First Friday Comedy Night: Domo Cann, Jake Leizear, Bria Beddoe
2024-09-06 18:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
The new monthly comedy series continues at Bird in Hand, hosted and curated by the one & only Satarah Fisher! This month’s featured comedians: Domo Cann, Jake Leizear, & Bria Beddoe.
Join us at 6pm to hear the featured comedians, or at 7pm for the free open mic! Tickets available here for both. Drinks (alcoholic and non) and snacks will be available at the Bird Bar.

Click here for tickets!

Ivy Kids Saturday: Mandala Crafts with Author Meghana Narayan
2024-09-07 09:00 - 10:00 | The Ivy Bookshop, Back Patio, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209
Head to the Ivy on Saturday morning to make a craft with children’s author Meghana Narayan, whose picture book A Little Bit of Everything is a beautiful story of a child learning about her heritage– all the things that make her her– to pass it along to her new sibling.
Joined by the author herself, we’ll make mandala crafts inspired by the book, and you’ll have a chance to have your copy signed! Stop by any time between 9-10 to join in, and then play some lawn games and browse the shop.
Click here to RSVP!
Click here to order the book or read more about it!
Meghana Narayan is an abstract artist and children’s book author living just outside of Baltimore, Maryland.
Her visual work is rich with texture, often mimicked from patterns and colors found in nature. As a children’s book creator, she feels a great responsibility in creating space for the stories that often go untold. Meghana seeks to bring out the voices and narratives that she was yearning for as a child—those characters that have rich histories and powerful stories to tell.
She draws from her unique experiences as a child of Indian immigrants when creating her stories and art. Between the layers there is a sense of universality that helps to create bridges between us all.
When Meghana is not in her studio, she is reading and creating alongside her daughters (4 years and 16 months), who are her greatest inspiration. She loves to get dirt beneath her fingernails and watch her garden transform every year. Nature and morning light almost always makes their way into her artwork.
Meghana graduated from Teachers College, Columbia University, has an MA in literacy, and has over a decade of teaching experience in the early childhood classroom.

Charm City Spec: September Edition
2024-09-07 18:30 - 20:00 | MD
Come join us at Bird in Hand on the evening of September 7th for the spring edition of Charm City Spec! For this edition of Baltimore’s longstanding speculative fiction reading series, you’ll hear from T. T. Madden, Ann Leblanc, P. H. Low, and J. L. Birchwood!
Whether it’s your first time at the series or you’ve been coming for years, we can’t wait to see you for what is always a warm, wonderful evening in support of exciting authors.
Click here to RSVP!
Books and refreshments will be available at the event.

The Hot L Poets Series, featuring Alejandro Lucero and Peter Vertacnik
2024-09-08 16:00 - 18:00 | The Ivy Bookshop, Back Patio, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209
Sunday September 8th (4pm) THE HOT L POETS SERIES returns after summer break, with poets Alejandro Lucero and Peter Vertacnik! The event will be on the Ivy’s Back Patio.
The reading includes an open mic so bring a poem (1 poem, 3 min. or less). The reading series is co-sponsored by Smartish Pace & Baltimore Poets Theatre.
Click here to RSVP!
Books by the featured poets will be available at the event.
Alejandro Lucero’s chapbook, Sapello Son, was named the Editors’ Selection for the 2022 Frost Place Competition (Bull City Press, 2024). His work appears in Best New Poets, The Cincinnati Review, Gulf Coast, RHINO Poetry, and The Southern Review. He lives in Baltimore, where he is an MFA candidate in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins and a managing editor for The Hopkins Review.
Peter Vertacnik is the author of The Nature of Things Fragile (Criterion Books, 2024), winner of the 2023 New Criterion Poetry Prize. His poetry, translations, and criticism have appeared in journals such as 32 Poems, Bad Lilies, The Cortland Review, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, The Hopkins Review, Literary Matters, Poet Lore, and THINK, among others. With Chase Dearinger, Vertacnik is the co-director of the Cow Creek Chapbook Prize at Pittsburg State University. Currently he resides in northeast Florida where he teaches at Episcopal School of Jacksonville.

Joyce White: COOKING MARYLAND'S WAY (with Kara Harris)
2024-09-10 18:00 - 19:30 | The Ivy Bookshop, Back Patio, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209
In 1963, the Hammond-Harwood House Association published Maryland’s Way, The Hammond-Harwood House Cook Book, which includes over 700 recipes sourced from centuries’ old manuscript recipe books and contributions from Marylanders from across the state. Since its inception over 60 years ago, it has sold over 100,000 copies and is still in demand today.
In the new companion book, Cooking Maryland’s Way: Voices of a Diverse Cuisine, food historian Joyce M. White, supported by several contributing authors, reflects on the chief cultural influences of Maryland’s early foundational cuisine: Native American, African American, German, and British. Extensive research on both the foods and their method of preparation brings the history of Maryland’s diverse cuisine into sharp focus.
The Ivy is delighted to celebrate this seminal volume with a conversation between Joyce White and contributing author Kara Harris, followed by a Q&A and book signing.
Click here to RSVP!
Books will be available at the event.
Joyce White’s work as a food historian began in college in the late 1980s when she was a museum education intern at the Geneva Historical Society/Rose Hill Mansion in the Finger Lakes region of New York where she performed the role of an 1840s kitchen maid and learned to use the hearth to bake cakes with every 4th grade class in the county! From there, she worked as the Education Curator at the Square House Museum, an 18th century tavern located on the Boston Post Rd, in Rye, New York where she cooked frequently on the tavern’s original hearth. Joyce’s interest in Maryland’s food history began in the late 1990s when she moved to Annapolis. She volunteered as a hearth cook at the Claude Moore Colonial Farm in Virginia, was an adjunct instructor of American Studies at Anne Arundel Community College, and worked as a museum educator at the Maryland Historical Society where she studied several 19th century manuscript receipt (recipe) journal books. Joyce was also the consultant for the restoration of the 18th-century kitchen at Historic Annapolis’s William Paca House. In 2006, Joyce became Education Director and Foodways Consultant at the c. 1801 Riversdale House Museum in Riverdale Park, MD. Other accomplishments include being appointed guest curator for the Maryland State exhibit at the Southern Food & Beverage Museum in New Orleans. In 2018, Joyce joined the Board of Trustees at the Annapolis’ c. 1774 Hammond-Harwood House Museum. Joyce is now creating historically accurate faux food items of use at historic sites across the United States.
Joyce has written food history articles for Outlook by the Bay, MarylandRoadTrips.com, Chesapeake Family Magazine, and other publications. She can also be seen on the following television shows: State Plate with Taylor Hicks, Eatin’ the Chesapeake (MPT), CBS News Sunday Morning, and American the Bountiful (PBS).
Along with a B.A. from William Smith College and an M.A. from Penn State University in American Studies, Josh has studied food history with leaders in the field at various historic sites in England and the US.
Kara Mae Harris explores the culinary history of Maryland on her blog Old Line Plate. Old Line Plate has been featured on CBS Mornings, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, and other local media. She lives in Baltimore. “The Blogger Quietly Preserving Maryland’s Culinary History” – Kristina Gaddy, Gastro Obscura.

