The 5ive:ten Readings

February 18th @ Minas: Lia Purpura, Adam Robinson, Timmy Reed, Isaac James Baker

2012-01-25T18:45:00.011-05:00

The 510 is back for a late winter/early spring run. This first one on February 18th is going to be so good: Lia Purpura, Adam Robinson, Timmy Reed, and Isaac James Baker.

Lia Purpura is the author of seven collections of essays, poems and translations, most recently, Rough Likeness (essays, Sarabande Books, January 2012). Her awards include Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award (for the essay collection On Looking), NEA and Fulbright Fellowships, three Pushcart prizes, work in Best American Essays, 2011, the AWP Award in Nonfiction, and the Beatrice Hawley award in Poetry. Recent work appears in Agni, Field, The Georgia Review, Orion, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. She is Writer in Residence at Loyola University, Baltimore, MD and teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA Program.

Baltimore's ADAM ROBINSON is the author of ADAM ROBISON AND OTHER POEMS and SAY POEM, both books of poetry. In 2005 he wrote and produced a horror play called THE PROFESSOR, in which a first-year associate professor attempts to teach his students about gothic literature by faking murders around campus -- and then the murders become real. Or do they? He is also the author of a serialized novella called THE ORGANIZATION. Adam runs PUBLISHING GENIUS PRESS and plays guitar in the rock band called COACH TAYLOR.

Isaac James Baker is a writer and communications specialist living in Washington, DC. He is working on a master’s degree in fiction writing from Johns Hopkins University. His short stories, poetry and journalism have been published in journals around the country and online. His first novel, Broken Bones, is the story of a young man’s stay in a psychiatric ward for anorexics (The Historical Pages Company).

Timmy Reed is a writer and visual artist from Baltimore, Maryland where he currently attends the Creative Writing & Publishing Arts MFA program at University of Baltimore. He worked as an Editorial Intern at Crazyhorse while an undergraduate at the College of Charleston and has recently published in Spilt Milk Magazine, Pure Slush, The Bicycle Review, Artichoke Haircut, Pretend Genius' Write This, and Smile, Hon, You're in Baltimore. He was awarded Third Place in the 2011 Baltimore City Paper Fiction Contest. Read his blog about animals and other stuff at Underrated Animals and his tiny stories on Twitter @BMORETIMMYREED.

The Season 4 Finale: November 19th

2011-11-01T14:27:00.010-04:00

November 19th, 5pm, at Minas -- it's Stephanie Barber, Joshua Mohr, Ben Loory, and Mike Young -- and then there won't be anymore readings for a few months, none at all, so maybe stop by and say hello or goodbye?

Stephanie Barber is a writer and video maker who constructs work that wriggles through the tight spaces in between humor and misery, science and magic and intellect and emotion. Her work has been featured in books, magazines, museums and galleries all over the world.

Mike Young is the author of Look! Look! Feathers, a book of stories that Publishers Weekly called "relevant, wise, and immensely enjoyable," and We Are All Good If They Try Hard Enough, a book of poems selected by The Believer as one of 2010's Top 20 Poetry Books. He co-edits NOÖ Journal, runs Magic Helicopter Press, and writes for HTMLGIANT.

Ben Loory lives in Los Angeles, in a house on top of a hill. His story "The TV" was featured in the April 12, 2010 issue of The New Yorker, and was named a Distinguished Story of the Year in The Best American Short Stories 2011. His book Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day (Penguin, 2011) is now in its fourth printing. It was chosen as a selection of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program and the Starbucks Coffee Bookish Reading Club, and was named one of the 10 Best Fiction Books of the Year by the Hudson Booksellers retail chain.

Joshua Mohr's novel, Some Things That Meant the World to Me, was published by Two Dollar Radio in June 2009. His second novel, Termite Parade, was published by Two Dollar Radio in 2010. His third novel, Damascus, will be published by Two Dollar Radio in 2011. Visit his website for news, readings and more: www.joshuamohr.net.

Season 4, Episode 7: October 15th

2011-10-05T13:48:00.010-04:00

October 15th, 5pm, Minas -- Mark Cugini, Jackie Wang, John Rowell, Laura Ellen Scott -- you will be able to say you were there when it happened.

Mark Cugini's got slugs for snitches. The managing editor of Big Lucks, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in NOÖ, Everyday Genius, Stymie, Petrichor Machine and others. He curates the Three Tent Reading Series in Washington, DC and is the recent recipient of a Scholarship Grant to the Juniper Summer Writing Institute at UMass Amherst.

Jackie Wang is a Baltimore-based writer and performer. Her hybrid writings on literature, art, film, music, theory, politics, and culture can be read on HTMLGIANT, BOMBlog and her personal blog. She has recently published an essay in the anthology Other Tongues (Inanna Publications) about hybrid identities and writing temporalities. She is currently working on a book of poetry and a novel about mother-ghosts, adolescent queer desire, kidney stones, and parthenogenetic birth stories.

