washington, D.C. James Magruder, author of the recent The Play’s the Thing: Fifty Years of Yale Repertory Theater (1966-2016), will join Lichtenberg in conversation.
Purchase Shakespeare in the Theatre Here!
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Drew Lichtenberg is Artistic Producer/Resident Dramaturg at Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. He has also worked in London, on and off Broadway, and at regional theatres around the country. He teaches at Catholic University and the STC Academy for Classical Acting, and has taught previously at Yale University and the New School. As a guest essayist, his work has appeared in The New York Times and other publications. Shakespeare in The Theatre: Shakespeare Theatre Company is his second book. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his partner, Rebecca, and their children Dylan and Noah.
James Magruder is a fiction writer, playwright, and translator. His adaptations of Dickens, Marivaux, Molière, Gozzi, Lesage, Labiche, Giraudoux, and Hoffmanstal have been staged across America, and in Japan, England, and Germany. His Three French Comedies was named an “Outstanding Literary Translation” by the American Literary Translators Association. He has published four books of fiction (Sugarless, Let Me See It, Love Slaves of Helen Hadley Hall, and Vamp Until Ready), and written the books for two Broadway musicals (Triumph of Love and Head Over Heels, the blank verse mash-up of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia and the song catalog of the Go-Go’s. His first–and last–book of nonfiction, The Play’s the Thing: Fifty Years of Yale Repertory Theater (1966-2016), was published three months ago by Yale University Press.

Hot L Poets Series: Featuring Tracy Dimond and Justin Marks
2025-01-12 16:00 - 18:00 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Sunday January 12, 2025 at 4pm, The HOT L Poets Series continues at Bird in Hand Charles Village (Baltimore) with poets Tracy Dimond and Justin Marks! The reading includes an open mic so bring a poem (1 poem, 3 min. or less). In our 7th year, the reading series is sponsored by Smartish Pace and Baltimore Poets Theatre. Hosts: Clare Banks, David Yezzi, Stephen Reichert Art and Traci Lynn.
Click here to RSVP!
Click here to order Emotion Industry by Traci Dimond.
Click here to order If This Should Reach You In Time by Justin Marks.
Tracy Dimond is a 2016 Baker Artist Award finalist. She is the author of the full length poetry collection, Emotion Industry (Barrelhouse), and four chapbooks, including: TO TRACY LIKE / TO LIKE / LIKE (akinoga press) and Sorry I Wrote So Many Sad Poems Today (Ink Press), winner of Baltimore City Paper’s Best Chapbook. She holds her MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts from the University of Baltimore MFA in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts. Find her online at poetsthatsweat.com.
Justin Marks is the author of The Comedown (Publishing Genius), You’re Going to Miss Me When You’re Bored (Barrelhouse), A Million in Prizes (New Issues Magazine), and the chapbook We Used to Have Parties (Dikembe Press). He is a co-founder of Birds, LLC, an independent poetry press, and lives in New York with his family.

Yellow Arrow Writers In Residence Reading
2025-01-11 18:00 - 19:30 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Join us for an evening in celebration of the 4 Writers in Residence with Baltimore-based Yellow Arrow Press: Ashley Elizabeth, Kavitha Rath, Parisa Saranj, and Steph Sundermann-Zinger! Bird in Hand loves partnering with Yellow Arrow to offer writing space to the writers in residence, and we can’t wait to hear what they’ve been up to with this special reading. We hope you’ll join us.
Click here to RSVP!
Ashley Elizabeth (she/her) is a Baltimore-based poet and winner of the 2024 Garden Party Collective Chapbook Contest. She is a Pushcart-nominated writer and educator whose work has appeared in SWWIM, Voicemail Poems, Rigorous, Lucky Jefferson, and Sage Cigarettes, among others. She is the author of four chapbooks, including red line and CHARM(ed). Her debut full-length, A Family Thing, is out now from ELJ Editions. Find her on IG and Twitter @ae_thepoet or her website aetheblkpoet.com.
Kavitha Rath is a writer based in Baltimore, MD whose publications have appeared in Strange Horizons, The Lorelei Signal, Mythic Delirium, Papercuts Magazine, and more. She interweaves myth, magic, and mysticism into her poetry and short stories. Kavitha has a BA in International Studies and Journalism from Emory University and an MPH/MBA from Johns Hopkins University. She has lived in numerous cities, including Atlanta, Chennai, and London. Follow Kavitha on Instagram @kavithanalini, Tumblr @ishtarverse, and at kavitharath.wordpress.com.
Parisa Saranj (she/her) is an Iranian-American writer and Persian translator. Her writings on contemporary Iranian politics and Persian (Farsi) translations have been published in several publications, including Ms. Magazine, True, Defunct Magazine, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Faultline, Asymptote, Two Lines, and Your Impossible Voice. She has also translated two books, Empty and Me (Lee & Low, 2023) by Azam Mahdavi and Women, Life, Freedom: Our Fight for Human Rights and Equality in Iran (Cornell University Press, 2023) by Nasrin Sotoudeh and two documentaries, Nasrin (2020) and Sansur (2023), on women’s rights in Iran. She is working on a memoir of growing up in Esfahan, Iran, in the 1990s.
Steph Sundermann-Zinger (they/she) is a queer poet living and writing in the Baltimore area. Their work explores themes of identity, relationship, and connection with the natural world, and has appeared in Blue Unicorn, Little Patuxent Review, Lines + Stars, Literary Mama, Every Day Fiction, Litbreak, and other journals. Her poem, “In Praise of Solitude,” was selected as the winner of the 2023 Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize. They hold an MFA from the University of Baltimore.