Vital Perspectives on Healthcare and Science: Thurka Sangaramoorthy, LANDSCAPES OF CARE
2024-09-11 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. And it’s back for the new acadmic year!
This first event will feature Dr. Thurka Sangaramoorthy, author of Landscapes of Care: Immigration and Health in Rural America, with Dr. Jeremy Greene joining in conversation.
This insightful work on rural health in the United States examines the ways immigrants, mainly from Latin America and the Caribbean, navigate the health care system in the United States.
Her extensive ethnographic and policy research shows the personal stories behind health inequity data and helps to give readers a human entry point into the enormous challenges of immigration and rural health.
RSVP here!
Click here to order a copy of the book!
Dr. Thurka Sangaramoorthy is a cultural and medical anthropologist and global health expert with 23 years of experience conducting community-engaged ethnographic research, including rapid assessments, among vulnerable populations in the United States, Africa, and Latin America/Caribbean. Her work is broadly concerned with power and subjectivity in global economies of care. She has worked at this intersection on diverse topics, including global health and migration, infectious disease outbreaks, and environmental health disparities.
She is the author of numerous publications including three books: Landscapes of Care: Immigration and Health in Rural America (University of North Carolina Press, 2023), Rapid Ethnographic Assessments: A Practical Approach and Toolkit for Collaborative Community Research (with Karen Kroeger, Routledge, 2020) and Treating AIDS: Politics of Difference, Paradox of Prevention (Rutgers, 2014), and has one book in press based on her award-winning work: She’s Positive: The Extraordinary Lives of Black Women Living with HIV (Aevo, 2023). Her writing also has been featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, Newsweek, and The Washington Post.
Dr. Sangaramoorthy is Co-Chair of the American Anthropological Association’s Members Programmatic Advisory and Advocacy Committee and a Board member of the Society for Medical Anthropology. She serves as Associate Editor of Public Health Reports, Editorial Board Member of American Anthropologist and Social Science & Medicine, and the inaugural Social, Behavioral, and Qualitative Research Section Editor for PLOS Global Public Health.
She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and San Francisco, her M.P.H. from Columbia University, and her postdoctoral training in infectious diseases at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Sangaramoorthy is Affiliate Professor of Social Anthropology at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. Currently, through June 2024, she serves as part of the Horn of Africa Regional Refugee Team for the US Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration at the US Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where she coordinates the Sudan and South Sudan portfolios.
Dr. Jeremy Greene is broadly interested in the history of disease, and his research explores the ways in which medical technologies come to influence our understandings of what it means to be sick or healthy, normal or abnormal. His broader research interests focus on the history of disease, medical technology, the history of global health, and the relationship between medicine and the marketplace. Dr. Greene received an MD and PhD in the history of science from Harvard in 2005, completed a residency in Internal Medicine at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital in 2008, and is board certified in Internal Medicine and a member of the American College of Physicians. In addition to his appointment at the Institute for the History of Medicine, he practices internal medicine at the East Baltimore Medical Center, a community health center affiliated with Johns Hopkins.

Charles Trueheart: DIPLOMATS AT WAR and Alice McDermott: ABSOLUTION (with Robert Ruby)
2024-09-12 18:00 - 19:30 | The Ivy Bookshop, Back Patio, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209
In this one-of-a-kind evening, The Ivy is delighted to bring together two writers with recent books, in different genres, about Americans on the peripheries of war in Vietnam: children and wives of American servicemen.
In his memoir, Diplomats at War: Friendship and Betrayal on the Brink of the Vietnam Conflict , Charles Trueheart threads his boyhood family experiences through the heart of a dramatic episode of Cold War power politics whose denouement hastened America’s ten-year military involvement in Southeast Asia.
Alice McDermott’s latest novel Absolution gives a riveting account from the perspectives of the wives of American servicemen, as they discover how their own lives as women on the periphery—of politics, of history, of war, of their husbands’ convictions—have been shaped and burdened by the same sort of unintended consequences that followed America’s tragic interference in Southeast Asia.
Robert Ruby, former foreign editor of The Baltimore Sun, will moderate this conversation.
The Ivy is beyond pleased to present this excellent panel for what’s sure to be an insightful evening of conversation.
RSVP Here
Click here to order Diplomats at War!
Click here to order Absolution!
Charles Trueheart is a former foreign correspondent of the Washington Post, a former Associate Director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard, and a former Director of the American Library in Paris.
Alice McDermott’s eighth novel, The Ninth Hour, was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in September 2017. Her seventh novel, Someone, 2013, was a New York Times bestseller, a finalist for the Dublin IMPAC Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Patterson Prize for Fiction, and The Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Someone was also long-listed for the National Book Award. Three of her previous novels, After This, At Weddings and Wakes and That Night, were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Charming Billy won the National Book Award for fiction in 1998 and was a finalist for the Dublin IMPAC Award. That Night was also a finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her stories, essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Harpers, Commonweal and elsewhere. She has received the Whiting Writers Award, the Carington Award for Literary Excellence, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for American Literature. In 2013, she was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. She is the Richard A. Macksey Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University.
Robert Ruby is a former European correspondent, Middle Eastern correspondent and then foreign editor of The Baltimore Sun. He later served as an executive at human rights organizations in New York and Washington. He is the author of Jericho: Dreams, Ruins, Phantoms and Unknown Shore: The Lost History of England’s Arctic Colony.