John Rowell is the author of the short story collection The Music of Your Life (Simon and Schuster), which was named a Dazzling Debut/Breakout Book of Spring, 2003 at Amazon.com, and was also a finalist for the 2004 Ferro-Grumley Prize for Best Fiction Book of the Year. John served for two years as the Reginald S. Tickner Fellow/Writer-In-Residence at The Gilman School of Baltimore, Maryland, where he is now a member of the permanent Upper School faculty, teaching English and Creative Writing and directing in the theater program. John’s fiction, essays and reviews have been featured in such publications as Tin House, Bloom and Show Business Weekly, among others, and he was recently represented with a story in Long Story Short: Flash Fiction From Sixty-Five of North Carolina’s Finest Writers, published by UNC Press. Currently, he is at work on a novel entitled Overachievers: A Love Story, and last year completed a stage adaptation of several of the stories in The Music of Your Life, which received its World Premiere at the Jermyn Street Theatre in London’s West End in November, 2010.

Laura Ellen Scott's debut novel is Death Wishing, a comic fantasy set in New Orleans. She teaches fiction writing at George Mason University, in Fairfax, Virginia and has published traditional short stories in Ploughshares, Hayden's Ferry Review, Barrlehouse, and the Paycock Press anthology Gravity Dancers: Even More Fiction by Washington Area Women. However, she also writes experimental, magic realist fiction, most of which is very short for online journals such as Wigleaf, Storyglossia, and elimae. Her collection of very short fiction, Curio, was published by Uncanny Valley Press earlier this year.

510 Fall Season Opens September 17th

2011-09-04T11:31:00.008-04:00

Like major television networks, we don't do real programming over the summer, but it's fall again and we have some exciting watching and listening planned. First up are John Brandon, Sandra Beasley, Christine Grillo, and Greg Olear (bios and faces, below). The rest of the fall schedule is over there on the right. I hope to see you there or there or there.

John Brandon was raised on the Gulf Coast of Florida. He spent the last couple years at Ole Miss and this year will be the Tickner Writing Fellow at Gilman School in Baltimore. He has written two novels, 'Arkansas' and 'Citrus County,' both put out by McSweeney's. His shorter work has appeared in GQ, Oxford American, Subtropics, The New York Times Magazine, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, The Believer, Mississippi Review, Tampa Review, Saw Palm, ESPN the Magazine, The Pinch, Yalobusha Review, etc. Last season he wrote a blog on SEC football for GQ.com and this fall is writing about all of college football for Grantland.com.

Sandra Beasley’s most recent book is Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life, a memoir and cultural history of food allergy. She is also the author of I Was the Jukebox, winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Theories of Falling, winner of the New Issues Poetry Prize. Other honors for her work include selection for the 2010 Best American Poetry, the 2010 University of Mississippi Summer Poet in Residence position, a DCCAH Artist Fellowship, the Friends of Literature Prize from the Poetry Foundation, and the Maureen Egen Exchange Award from Poets & Writers. She lives in Washington, D.C.

Christine Grillo's work has appeared in The Southern Review, Utne Reader, LIT, and other journals. She works full-time as a contributing writer at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, and does freelance magazine writing for publications such as BSO Overture, Baltimore Style, Urbanite, and others. She is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins master's program in creative writing, and a fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Greg Olear is the author of the novels Totally Killer and Fathermucker. He’s the senior editor of The Nervous Breakdown and the editor-in-chief of Fathermucker: The Blog, and he regularly contributes to Huffington Post Parents. His work has also appeared at Babble.com, The Millions, and The Rumpus. He lives with his family in upstate New York, where he teaches creative writing at Manhattanville College.

Summer Break

2011-05-22T03:46:00.001-04:00

The 510 Readings will be away for summer break, but we want you to know something: That doesn't change anything between us.

The Great May 21st 510 Readings

2011-05-13T12:51:00.012-04:00

Paul Maliszewski has published essays in Harper's, Granta, and Bookforum, among other magazines. His stories have appeared in The Paris Review, One Story, and Bomb and have been awarded two Pushcart Prizes. He is the author of Fakers (The New Press, 2009) and Prayer and Parable, a collection of stories published by Fence Books in May 2011.

Sarah Rose Etter’s chapbook, Tongue Party, is forthcoming from Caketrain Press. Her writing has appeared in The Collagist, PANK Magazine and elimae. She earned her M.F.A in Fiction from Rosemont College.

Joseph Riippi (www.josephriippi.com) is the author of The Orange Suitcase (2011) and Do Something! Do Something! Do Something! (2009), both from Ampersand Books. Research, a novel for performance, is currently in production with The Claque in New York City, and tentatively set for performance in November 2011. Treesisters, a chapbook, is forthcoming from Greying Ghost Press in 2012. He lives in New York.