IvyKids Saturday: Writing Workshop with Katie MacNichol
2025-01-11 09:00 - 10:00 | The Ivy Bookshop, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209, United States
Let’s write stories with author Katie MacNichol! The author of Be Careful, Little Duck will lead a storytelling workshop for children under 8 on this Saturday morning. Be Careful, Little Duck is a wholesome story where kids are in the lead, teaching their grown-up how to be brave as they go on shared adventures.
With coffee for the parents and the shop open for browsing, we invite you to stick around and make a morning of it. Come get warm and spend a cozy morning together!
RSVP Here!
The author, Katie MacNichol is a mom of two boys (eight and six), living in northern Harford County. A communications professional by day, when she decided to pick up her pen to start writing for children, Katie took her skills to another level and focused on personal experiences to connect with other moms with young children just like her. When Katie’s not daydreaming about her Little Duck’s next story, she, her husband, and their two boys can be found adventuring outdoors or traveling to a sunny, sandy place where the water’s always warm.

Rosalia Scalia: UNDER THE RADAR (with Susan Muaddi Darraj)
2025-01-07 18:00 - 19:30 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Bird in Hand is delighted to celebrate the launch of Rosalia Scalia’s second short story collection, Under the Radar! This heartfelt collection offers a poignant look at characters grappling with grief and loss in various forms, with a focus on their struggles to find resilience in the face of such loss.
Susan Muaddi Darraj, author of Behind You Is the Sea and many other books for adults and children, will join Rosalia Scalia in conversation. We’re delighted that this conversation will take place between two pillars of the Baltimore writing community, and we hope you can join us for this special evening.
Click here to RSVP!
Purchase Under the Radar!
Rosalia Scalia is the author of the story collection, Stumbling Toward Grace (Unsolicited Press 2021) and a second collection, Under the Radar, forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in January 2025. She has published in numerous literary journals. She holds an M.A. in writing from Johns Hopkins University and is a Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artist’s Award recipient. She won the Editor’s Select award from Willow Review and the Gary Wilson Short Fiction Award from descant literary magazine. Her fiction has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She lives with her family in Baltimore City. https://www.rosaliascalia.com.​
Susan Muaddi Darraj is an award-winning writer of books for adults and children. She won an American Book Award, two Arab American Book Awards, and a Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artists Award. In 2018, she was named a USA Artists Ford Fellow. Her books include her linked short story collection, A Curious Land, as well as the Farah Rocks children’s book series. She lives in Baltimore, where she teaches creative writing at Harford Community College and the Johns Hopkins University. Her new novel, BEHIND YOU IS THE SEA, was published in January 2024 by HarperVia. It received praise from The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Ms Magazine, and it was named a Best Book of 2024 by The New Yorker and Apple Books.

Hands On Holiday: Winter Solstice with the Waldorf School of Baltimore
2024-12-21 16:30 - 17:30 | The Ivy Bookshop, Back Patio, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209
In the Hands On Holiday event series, the Waldorf School of Baltimore leads festive seasonal children’s and family events on the back patio at the Ivy Bookshop. On December 21, bundle up and join them for a fun and special evening celebration. This program is best for children up to age 8 and will include songs, story time, a holiday craft and a very special candlelit walk around the evergreen spiral. We will end the evening departing with a warm cup of cocoa.
Please purchase tickets through the Waldorf School at this link.

Each year as the Winter Solstice approaches, Waldorf Schools hold the quiet festival of the Winter Spiral. The spiral is ancient and symbolizes the inward-turning we tend to experience as the night grows longer and cold drives us indoors. We think you will find it is simple yet profound experience and a wonderful way to celebrate the season.
All are welcome.

IvyKids Holiday Event: Music with Common Tone and Paper Snowflakes with Laura Gehl!
2024-12-14 09:00 - 10:00 | The Ivy Bookshop, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209, United States
For our annual IvyKids Holiday event, come spend the morning at the bookshop for festive, wintry-themed children’s music and crafts! From 9-10am on December 14, join us for a free winter-themed music class with Common Tone Music in the shop. Plus, make a paper snowflake with Laura Gehl, author of Snow Is… , sip some hot cocoa, and fill out a book wish list.
We’re so happy ’tis the season to invite you over for this! We can’t wait to see you there.
RSVP Here!
Laura Gehl is the author of more than fifty books for young readers, including One Big Pair of Underwear, a Charlotte Zolotow Highly Commended Title and Booklist Books for Youth Editors’ Choice; I Got a Chicken for My Birthday, a Kirkus Reviews Best Picture Book; Donut, a Dolly Parton Imagination Library selection and Junior Library Guild selection; and Apple and Magnolia, a White Ravens International Children’s and Youth Literature Selection. Kirkus Reviews called her newest book, Snow Is…, a “cozy ode to snow” and a “sweet wintry celebration.” Laura lives with her husband and their four kids in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Visit her online at LauraGehl.com.
Common Tone music enrichment programming promotes authentic music exploration for children of all ages. Founded in 2024 by Baltimore-based teachers Mike Feathers and Beth Rausch, Common Tone encourages students of all levels to develop a love for music and a shared desire to explore its boundless possibilities. Through thoughtful curricula, original music, and interactive learning experiences, students explore their creativity and express themselves authentically. Common Tone believes in cultivating a community of dedicated educators and musicians who engage and inspire students by implementing the use of authentic instruments and encouraging self-discovery through music.

Community Craft and Music Night with Common Tone
2024-12-12 18:00 - 20:00 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Bird in Hand joins with local music duo Common Tone to present a cozy wintry night out. Join us for live music and festive community craft– one to help decorate the Bird in Hand space together, and one for you to take home! And of course, book-related holiday shopping and tasty drink specials.
Bring a friend or make a friend – all ages welcome and we can’t wait to see you!
RSVP Here!