Ivy Kids Saturday: 1st Day of School Picture Frames with Author Dee Write
2024-09-14 09:00 - 10:00 | The Ivy Bookshop, Back Patio, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209
Head to the Ivy on Saturday morning, September 14th, to make a craft with children’s author Dee Write, whose picture books about Little Ruth follow a young character learning to build confidence and head out into the world (like on the first day of school!) with the support of her family behind her.
Joined by the author herself, we’ll make picture frame crafts for you to use to frame your first-day-of-school photos, and you’ll have a chance to have your books signed! Stop by any time between 9-10 to join in, and then play some lawn games and browse the shop.
Click here to RSVP!
Click here to order Little Ruth: First Day of School!
Dee Write is the author and creator of the Little Ruth Children’s Collection, a book series and products, which includes books such as First Day of School, Backpack Mishap, and Halloween Drama Queen. Dee has enjoyed creating stories ever since she was a child. Her first published work titled, If I Were a Crayon, was printed in her elementary school’s journal when she was just a young girl, and Dee’s zeal for creative writing never waned. Dee lives in Virginia, near Washington, D.C. She loves enjoying time with her family and writing about Little Ruth’s new adventures.

Kenneth Weiss: STILL TRENDING: A DIVIDED AMERICA FROM NEWSPAPER TO NEWSFEED (with Mike Ahlers)
2024-09-17 18:00 - 19:30 | The Ivy Bookshop, Back Patio, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209
Former editor of the Baltimore Sun Kenneth N. Weiss, visits the Ivy to speak about his new book on the earliest form of “social media”– letters to the editor from the 1800s to the 20th century. The letters address topics from pandemics to abortion. It’s remarkable to see how Americans navigate these issues over time, and what lessons, if any, we can learn from them.
Longtime journalist Mike Ahlers will join Weiss in conversation. We hope you can join us!
RSVP here
Click here to order Still Trending!
Kenneth N. Weiss most recently served as a content editor for the Baltimore Sun Media Group. Previously, he held editorial oversight for the Opinion pages in three distinct publications, including The Washington Post Company’s Gazette of Politics and Business. In addition, he worked as a part-time copy editor for the African Institute for Development Policy, contributing to a project that evaluates democracy indicators in African countries. Weiss was a researcher for the film “The War atHome” which was nominated for theAcademy Award for Best Feature-LengthDocumentary in 1979. He instructed an introductory news writing course at Towson University and the University ofMaryland, Baltimore
Mike Ahlers — a native of Baltimore — has spent more than 40 years in journalism, including newspapers, television and the internet. He spent 12 years in local newspapers, becoming managing editor of The Montgomery Journal. He also served as editorial page editor for one year. After a stint at WUSA-TV in Washington, he spent 19 years with CNN, being named senior producer of homeland security in the days following the September 11th attacks. At CNN, he was dispatched to cover the 2000 Florida vote recount, school shootings at Columbine, Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook, plane crashes, hurricanes, tornados, wildfires and floods. In 2002, he stayed home to cover the Washington snipers, who terrorized his neighborhood. A writer and avid photographer, he counts among his greatest influences Baltimore’s own H.L. Mencken and photographer A. Aubrey Bodine. He currently is a free-lance assignment editor with CBS News in Washington.

Book Signing and Happy Hour with Jay Grubb: LAND OF SINS AND PROMISE
2024-09-18 17:00 - 19:00 | The Ivy Bookshop, Back Patio, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209
Come on by the Ivy for a book party for Jay Grubb and his new historical novel, Land of Sins and Promise! Enjoy some music and a beverage while meeting Jay and having your book signed.
A Land of Sins and Promise follows 21-year-old Joshua Banks who accepts a foreign correspondent position to save his future, and confronts an array of Gilded Age questions around morality and journalistic responsibility.
RSVP here!
Books will be available at the event.
Jay G. Grubb is an entertainment attorney working in music, film, and publishing. As a professor teaching the history of jazz, blues, and pop he has confronted the complexities and contradictions of American culture that are at the core of Land of Sins and Promise. He was a columnist for Script Magazine (now merged with Final Draft), and received an Achievement Award in Writing from the National Council of Teachers of English. He is a frequent speaker, including lectures at Peabody Institute and the Maryland Institute College of Arts. He loves to travel, especially to the scout the locations used in his writing.

Living Room at Bird in Hand
2024-09-18 17:30 - 20:00 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Looking for a cozy evening out? Living Room @ Bird in Hand is back! We’ll offer: live music, snacks & drinks for purchase, and some starter craft materials. You can bring: your own crafts, cards, games, and whatever makes you feel at home. See you in our living room!
Neighborhood musicians Emefa Agawu and Jameson Owens join us again, which is such a treat. Stay until the end for a short activity!
Click here to RSVP!

David Daley: ANTIDEMOCRATIC and Madiba Dennie: THE ORIGINALISM TRAP
2024-09-19 18:00 - 19:30 | The Ivy Bookshop, Back Patio, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209
Join us for a conversation to help us engage more fully and critically with this particular political moment, featuring David Daley, author of Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections and Madiba Dennie, author of The Originalism Trap: How Extremists Stole the Constitution and How We the People Can Take It Back.
Both books, published this summer, help us understand that the law and its interpretation is something that we not only can engage with, but should.
Antidemocratic is a riveting yet disturbing history of the fifty-year Republican plot to hijack voting rights in America, its profound implications for the 2024 presidential election, and the crucial role that Chief Justice John Roberts has played in determining how we vote. The Originalism Trap gives a rallying cry for a more just approach to the law that bolsters social justice movements by throwing out originalism—the theory that judges should interpret the Constitution exactly as conservatives say the Founders meant it.
This is sure to be a lively conversation and we hope you’re able to join us on our back patio event space.
RSVP Here
Click here to order Antidemocratic!
Click here to order The Originalism Trap!
David Daley is the author of the national best-seller “Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count,” which has been credited for helping kickstart the movement to reform gerrymandering. His journalism has been published by the New Yorker, the New York Times and the Atlantic, among other publications. He is a senior fellow at FairVote and the former editor in chief of Salon.
Madiba K. Dennie is an attorney, columnist, and professor whose work focuses on fostering an equitable multiracial democracy. Her debut book, The Originalism Trap: How Extremists Stole the Constitution and How We the People Can Take It Back, is now available wherever books are sold. Dennie is the Deputy Editor and Senior Contributor at the critical legal commentary outlet Balls and Strikes. In her previous role as a counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, she provided legal and policy analysis regarding a range of democracy issues including the census, the courts, and attempts to disempower communities of color. Her legal and political commentary has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and more. Dennie has been interviewed on-air about race, gender, and the law on outlets including the BBC and MSNBC. She has taught at Western Washington University and NYU School of Law. She earned her law degree from Columbia Law School and her undergraduate degree from Princeton University, where she concentrated in Politics and earned a certificate in African-American Studies. Her hot takes are not legal advice.