Scott McClanahan hates bio's. New York Tyrant Books will soon release Hill William. Stories V! and The Nightmares will also be released in 2011.

Steve Himmer is the author of the novel The Bee-Loud Glade, and editor of the webjournal Necessary Fiction. His stories have appeared recently in Hobart, Monkeybicycle, Hawk & Handsaw, and elsewhere. He lives in Quincy, MA and teaches at Emerson College.

The April Five:ten Readings, CityLit Festival, April 16th

2011-03-28T20:29:00.008-04:00

We're so excited to be hosting the April 510 Readings at Baltimore's CityLit Festival for the third straight year, and we're especially proud to feature Susi Wyss, Ron Tanner, and Janice Eidus. The reading, free to all, will be held in the Fine Arts Department of the Enoch Pratt Library, Downtown branch, on April 16th from 3:30-4:30. As always, we hope you'll enjoy the many wonderful readings scheduled that day, including 2010 National Book Award winner and Baltimore native Jaimy Gordon, as well as the hundreds of vendor tables and panels.

Susi Wyss's fiction is influenced by her twenty-year career managing women's health programs in Africa, where she lived for more than eight years. Her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and has been recognized by awards from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, among others. She holds a B.A. from Vassar, an M.P.H. from Boston University, and an M.A. in fiction writing from Johns Hopkins University.

Ron Tanner has won numerous awards for his fiction, including a Faulkner Society Gold Medal, a Pushcart Prize, a New Letters Award first prize, a Best of the Web award, among others. His stories have appeared in dozens of literary magazines and his collection of short stories, Bed of Nails, won both the G.S. Sharat Chandra Award and the Towson Prize for Literature.

Janice Eidus’s new novel, The Last Jewish Virgin, features mythology, sexuality, politics, and feminism all colliding in contemporary New York City—and beyond. A two-time winner of the O. Henry Prize, Janice Eidus’s other books include the novel The War of the Rosens and the story collection The Celibacy Club. She lives in Brooklyn, NY, and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. (http://www.JaniceEidus.com)

The March 19th 510 Greatness

2011-03-07T13:51:00.009-05:00

Season Four, Episode Three: Deb Olin Unferth, Megan Boyle, Jen Grow, and Mikita Brottman. This actually too much greatness to have in one place at one time, but please come anyway. Saturday, March 19th, at 5pm, at Minas.

Deb Olin Unferth is the author of the memoir Revolution, the story collection Minor Robberies, and the novel Vacation. Her work has been published in Harper's Magazine, McSweeney's, The Believer, and the Boston Review. She has received two Pushcart Prizes and a 2009 Creative Capital grant for Innovative Literature, and was a Harper's Bazaar Editors' Choice: Name to Know in 2011.

Megan Boyle has lived in Baltimore for three years. She has been published by 3 AM, Muumuu House, and frequently contributes to Thought Catalog. Her debut poetry collection, selected unpublished blog posts of a mexican panda express employee, is forthcoming from Muumuu House in October 2011.

Jen Grow has had her fiction and nonfiction appear in The Writer’s Chronicle, Other Voices, The Sun Magazine (of North Carolina), The GSU Review, Shattered Wig Review, Hunger Mountain, Indiana Review, City Sages: Baltimore and others. She’s received two Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council and her stories have earned nominations for both the Best New American Voices and a Pushcart Prize. Her story collection, O.K., Goodbye, was a finalist for the St. Lawrence Book Award, the G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Fiction and the Spokane Prize. She holds her MFA from Vermont College and taught for several years at Goucher College and MICA.

Mikita Brottman is an author and cultural critic known for her psychological readings of the dark and pathological elements of contemporary culture. She is the author of books on the horror film, cannibalism, psychoanalysis, critical theory and contemporary popular culture. Her most recent book, The Solitary Vice: Against Reading (Counterpoint, 2008) was selected as one of the Best Books of the year by Publishers Weekly.

February 19th readings

2011-02-23T15:07:00.002-05:00

Another big crowd for the February 510:

Jessica Blau reads from her second novel, Drinking Closer to Home:

Pat King sings "I Left My Heart in Philadelphia" while reading from his autobiographical novel in progress:

Author and Smokelong editor Tara Laskowski reads three haunting and sweet flash pieces:

Nik Korpon tells Dashiell Hammett how it's done in Stay God:

See you next month for Deb Olin Unferth, Megan Boyle, Jen Grow, and Mikita Brottman!

The February 510

2011-02-06T15:51:00.007-05:00

Its Episode Two of Season Four: Jessica Anya Blau, Nik Korpon, Pat King, and Tara Laskowski. It's difficult to think about this much good writing (and reading) happening all in one place at one time, Saturday, February 19th, at 5pm, at Minas.