A.S. King: PICK THE LOCK (with Paula Willey)
2024-09-23 18:00 - 19:30 | The Ivy Bookshop, Back Patio, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209
A frequent request around the shop: “What would you recommend for a young reader approaching adult fiction?” A.S. King is perfect for this, and especially her newest novel, PICK THE LOCK, which tells of teenage Jane’s bizarre and brilliant journey to reconnect with her mother by breaking out of her shell and composing a punk opera.
We’re delighted that beloved Baltimore librarian and longtime advocate for inclusive books and programming Paula Willey will join King in conversation.
We hope you’ll join us on September 23rd to meet the author, hear her talk about PICK THE LOCK, and have your book signed.
Click here to RSVP!
Click here to order PICK THE LOCK!
A.S. King is the bestselling and award-winning author of many acclaimed books for young readers. Her novel Dig and the anthology The Collectors both won the Michael L. Printz Award, and her novel Ask The Passengers won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. The New York Times called her “one of the best YA writers working today.” In 2022, she was awarded the American Library Association’s Margaret A. Edwards Award for her significant contribution to YA literature. King spends many months of the year traveling the country talking to teenagers about writing, mental health, and succotash. She lives in Pennsylvania.
Paula Willey (she/ella) is a Baltimore librarian, currently working as a buyer for the national children’s literacy nonprofit First Book. Co-author of The Passive Programming Playbook: 101 Ways to Get Library Customers Off the Sidelines, Paula reads hundreds of books a year looking for just the right titles to appeal to, educate and entertain the students served by First Book’s network of Title I teachers and others serving low-income communities. She also writes and speaks on inclusive library programming, media literacy, service to people with justice system involvement, and the appeal of horror fiction to children and teens.

Sidney Morrison: FREDERICK DOUGLASS: A NOVEL
2024-09-24 18:00 - 19:30 | The Ivy Bookshop, Back Patio, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209
Sidney Morrison’s new novel about one of history’s– and Baltimore history’s– greatest, takes the spotlight in this event on September 24th at the Ivy’s back patio. Frederick Douglass: A Novel portrays Douglass’ life in the richness of its conflict, drama, suspense, and ordinary interpersonal interactions, alongside the familiar, astonishing arc from enslavement to abolitionist public figure, journalist, and politician. Join us for an evening to hear from the author about the making of the novel, to learn about this historical figure with an important Baltimore chapter, and to ask your own questions!
Click here to RSVP!
Click here to order Frederick Douglass: A Novel!
Sidney Morrison was born in New York City and now lives in Los Angeles with his wife Karan. He is a retired teacher and school principal (elementary, middle and high school, one of the few serving as principal at all three levels), and now a part-time educational consultant and leadership coach for school leaders in school districts in Southern California. He also provides professional development in workshops about ethical leadership and diversity/equity issues in schools.
Before retiring he worked in the public schools for 36 years serving as a History and English teacher, then as an assistant principal and principal. Elected to the Board of Directors of the Association of California School Administrations, representing the LA south bay area, he was then elected as state president for 1998-1999. He is proud of ACSA’s recognition of his leadership through two major awards. He is also proud of the Bronze Star earned as a medical corpsman assisting the wounded in a minefield during the Vietnam War.
He is working on his next historical novel on the life of James Hemings, brother of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson’s slave and personal chef.

James Magruder: THE PLAY'S THE THING: Fifty Years of Yale Repertory Theatre (1966-2016) (with David Yezzi)
2024-09-26 18:00 - 19:30 | The Ivy Bookshop, Back Patio, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209
Presenting the Ivy’s very own bookseller Jim Magruder, in celebration of his impressive new book project The Play’s the Thing: Fifty Years of Yale Repertory Theatre (1966-2016)! David Yezzi will join Magruder to discuss this thoughtful chronicle, which shows how dozens of theater artists have played their parts in the evolution of a sterling American institution. Each of its four chapters is dedicated to one of the Yale Rep’s artistic directors to date: Robert Brustein, Lloyd Richards, Stan Wojewodski Jr., and James Bundy.
More than just a valentine to an important American theater, The Play’s the Thing is a story about institution-building and the force of personality; about the tug-of-war between vision and realpolitik; and about the continuous negotiation between educational needs and artistic demands.
RSVP here
Click here to order The Play’s The Thing!
James Magruder has long-standing Yale ties: three advanced degrees; an award-winning dissertation, Three French Comedies, published by Yale University Press in 1996; two adaptations produced at Yale Repertory Theatre; and fourteen years’ teaching translation and adaptation at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. He has also published four novels, among them Love Slaves of Helen Hadley Hall, set at Yale in 1983–84, and had two musicals reach the Broadway stage. He has been a Baltimore resident for 33 years, since 1991.
David Yezzi’s latest books are Late Romance: Anthony Hecht—A Poet’s Life (St. Martin’s Press) and More Things in Heaven: New and Selected Poems (Measure Press). He is the editor of The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets, foreword by J. D. McClatchy. As an actor, he recently performed the roles of King Lear (Baltimore Shakespeare Factory) and Hamlet’s Ghost/Player King (Chesapeake Shakespeare). His verse play Schnauzer (2018), produced by The Baltimore Poets Theater, was published by Exot Books. His libretto for David Conte’s opera Firebird Motel has been widely performed and is available on CD from Arsis. A former director of the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y in New York, he was a 2022 short-term visiting fellow at Jesus College, Oxford.

Workshop with Vital Matters: Writing with the Elements, a Generative Workshop
2024-09-28 15:00 - 18:00 | The Ivy Bookshop, Garden, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209, United States
Get expert tips on incorporating climate activism into creative writing!
Local theater-for-climate-justice organization Vital Matters hosts Jacob Budenz in this 3-hour writing workshop in the gardens of the Ivy.
Burgeoning climate activists and seasoned environmental writers alike may wonder where to begin when faced with the mammoth task of tackling climate change through writing. In this generative workshop, queer author and performance artist Jacob Budenz will provide resources, space, and time to write with the elements, sharing tips on weaving climate activism into creative writing, making the political personal and the personal political, and creatively engaging with the existential threats to the natural world with an eye toward hope and connection.
Located in the gardens of the Ivy Bookshop, Writing with the Elements will immerse participants in climate writing alongside the elements they wish to protect, offering participants the opportunity to share their writing around a fire at the workshop’s culmination.
Click here for tickets!
Click here to learn more about Vital Matters!

Writers in Baltimore Schools at the Baltimore Book Festival
2024-09-29 11:00 - 12:00 | Baltimore Book Festival, 31st St. Stage
We’re so excited to see you at the Baltimore Book Festival, where you can find us at our booth on Sept. 28-29. On Sunday, September 29th, we are thrilled to be hosting the 31st St. Stage!
At 11am, join us in welcoming Writers in Baltimore Schools for the launch of THE PLAYGROUND, an anthology of work by their youngest writers from Baltimore City Schools, created by their Youthworks Baltimore interns!

Telling Baltimore’s Story: Devin Allen, Tia Goodson, Alexis Taylor, & Alanah Nichole Davis
2024-09-29 12:00 - 13:00 | Baltimore Book Festival, 31st St. Stage
We’re so excited to see you at the Baltimore Book Festival, where you can find us at our booth on Sept. 28-29. On Sunday, September 29th, we are thrilled to be hosting the 31st St. Stage! At 12pm, join us in welcoming Devin Allen, Tia Goodson, Alexis Taylor, & Alanah Nichole Davis for a conversation about how we tell the story of Baltimore to the wider world.

Devin Allen is a self-taught artist who gained national attention when his photograph of the Baltimore Uprising was published on the cover of TIME in May 2015. A native of Baltimore, Devin achieved a rare feat as only the third amateur photographer TIME selected to feature on its cover.

In 2017, he was named the first fellow of the Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship and was nominated for an NAACP Image Award as a debut author for his book, A Beautiful Ghetto (Haymarket Books).
Devin was chosen to serve as a 2020 Ambassador for Leica Camera AG; and following the untimely deaths of George Floyd, Tony McDade, and Breonna Taylor, TIME once again acknowledged and honored Devin’s artistry by selecting one of his images from a Black Trans Lives Matter protest to grace the cover of their June 2020 issue.
Devin’s powerful imagery of Black life has been featured in New York Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Aperture.
His photography is also featured in permanent collections at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, the Jule Collins Smith Museum, and The Studio Museum in Harlem.
His new book—No Justice, No Peace: From the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter—was released in October 2022 under the Legacy Lit imprint of Hachette Book Group.
Tia Goodson is a seasoned award-winning film and TV professional based in Baltimore, and the Senior Director of Marketing & Communications at the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts.
Alexis Taylor is the Managing Editor of the AFRO News.
Alanah Nichole Davis (She/Her) is a Baltimore-raised, award-winning journalist. She’s currently the Chief Storyteller in Baltimore’s Mayor’s Office of Performance and Innovation where she uses storytelling to showcase the positive impact of Baltimore City Government on its communities. With experience as a Lead Reporter covering technology, design, and civic news, she has a knack for simplifying complex topics for a wide audience.

Beyond journalism, Davis is deeply involved in Baltimore’s arts, land stewardship, and youth engagement efforts. Holding an MA in Social Design from Maryland Institute College of Art, she brings broad perspective and imagination to her work.
Known affectionately as Baltimore’s Godmother, Alanah often hosts events, moderates panels, mentors, and speaks publicly, drawing from her identity as a Black woman, human-centered designer, and mother. In her free time, she enjoys sharing crabs with friends, swimming, and savoring a good mocktail.
Davis work can be seen in Next City, Maryland Matters, Baltimore Magazine, Baltimore Banner, Salon, BmoreArt, and so many more.

The Many Cultures of Maryland, Told Through Short Stories: Susan Muaddi Darraj & Rion Amilcar Scott
2024-09-29 13:00 - 14:00 | Baltimore Book Festival, 31st St. Stage
We’re so excited to see you at the Baltimore Book Festival, where you can find us at our booth on Sept. 28-29. On Sunday, September 29th, we are thrilled to be hosting the 31st St. Stage!

At 1pm, we’re honored to welcome Susan Muaddi Darraj, author of Behind You is the Sea, and Rion Amilcar Scott, author of The World Doesn’t Require You, to discuss the short story as a tool for authentically portraying the experiences of Marylanders and the histories they inherit.

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.
Rion Amilcar Scott is the author of the story collection, The World Doesn’t Require You (Norton/Liveright, August 2019), a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and winner of the 2020 Towson Prize for Literature. His debut story collection, Insurrections (University Press of Kentucky, 2016), was awarded the 2017 PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2017 Hillsdale Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. His work has been published in places such as The New Yorker, The Kenyon Review, Crab Orchard Review, Best Small Fictions 2020 and The Rumpus, among others. His story, “Shape-ups at Delilah’s” was published in Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020. He was raised in Silver Spring, Maryland and earned an MFA from George Mason University where he won the Mary Roberts Rinehart award, a Completion Fellowship and an Alumni Exemplar Award. He has received fellowships from Bread Loaf Writing Conference, Kimbilio and the Colgate Writing Conference as well as a 2019 Maryland Individual Artist Award. Presently he teaches Creative Writing at the University of Maryland.

Taking Friendship Seriously: Writing the Relationships that Sustain Us with Rhaina Cohen, Lilly Dancyger, & Emefa Addo Agawu
2024-09-29 14:00 - 15:00 | Baltimore Book Festival, 31st St. Stage
We’re so excited to see you at the Baltimore Book Festival, where you can find us at our booth on Sept. 28-29. On Sunday, September 29th, we are thrilled to be hosting the 31st St. Stage!
For this 2pm panel, we’re so excited to be joined by Rhaina Cohen, author of The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center, and Lilly Dancyger, author of First Love: Essays on Friendship, who will discuss their recent works of nonfiction in conversation with Baltimore-based writer and editor Emefa Addo Agawu.
Rhaina Cohen is the bestselling author of The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center and an award-winning producer and editor for NPR’s Embedded podcast. Her writing about social connection has been published by The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME and other outlets, and her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholars Program. Cohen lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband and close friends.
Lilly Dancyger is the author of First Love: Essays on Friendship, and Negative Space. She lives in New York City, and is a 2023 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in nonfiction from The New York Foundation for the Arts. She teaches creative nonfiction in the MFA programs at Columbia University and Randolph College, and her work has been published by The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Playboy, Elle, and more. Find her on Twitter and Instagram at @lillydancyger, and on Substack at The Word Cave.
Emefa Addo Agawu is a Baltimore-based writer and editor and a 2024 Moynihan Public Scholar at The City University of New York. Previously, Agawu produced The Ezra Klein Show at The New York Times and wrote editorials at The Washington Post as a member of the paper’s editorial board. For her reporting on public safety, Agawu won the 2022 Burl Osborne Editorial and Opinion Award and was a finalist for the 2021 Online Journalism Awards Excellence in Social Justice Reporting. She is currently at work on a collection of essays about attention.