Jessica Anya Blau's first novel, THE SUMMER OF NAKED SWIM PARTIES, was chosen as a Best Summer Read by the Today Show, the New York Post, and New York Magazine. Barnes and Noble, The San Francisco Chronicle, and other major newspapers chose it as one of the Best Books of the Year. Jessica's second book, DRINKING CLOSER TO HOME, pubs today, January 18th. Currently, Jessica is teaching at Goucher College in Maryland.

Nik Korpon is the author of Stay God, a noir novel set in Baltimore. His stories have ruined the reputation of Out of the Gutter, 3:AM, Cherry Bleeds, Everyday Genius, Sex and Murder, TripleQuick!, Do Some Damage, and a bunch more. He co-hosts the reading series Last Sunday, Last Rites and his noir novella Old Ghosts will be out in March. Give him some danger, little stranger, at www.nikkorpon.com

Pat King was born in Texas but has only been there twice. His autobiographical novel, Exit Nothing, is close to completion. Recently, he's been writing about movies and television for the pop culture website Cin City 2000 (www.cincity2000.com). Along with Nik Korpon, he co-hosts the Baltimore reading series, Last Sunday, Last Rites.

Tara Laskowski was the 2009 Kathy Fish Fellow and writer-in-residence at SmokeLong Quarterly, and is now a senior editor there. She won the 2010 literary awards series from the Santa Fe Writers Project. Her story, "Ode to the Double-Crossed Lackey in 'Thunderball'" was nominated for Dzanc's Best of the Web series for 2009. Her short stories "They" and "Like Everyone Else" were recognized by storySouth as noteable online stories in 2004 and 2009. Another story, "Hole to China," was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She currently lives in a suburb of Washington, D.C. with her husband Art Taylor.

510 Readings: The Fourth Season Commenceth on January 15th!

2010-12-27T15:23:00.010-05:00

Welcome to the fourth season of the 510 Readings, and we've got a terrific first reading lined up for you on January 15th: Robin Black, Ken Sparling, Shya Scanlon, and Megan McShea. Thank you for being so good to us for the past three years, Baltimore, and we hope, with our amazing lineups of readers, that we've been good to you right back. Let's celebrate the new year together on the 15th!

Robin Black's debut collection, If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This (Random House, 2010) was a finalist for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize, a San Francisco Chronicle and Irish Times Best Book of 2010, and a pick on the O Magazine and Huffington Post Summer Reading Lists. The book has also been published or is forthcoming in six countries overseas. Her nonfiction essays have also been recognized and anthologized. Robin is currently at work on her first novel. She lives in Philadelphia with her family.

Pedlar Press has published three novels by Ken Sparling, the most recent being BOOK, and will release a new novel by Ken in May 2011. Artististically Declined Press released a tenth anniversary edition of Ken's handmade novel, HUSH UP AND LISTEN STINKY POO BUTT in 2010. Mud Luscious press will re-issue Ken's first novel, DAD SAYS HE SAW YOU AT THE MALL, in 2012. Ken also has work in New York Tyrant and Sententia, as well as at corium and at jmww.

Shya Scanlon is the author of the poetry collection In This Alone Impulse (Noemi Press, 2010), and the novel Forecast (Flatmancrooked, 2010). He received his MFA from Brown University, where he was awarded the John Hawkes Prize in Fiction.

Megan McShea lives in Baltimore. She's put out two chapbooks, "Recipes for Greatness" and "Yarn!" as Thingy Press. Her writing has appeared in the i.e. reader (Narrow House Press), Topograph (Novello Press), and the Shattered Wig Review (Shattered Wig Press).

On Holiday

2010-12-13T14:42:00.000-05:00

The 510 Readings is on holiday until January. See you next year.

November 20th Highlights

2010-11-23T18:27:00.007-05:00

Thanks for attending the last 510 Reading of 2010. You were there. We saw you:

Four amazing women writers rocked the house, first of whom was Amber Sparks. She read two pieces, including "The Monstrous Sadness of Mythical Creatures," which can be found in the April 2010 issue of matchbook.

Jenny Hollowell was up next, and she read from her debut novel, Everything Lovely, Effortless, Safe (Henry Holt & Co., 2010).

Jen Michalski, 510 cohost, led off after the break. She read excerpts from May-September, which won first place in the 2010 Press Open Awards (novella) and appears in the anthology of the same title.

Janice Shapiro capped the evening with a story from her debut collection, Bummer (Soft Skull Press, 2010).

Join us in 2011 to kick off our first reading of the year. It promises to be excellent: Ken Sparling, Shya Scanlon, Megan McShea, and Robin Black read on January 15th.