Remembering the 300 Man March: Darnyle Wharton interviewed by J.M. Giordano
2024-09-29 15:00 - 16:00 | Baltimore Book Festival, 31st St. Stage
We’re so excited to see you at the Baltimore Book Festival, where you can find us at our booth on Sept. 28-29. On Sunday, September 29th, we are thrilled to be hosting the 31st St. Stage!
At 3pm, join us for a special commemorative event for the 10-year anniversary of the 300 Man March in Baltimore. Darnyle Wharton, activist and Co-Organizer, and Squad Member of the Baltimore Peace Movement, will be interviewed by photojournalist J.M. Giordano, about Wharton’s remembrance of the 300 Man March. Wharton, his fellow activists with Baltimore Peace Movement, and marchers were featured in Giordano’s book 13-23: How a Summer of Violence Sparked a Decade of Activism.
About Darnyle Wharton: As a husband and father of two beautiful girls, and an advocate for non-violence, peace, love, and light, Darnyle Wharton is one of the co-organizers for the Baltimore Ceasefire 365 Movement alongside the founder, Erricka Bridgeford, co-founder, Ogun Gordy, and the other co-organizers, Letrice Gant, Jakia Jason, and Michelle Sellers. He is also a member of the all Black men community support group, Band of Brovaz, where he serves as the Communications officer.
He is the Northern District Community Liaison for the Baltimore City State’s Attorney Office. He is a part of a team of community liaisons who give the residents of Baltimore information and updates on the community engagement initiatives, resources, and policies of the State’s Attorney Office while getting feedback and concerns from them about public safety and what the office is doing to improve the crime situation in the city. Darnyle Wharton is a trained mediator for the Baltimore Community Mediation Center where they strive to help Baltimore City with conflict Resolution through mediation.
Before this, he was a member of 300 Men March on their Street Engagement Team and Village Keepers, a community support group that formed after 300 men March was disbanded. He also serves as the President of the Men’s Ministry group, M.O.V.E. (Men of Empowerment and Valor), at Empowerment Temple AME Church, where he currently worships.
Darnyle’s favorite phrase, is, Nothing changes if nothing changes. His fight to decrease Baltimore’s murder rate by inspiring and invigorating the community to get involved continues on and will be a part of what he does forever.
About J.M. Giordano: This year he was short-listed for the National Gallery’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Prize and will be featured in American Photography Annual 40 for his second book 13-23 (Nighted Life Press), covering a decade of Baltimore’s homicide rate. Work from the book was also awarded a Curator’s Choice award at Paris Photo His international photographs covering the collapse of the steel industry are the subject of a solo show at the Museum of Industry in Baltimore. He is at work on his next book Trumpland (Nighted Life Press), due out in October.

Humanities in the Village with Diego Javier Luis, THE FIRST ASIANS IN THE AMERICAS (with Johaina Katinka Crisostomo)
2024-09-30 18:30 - 20:00 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
You’re invited to the September edition 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.
This month, the series features Dr. Diego Javier Luis, whose book The First Asians in the Americas: A Transpacific History, provides a definitive account of transpacific Asian movement through the Spanish empire—from Manila to Acapulco and beyond—and its implications for the history of race and colonization in the Americas. Dr. Johaina Katinka Crisostomo will join Dr. Luis 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.
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Click here to order The First Asians in the Americas!
Diego Javier Luis is the Rohrbaugh Family Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Johns Hopkins University. He specializes in the histories of colonial Latin America and the Spanish Pacific World. He is the author of The First Asians in the Americas: A Transpacific History, published with Harvard University Press in 2024. In his free time, Luis enjoys photography, hiking, and fencing.
Johaina K. Crisostomo received her B.A. from Stanford University in 2011 and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2022. Her work thinks through the intersections between Asian/Asian American and Latinx/Latinx American literatures, engaging literature, political philosophy, religion, and comparative empire studies.

Lou Hammond and Paul Travers: THEY CALL ME SWEET LOU: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A FOOTBALL OFFICIAL
2024-10-01 18:00 - 19:30 | The Ivy Bookshop, Back Patio, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209
Join us for a special football season event for Ravens fans, featuring Ravens official Lou Hammond. Co-written with Paul Travers, They Call Me Sweet Lou: The Life and Times of a Football Official is a hilarious and heroic journey from the hardscrabble lot at Baltimore’s Radecke Park to the manicured lawn at M&T Bank Stadium. We’re so excited to hear from both Lou and Paul as they discuss the trials and tribulations of refereeing football with the book as reference point.
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Click here to order They Call Me Sweet Lou!
Lou Hammond has officiated football games for over fifty years in sandlot, high school, college, flag, semipro, arena, the Canadian Football League, and the National Football League. During his career, he served on the board of directors for various leagues and conferences. He currently works game-day functions in the booth for the NCAA and NFL. In addition to his many awards, he was elected to the Minor League Football Hall of Fame in 1998.
Paul Travers, a prior Marine Corps officer, park ranger, security analyst, and ballpark tour guide, has written numerous books, including the bestseller Eyewitness to Infamy: An Oral History of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. In 2009, he through-hiked the Appalachian Trail as a fundraiser for veterans with Alzheimer’s disease. His most recent book, Dancing with the Mountains: Alzheimer’s, Angels, and the Appalachian Trail, chronicles that adventure.

Vital Perspectives on Healthcare and Science: Nicole Fabricant, FIGHTING TO BREATHE (with Nicole King)
2024-10-02 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. The October edition, focused specifically on Baltimore, features Dr. Nicole Fabricant, author of FIGHTING TO BREATHE: Race, Toxicity, and the Rise of Youth Activism in Baltimore, with Dr. Nicole King joining in conversation.
FIGHTING TO BREATHE is an essential book for Baltimore. Industrial toxic emissions on the South Baltimore Peninsula are among the highest in the nation. Because of the concentration of factories and other chemical industries in their neighborhoods, residents face elevated rates of lung cancer and other respiratory illnesses in addition to heart attacks, strokes, and cardiovascular disease, all of which can lead to premature death. Fighting to Breathe follows a dynamic and creative group of high school students who decided to fight back against the race- and class-based health disparities and inequality in their city. For more than a decade, student organizers stood up to unequal land use practices and the proposed construction of an incinerator and instead initiated new waste management strategies. As a Baltimore resident and activist-scholar, Nicole Fabricant documents how these young organizers came to envision, design, and create a more just and sustainable Baltimore.
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Click here to order FIGHTING TO BREATHE!
Nicole Fabricant received a BA from Mount Holyoke College in 1999 in urban anthropology and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 2009. She completed a presidential post-doc at the University of South Florida in 2010 where she focused on the global water crisis and joined Towson University in the Fall of 2010. Dr. Fabricant’s teaching interests include Revolution in Latin America, Resource Wars of the 21st Century, Environmental (In)justice, and Gender and Labor in Latin America.
For the past several years, Dr. Fabricant has been developing a Participatory Action Research (PAR) project that is presently investigating structural injustices in Curtis Bay, South Baltimore. Much of the data collection and analytic work is being conducted by Benjamin Franklin high-school youth alongside Towson University students who are completing their senior capstone in anthropology. One major question has animated this research: Why do communities experience environmental problems and hazards unevenly? Towson University students have assembled small research collectives and worked collaboratively with youth to document the multiple layers of industrial toxicity, and the cumulative effects upon residents’ health and well-being. The PAR project with undergraduates and high-school students feeds directly into her broader research agenda, as we are creatively mapping how environmental hazards lead to political action or inaction during specific historic moments.
Nicole King is an associate professor of the Department of American Studies, an affiliate professor in the Language, Literacy, and Culture doctoral program, and director of the Orser Center for the Study of Place, Community, and Culture at UMBC.
She received her PhD in American studies from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2008 and a MA in comparative literature and cultural studies from the University of New Mexico in 2001. Her research and teaching interests focus on issues of place, power, and economic development. King’s scholarship analyzes changes to the social and built environment during the rise of consumer culture in the twentieth century—such as the development of vernacular landscapes of tourism in the U.S. South and the decline of industrial neighborhoods in Baltimore. She is an editor of the book Baltimore Revisited: Stories of Inequality and Resistance in a U.S. City (Rutgers University Press, 2019) and the author of Sombreros and Motorcycles in a Newer South: The Politics of Aesthetics in South Carolina’s Tourism Industry (University Press of Mississippi, 2012). She co-founded the Baltimore Traces: Communities in Transition public humanities project where students work with local partners to research historic neighborhoods and complete oral history interviews focused on preserving the opinions of those who live and work in Baltimore. King’s research and teaching is based on the belief that looking and listening to a place can be a transformative act.

Hahrie Han: UNDIVIDED: THE QUEST FOR RACIAL SOLIDARITY IN AN AMERICAN CHURCH (with David Ware)
2024-10-03 18:00 - 19:30 | The Ivy Bookshop, Back Patio, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209
The Ivy is delighted to welcome Hahrie Han for a hometown event celebrating her new book Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church, the story of a faith-based program designed to foster antiracism and systemic change.
The book emerged out of the observation that in 2016, even as Ohio helped deliver victory to presidential candidate Donald Trump, Cincinnati voters also passed a ballot initiative for universal preschool. The margin was so large that many who elected Trump must have—paradoxically—also voted for the initiative: how could the same citizens support such philosophically disparate aims? What had convinced residents of this Midwestern, Rust Belt community to raise their own taxes to provide early childhood education focused on the poorest—and mostly Black—communities?
Rev. David Ware, the Rector of Baltimore’s Church of the Redeemer, will join Han in conversation about the transformative possibilities for racial solidarity in a moment of deep divisiveness in America.
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Hahrie Han is the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Professor of Political Science, the inaugural director of the SNF Agora Institute, and the director of the P3 research lab at Johns Hopkins University. An elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she has published four previous books: Prisms of the People, How Organizations Develop Activists, Groundbreakers, and Moved to Action. Her most recent book was awarded the 2022 Michael Harrington Book Award from the American Political Science Association for “scholarship contributing to the struggle for a better world,” and she was also named a 2022 Social Innovation Thought Leader of the Year by the World Economic Forum’s Schwab Foundation. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Republic, among other national publications. The daughter of Korean immigrants, she lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
Rev. David Ware is the current Rector of Baltimore’s Church of the Redeemer, where he has been since 2015. Raised in Arkansas, Ware holds a BA in English from Yale (1984), an MLS from St. John’s College (1991) and an MDiv from General Theological Seminary (1995). Ware spent time teaching at Sidwell Friends School during the late 80’s and early 90’s before serving as Head of the Upper School of St. Albans, DC in the early 2000’s. He has worked as an Episcopal priest for 29 years. Prior to moving to Baltimore, he served as rector in Cold Spring Harbor, NY.
Exerpted below is a piece of a letter from Rev. David Ware offering personal insights into his roots and the framework of his work.

I came to consciousness lying under a folding table, woken up by an image of church that still inspires me, more of a verb than a noun. Following Jesus is a way to live, and it seeks justice and builds up people and neighborhoods that are broken and tired. And all that we have is a gift—from parents, from friends, from our own hard work, from God—meant to help and heal the world. What’s waking you up right now […] in Baltimore, in your family or around the world? Get engaged [with your neighbors;] I imagine we will lose a little sleep, but the promise is that in the process we’ll find our lives.

Book Signing Happy Hour with Bob Bowie & Featured Writers: The Older You Are The Shorter Your Stories Should Be
2024-10-04 17:00 - 19:00 | The Ivy Bookshop, Back Patio, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209
Bob Bowie launches his new book of short essays, The Older You Are The Shorter Your Stories Should Be, alongside several beloved local writers who will read excerpts from the book as “toasts” during the evening happy hour. Come at 5 and stay the whole time, or drop by between 5-7pm to hear a toast, meet Bob, and have your book signed!
The Older You Are The Shorter Your Stories Should Be is a warm, witty collection of bite-sized stories, outsized characters, offbeat observations, and globe-trotting misadventures. Bob Bowie writes with clear-eyed honesty, compassion, and humor (often at his own expense).
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Robert Bowie, Jr. has worked as a house painter, bartender, lawyer, adjunct professor, poet, author, and playwright. He lives in Maryland.He has had 10 plays produced, including Onaje, which premiered with five sold-out performances at FringeNYC in 2018. An expanded version is currently in development.Bob’s well-reviewed collection of sonnets, An Accidental Diary, is available to order online: https://robertbowiejr.com/booklink.Bob continues to post regularly on his blog at https://robertbowiejr.com.