The Season Finale: November 20th @ 5pm @ Minas

2010-11-04T01:12:00.009-04:00

The season three finale of the 5ive:ten Readings is November 20th with Jenny Hollowell, Amber Sparks, Jen Michalski, and Janice Shapiro. Janice Shapiro will be reading from her new book of stories, Bummer. Jenny Hollowell will be reading from her novel, Everything Lovely, Effortless, Safe. Jen Michalski will be reading from her new novella, May-September. And Amber Sparks will be reading from work that will surely be collected into a book in the near future. Plus, there will be prizes.

Jenny Hollowell’s short fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, Scheherezade, and the anthology New Sudden Fiction, and was named a distinguished story by Best American Short Stories. She received an MFA from the University of Virginia, where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow in Fiction and recipient of the Balch Short Story Award. She has received fellowships from Ledig House International Writers Residency and the Vermont Studio Center, and was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the 2007 Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her debut novel, Everything Lovely, Effortless, Safe, was published by Henry Holt & Company in June 2010. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.

Amber Sparks's work is featured or forthcoming in various places, including New York Tyrant, Unsaid, Lamination Colony, The Collagist, Annalemma, and PANK. She is also the fiction editor at Emprise Review. She lives in Washington, DC with two beasts and a husband, but most days you can find her here.

Jen Michalski's first collection of fiction, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, is available from So New (2007), her second is forthcoming from Dzanc (2013), and her novella MAY-SEPTEMBER (2010) will be published by Press 53 in October as part of the Press 53 Open Awards. Her chapbook CROSS SECTIONS (2008) is available from Publishing Genius. She also is the editor of the anthology CITY SAGES: BALTIMORE (CityLit Press 2010), which won a 2010 "Best of Baltimore" award from Baltimore Magazine. She edits the literary quarterly jmww, and is cohost of the monthly reading series The 510 Readings in Baltimore.

Janice Shapiro studied film at UCLA where she won first prize in The Samuel Goldwyn Screenwriting Competition. The short films she directed were screened widely at film festivals around the world and she was a recipient of an AFI Filmmakers’ Grant. She has written scripts for numerous studios and independent producers including the cult film, Dead Beat that she co-wrote with her husband, Adam Dubov. Janice’s short stories have been published in The North American Review, and The Santa Monica Review. A graphic memoir of hers was included in the anthology, What Were We Thinking? Another graphic memoir appeared in The Seattle Review. She is currently working on a novel, Bad Baseball, a second collection of short stories, a collection of food essays entitled, Eat Like Me, and a book length graphic memoir, Crushable – My Life In Crushes From Ricky Nelson to Viggo Mortensen. Janice lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son and dog. Bummer and Other Stories is her first book.

The Great October 510

2010-10-17T18:56:00.013-04:00

I started off by reading some things that had been written on a piece of paper.

Then Matt Bell read from How They Were Found, the very first reading from the actual book, and the 510 felt honored.

Then Joanna Howard read the first story from On the Winding Stair and the syntax was intricate and beautiful. We were all caught up in it.

Then we took a break while Brian Evenson signed books and Alphonso Lingis (the great philosopher) said the truest things.

Then Carolyn Parkhurst read from her new novel, The Nobodies Album, which is a novel that denies it is in fact a novel while also containing seven other novels.

And then Brian Evenson read a story with a title I don't know how to spell, but it was good.

And then we went to Frazier's.

The Great October Reading

2010-10-08T12:59:00.013-04:00

You don't want to miss this one--Brian Evenson, Carolyn Parkhurst, Matt Bell, Joanna Howard.

Brian Evenson is the author of ten books of fiction, most recently the limited edition novella Baby Leg, published by New York Tyrant Press in 2009. In 2009 he also published the novel Last Days (which won the American Library Association's award for Best Horror Novel of 2009) and the story collection Fugue State, both of which were on Time Out New York's top books of 2009. His novel The Open Curtain (Coffee House Press) was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an IHG Award. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Slovenian. He lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, where he directs Brown University's Literary Arts Program. Other books include The Wavering Knife (which won the IHG Award for best story collection), Dark Property, and Altmann's Tongue. He has translated work by Christian Gailly, Jean Frémon, Claro, Jacques Jouet, Eric Chevillard, Antoine Volodine, and others. He is the recipient of an O. Henry Prize as well as an NEA fellowship.

Joanna Howard is the author of the story collection On the Winding Stair and the chapbook In the Colorless Round, with artwork by Rikki Ducornet. She teaches at Brown University and lives in Providence, RI.

Matt Bell is the author of How They Were Found, a collection of fiction from Keyhole Press. His fiction has been anthologized in Best American Mystery Stories 2010 and Best American Fantasy 2. He is also the editor of The Collagist.

Carolyn Parkhurst is the author of the New York Times bestselling novels "The Dogs of Babel" and "Lost and Found," as well as the new novel "The Nobodies Album." Her first children's book, Cooking With Henry and Elliebelly, will be published later this month. She lives in Washington, DC with her husband and two children.

September 25th Readings, Baltimore Book Festival

2010-09-27T20:54:00.003-04:00

Thanks for visiting us at the Baltimore Book Festival! We had a great group of readers to kick off the fall and great weather as well. Here, Michael Kimball emcees and also reads an excerpt from a work-in-progress:

Jen Michalski reads an excerpt from her novella, MAY-SEPTEMBER (Press 53, 2010)

Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch read a selection from their co-authored book, Ten Walks/Two Talks (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010)

Paula Bomer reads a story from her forthcoming story collection, Baby (Word Riot Press, 2010)

Justin Kramon reads an excerpt from his novel, Finny (Random House, 2010)

Aryn Kyle reads a story from her collection, Boys and Girls Like You and Me (Scribner, 2010)

Next month (October 16th), we'll be back at Minas Gallery. Don't miss Brian Evenson, Carolyn Parkhurst, Joanna Howard, Matt Bell!

Live Preview of Unsaid #5

2010-09-19T13:13:00.012-04:00

We had a live preview of Unsaid #5 at the 510 Readings. The issue will be with us soon. In the meantime, I started the live preview by holding up Unsaid #4 and talking about what a behemoth it is. Then I introduced myself and read from Dear Everybody because I left the pages for the new thing that I was going to read at home on my desk. People called out years and subject matter (tornado, pancakes) and I found pieces that matched.

Next up was Kate Wyer who read four shorts, including work from Unsaid #5 and a new piece that reminded us "to press where it hurts." I think I've messed up the line, but the sentiment stands.

Then we took a break and people talked with each other.

Then Kim Calder read five pieces of work, the first of which is called "After Adorno" and is so good that it was distracting in that I couldn't stop thinking about it, trying to rehearse the lines so that I didn't forget them.

The live preview of Unsaid #5 ended with Andy Devine giving a reading unlike any that you have ever heard before unless you have heard Andy Devine read before. It was amazing.

September 18th: An Unsaid Reading

2010-08-29T03:23:00.007-04:00

Sure, we took the summer off, but we want you to know that we missed you and that nothing has changed between us. The first episode of the Fall 510 is going to feature readers from Unsaid Magazine, one of the greatest literary magazines ever published. The September line-up features Michael Kimball, Kim Calder, Kate Wyer, and Andy Devine.

Michael Kimball’s third novel, DEAR EVERYBODY, is now in paperback in the US, UK, and Canada. The Believer calls it “a curatorial masterpiece.” Time Out New York calls the writing “stunning.” And the Los Angeles Times says the book is “funny and warm and sad and heartbreaking.” His first two novels are THE WAY THE FAMILY GOT AWAY (2000) and HOW MUCH OF US THERE WAS (2005). His three novels have been translated (or are being translated) into many languages. His work has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered and in Vice, as well as The Guardian, Prairie Schooner, Post Road, Open City, Unsaid, and New York Tyrant. He is also responsible for Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard)—and two documentary films, I WILL SMASH YOU (2009) and 60 WRITERS/60 PLACES (2010).

Kim Calder lives in Los Angeles, but keeps leaving to study creative writing and literature in other places. Currently, she is an MFA student at the University of Maryland.

Kate Wyer is a mental health interviewer for the public health system of Maryland. Her work has most recently been published in Unsaid, PANK and The Collagist. Wyer is the recipient of the Elisabeth Woodworth Reese award. FENCE magazine granted her a fellowship to attend the Summer Literary Seminars in Lithuania. She heads the collaborative book project And, Afterward. Wyer supports the Understanding Campaign.

Andy Devine’s alphabetical fiction and essays have appeared in a variety of literary magazines, including New York Tyrant, Unsaid, elimae, Everyday Genius, and Taint. In 2002, Devine was awarded the Riddley Walker Prize (for a work that ignores conventional rules of grammar and punctuation). In 2007, he published his first chapbook, “As Day Same That the the Was Year” (Publishing Genius). In 2009, Devine was awarded The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Award (for fiction in the face of adversity). WORDS (2010, Publishing Genius) is his first book. Andy Devine Avenue — in Flagstaff, Arizona — is named after him.

September 25th Readings (at the Baltimore Book Festival)

2010-08-25T14:09:00.006-04:00

We're back after a summer hiatus (miss us?) and will open our fall 2010 schedule at the Baltimore Book Festival, September 25th, 5-6:30 pm, CityLit Tent. You can find information about the Baltimore Book Festival here. you can find out about our amazing lineup here:

Paula Bomer is a writer, the co-publisher at Artistically Declined Press, and the supervising editor at the literary journal, Sententia. Her collection of stories, BABY, is available from Word Riot Press (2010).

Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch are the authors of Ten Walks/Two Talks (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010). They recently completed another collaborative manuscript called Conversations over Stolen Food. Fitch’s Not Intelligent, but Smart: Rethinking Joe Brainard is forthcoming from Dalkey Archive. Cotner lives in Brooklyn, NY; Fitch, in Laramie, WY, where he’s an assistant professor in the U. of Wyoming’s MFA Program.

Michael Kimball’s third novel, Dear Everybody, was recently published in the US, UK, and Canada. The Believer calls it “a curatorial masterpiece.” Time Out New York calls the writing “stunning.” And the Los Angeles Times says the book is “funny and warm and sad and heartbreaking.” His first two novels are The Way the Family Got Away (2000) and How Much of Us There Was (2005), both of which have been translated (or are being translated) into many languages. His work has been on NPR’s All Things Considered and in Vice, as well as The Guardian, Prairie Schooner, Open City, Unsaid, and New York Tyrant. He is also responsible for Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard) and the documentary films, I Will Smash You (2009) and 60 Writers / 60 Places (2010).

Justin Kramon is the author of the novel Finny (Random House 2010). A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he has published stories in Glimmer Train, Story Quarterly, Boulevard, Fence, TriQuarterly, and others. He has received honors from the Michener-Copernicus Society of America, Best American Short Stories, the Hawthornden International Writers' Fellowship, and the Bogliasco Foundation. He teaches at Gotham Writers' Workshop in New York City and at the Iowa Young Writers' Studio. He lives in Philadelphia.

Aryn Kyle is the author of the internationally bestselling novel The God of Animals (Scribner, 2007) and the short story collection Boys and Girls Like You and Me (Scribner, 2010). Her fiction has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, Best American Short Stories 2007, and elsewhere. Aryn is the recipient of an American Library Association's Alex Award, a Rona Jaffe Award, and a National Magazine Award in fiction. She lives in New York City.

Jen Michalski's first collection of fiction, Close Encounters, is available from So New (2007), her second is forthcoming from Dzanc (2013), and her novella May-September (2010) will be published by Press 53 in October as part of the Press 53 Open Awards. She also is the editor of the anthology City Sages: Baltimore (CityLit Press 2010) and edits the literary quarterly jmww.

Summer Break

2010-06-28T15:00:00.001-04:00

The 510 Readings will be on summer break until September.

June 19th Readings

2010-06-25T15:46:00.005-04:00

Thanks for attending the June 19th edition of the 510 Readings. We'll be on hiatus until September, so here's what happened if you weren't there:

Readers visited us this month from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. A sizable and appreciative crowd was on hand:

Laura Ellen Scott read selections from her collection in progress of "creepy" flash fictions. Although it would be cheap to call them haunting, what else can you say about a story with a baby crib inside a bedroom wall? (We hope the B&W photo helps you get in the mood.) Anyway, be on the lookout for this collection sometime soon!

Timothy Gager followed, describing the perils of using high-wattage light bulbs in Easy Bake ovens. If you want to find out more, check out his latest collection, Treating a Sick Animal: Flash and Micro Fictions.

After the break, Bill Black mesmerized us with a true cruel story of youth, which can be found in the latest issue of The Southern Review.

To close, Curtis Smith treated us to some essays from his upcoming collection of essays, The Agnostic's Prayer.

I am sorry you missed out on such wonderful readings (and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, courtesy of Timothy Gager). But you can catch us twice in September—9/18 at our regular haunt (Minas) and 9/25 at the Baltimore Book Festival. See you then!

June 19th Readings: Laura Ellen Scott, Timothy Gager, Bill Black, and Curtis Smith

2010-05-27T15:10:00.004-04:00

Laura Ellen Scott teaches fiction writing to undergraduates at George Mason University, and in 2009-2010 published 19 short stories in print and online, including work selected for The Wigleaf Top Fifty and Barrelhouse magazine's Futures issue. Her work was nominated for Dzanc's Best of the Web 2010 anthology twice, and she is currently Fiction editor of Prick of the Spindle.

Timothy Gager is the author of eight books of short fiction and poetry. His latest, Treating a Sick Animal: Flash and Micro Fictions (Cervena Barva Press), features over 40 stories, many previously published in various literary magazines. He hosts the Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts, every month and is the co-founder of Somerville News Writers Festival. He has had over 200 works of fiction and poetry published since 2007, of which eight have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Timothy is the current Fiction Editor of The Wilderness House Literary Review, the founding co-editor of The Heat City Literary Review, and has edited the book OUT OF THE BLUE WRITERS UNITE: A BOOK OF POETRY AND PROSE FROM THE OUT OF THE BLUE ART GALLERY.