First Friday Comedy Show: Jeff King, Bobbie Ray, Hannah Alden Jeffrey
2024-10-04 18:00 - 20:30 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
The monthly comedy series continues at Bird in Hand, hosted and curated by the one & only Satarah Fisher! This month’s featured comedians: Jeff King, Bobbie Ray, Hannah Alden Jeffrey.
Join us at 6pm to hear the featured comedians, or at 7pm for the free open mic! Tickets available here for both. Drinks (alcoholic and non) and snacks will be available at the Bird Bar.
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Telling African Stories: A Family Event with Morenike Oyenusi
2024-10-05 12:00 - 14:00 | The Ivy Bookshop, Back Patio, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209
Bring your children (ages 6-12) and the whole family to an engaging workshop with local author Morenike Euba Oyenusi as she shares her journey of writing and publishing Chasing Butterflies in the Sunlight. Hear a story from the book, be inspired to find your voices and tell your stories and participate in fun hands-on activities that will spark your creativity! Plus, the first 24 families will receive a free copy of the book and an activity workbook.
Chasing Butterflies in the Sunlight is an illustrated chapter book of stories for children aged five to twelve. It was a finalist in the 2021 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, the largest international awards program for indie authors and publishers. The book narrates the joys and innocence of childhood as experienced by Ronke, a young girl growing up on a culturally and racially diverse university campus in Nigeria. Through Ronke’s adventures, the book beautifully showcases Nigeria’s and West Africa’s rich history, geography, culture, and culinary delights.
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Morenike Euba Oyenusi is a Nigerian American author, publisher, and lawyer with degrees from the University of London and Jesus College, Cambridge. Passionate about children’s fiction, poetry, and being an inspiration to others, in 2020, Ms. Oyenusi founded Paradise Restored Publishing which has published her three award-winning books: Chasing Butterflies in the Sunlight, Isaiah and the Orchestra of Sounds, and The Shepherd’s Care. The imprint has also published Dr. Patricia Aladekoba’s Solace: Empowering Pastor’s Wives to Prevent and Overcome Burnout.
When Ms. Oyenusi isn’t juggling fictional or legal writing, you will probably find her immersed in a good piece of literary fiction, at the theater, watching a movie, jet-setting to new places, hanging out with her children and friends, or discovering new ways to tweak recipes —usually after very long walks that fuel creativity. Her next book, The Primary Colors, will be published in 2025.

Megan Pinto: SAINTS OF LITTLE FAITH (with Samuel Cheney, Jimin Seo, and Jess Yuan)
2024-10-06 16:00 - 17:30 | Bird in Hand Coffee & Books, 11 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Presenting a Sunday afternoon of poetry at Bird in Hand, celebrating Megan Pinto’s debut collection Saints of Little Faith! “These are beautifully rendered ruminative and thoughtful coming- of-age poems,” says Victoria Chang, and we couldn’t agree more. Exciting for widely-read poetry lovers or those looking to get into contemporary poetry, Saints of Little Faith is a fine-tuned collection of meditative transformations that engage with South Asian experiences of addiction, domestic violence, and mental illness, refusing to ignore narratives treated as unspeakable and overlooked by the English canon.
In one of our favorite formats for poetry events, several poets will join Megan Pinto to read alongside her, including Jess Yuan, Samuel Cheney, and Jimin Seo.
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Click here to order Saints of Little Faith!
Megan Pinto is the author of Saints of Little Faith (Four Way Books, 2024). Her poems can be found in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Ploughshares, AAWW’s The Margins, Lit Hub and elsewhere. Megan has received scholarships and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference, Storyknife, The Peace Studio and an Amy Award from Poets & Writers. Most recently, she received the 2023 Anne Halley Poetry Prize from the Massachusetts Review and was selected for Poets & Writers 2024 Get the Word Out poetry cohort. Megan lives in Brooklyn and holds an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson.
Samuel Cheney is from Centerville, Utah. He is the winner of a Pushcart Prize and was the 2021-23 Tickner Writer-in-Residence at Gilman School. His poems are in Copper Nickel, Michigan Quarterly Review, Missouri Review, Salmagundi, The Southern Review, and other magazines. He has been awarded scholarships from Bread Loaf and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and is Program Coordinator of The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins and Assistant Editor of Smartish Pace. Before moving to Baltimore, he worked at Grove Press, Gasser Grunert gallery, and the Criterion Collection. His debut manuscript, BELIEVERS, was a Finalist for the 2024 National Poetry Series.
Jimin Seo, born in Seoul, Korea immigrated to the US at the age of eight. His books include OSSIA (Changes 2024), and the chapbook A – 1982. His most recent projects were Poems of Consumption with H. Sinno at the Barbican Centre in London, and a site activation for salazarsequeromedina’s Open Pavilion at the 4th Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism.
Jess Yuan is a poet, educator, and architect. She is the author of Slow Render (2024), winner of the Airlie Prize, and Threshold Amnesia (2020), winner of the Yemassee Chapbook Contest. She is a Kundiman Fellow, and her poems appear in Best New Poets, Tupelo Quarterly Review, jubilat, Beloit Poetry Journal, Pleiades, and elsewhere. She is currently an MFA candidate in Poetry at the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins.

Book Signing with Travis Brady: Make Room for Healing: 40 Tips from a Breast Cancer Survivor
2024-10-11 17:00 - 19:00 | The Ivy Bookshop, Back Patio, 5928 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD, 21209
We always count ourselves lucky when a book merges the practical with the inspirational, and that’s exactly what Travis Brady has done in writing Make Room for Healing: 40 Tips from a Breast Cancer Survivor. Accessible, heartfelt, and witty, this short collection of simple, practical tips offers self-care, healing, and recovery, from a stage-3 breast cancer survivor. Whether this situation applies to you or to someone you love, the organization of this book is designed to sequentially walk with you through treatment, and to share all the information she wished she had when she was first diagnosed.
Drop in any time during this 5-7pm event to meet-and-greet with Travis, have your book signed, and enjoy some refreshments.
Click here to RSVP!
Click here to order Make Room for Healing!
Travis Brady is surviving and thriving past her Stage 3A ER+ PR+ breast cancer diagnosis in 2016. Brady has spent her 30-year career in marketing and employee relations working for some global powerhouses like Levi Strauss & Co and Visa. She’s at her best when turning around underperforming brands or teams. Her modus operandi is to “maximize” by looking for ways to make things better and improve. This inherent nature led her to write, Make Room for Healing: 40 Tips from a Breast Cancer Survivor, to pay forward all the help she received when undergoing treatment. Brady lives in Chapel Hill, NC with her husband and daughter. To learn more, please visit TravisBrady.com and follow the author on Instagram @travis_brady.