Bill Black's work has appeared in The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Hotel Amerika, The Black Warrior Review, Short FICTION, and elsewhere. He has taught literature and creative writing at Western Washington University, Ohio University, and The Johns Hopkins University, and is currently Writer-in-Residence at Misericordia University in Dallas, Pennsylvania. He a founding Co-Director of the Pages & Places Book Festival in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Curtis Smith's stories and essays have appeared in over 60 literary journals and have been cited by The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, and The Best American Spiritual Writing. Press 53 has released his last two story collections (THE SPECIES CROWN and BAD MONKEY); Casperian Books has published his last two novels (SOUND AND NOISE and TRUTH OR SOMETHING LIKE IT). This fall, Sunnyoutside will publish his essay collection, THE AGNOSTIC'S PRAYER.

May 15th Readings: Deborah Rudacille, Joshua Furst, Alison Livingston, and Joanna Smith Rakoff

2010-04-29T12:45:00.006-04:00

The May 15th episode of season 3 of the 510 Readings is dramatic and action packed. Come join us for readings from Deborah Rudacille, Joshua Furst, Alison Livingston, and Joanna Smith Rakoff!

Deborah Rudacille is a science writer and the author of The Riddle of Gender and The Scalpel and the Butterfly. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Joshua Furst is the author of the novel The Sabotage Cafe, and the story collection Short People. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including the Chicago Tribune, BOMB, Conjunctions, etc. (Photo credit: Peter Gat)

Alison Livingston is an Infectious Disease and Ocular Immunology Research nurse at Johns Hopkins. Her writing has been published in Radar and in Urbanite. She is currently working on a non-fiction collection, "Tea and Bread, No Jam."

Joanna Smith Rakoff is the author of the novel A Fortunate Age, which was a New York Times Editors' Pick, a winner of the Elle Readers' Prize, a selection of Barnes and Noble's First Look Book Club, an IndieNext pick, and a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. As a journalist and critic, she's written for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post Book World, the Boston Globe, Vogue, Time Out New York, O:The Oprah Magazine, and many other newspapers and magazines. Her poetry has appeared in The Paris Review, Western Humanities Review, Kenyon Review, and other journals. She has degrees from Columbia University, University College, London, and Oberlin College. (Photo credit: Elena Seibert)

April 17th Readings: Sam Lipsyte, Dawn Raffel, Andy Devine, Geoff Becker

2010-04-19T20:46:00.003-04:00

we're back from our yearly pilgrimage to the CityLit Festival at Enoch Pratt Free Library in downtown Baltimore, where the 510 Readings were held in the cool, soft-lit Fine Arts Department. The lineup was even cooler: Geoff Becker, Andy Devine, Dawn Raffel, and Sam Lipsyte. Like mega cool.

Recent Flannery O'Connor prize winner Geoff Becker read the beginning of his new novel, HOT SPRINGS, just out from Tin House Books:

The reclusive but very dapper Andy Devine made a rare appearance to promote his first book, WORDS, from Publishing Genius Press:

The much-revered Dawn Raffel treated to new work and also a glimpse at her latest collection, FURTHER ADVENTURES IN THE RESTLESS UNIVERSE (Dzanc Books, 2010):

Finally, Sam Lipsyte, whose literary star could not burn brighter these days, gave us glimpses into parenting, unemployment, and the new world order in his latest novel, THE ASK (FSG, 2010):

That's all for now, but there's always more! Join us on May 15th at our regular location (Minas Gallery) for Deborah Rudacille, Joshua Furst, Joanna Smith Rakoff, and Alison Livingston!

The 510 Readings @ CityLit Festival

2010-04-01T15:01:00.010-04:00

The 510 Readings will be at the CityLit Festival this month, as is our tradition, though at a different time 1:30 in the Fine Arts Department in the main branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library. It will be a great one, four writers with new books--Sam Lipsyte (The Ask), Dawn Raffel (Further Adventures in the Restless Universe), Geoff Becker (Hot Springs), and Andy Devine (Words).

Sam Lipsyte is the author of Venus Drive, The Subject Steve and Home Land, winner of the Believer Book Award. His fiction has appeared in the Quarterly, Harper's, NOON, Open City, N+1,.Fence, Tin House and Playboy, among other places. His newest book is The Ask (FSG). He teaches at Columbia University in New York City.

Dawn Raffel's new short story collection is Further Adventures in the Restless Universe (Dzanc Books). She is also the author of a novel, Carrying the Body, and a previous collection, In the Year of Long Division. Her stories have appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, Conjunctions, Fence, Open City, The Mississippi Review Prize Anthology, The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, Arts & Letters, The Quarterly, NOON and numerous other periodicals and anthologies. She has been a magazine editor for many years and has also taught in the MFA program at Columbia University.

Andy Devine’s alphabetical fiction and essays have appeared in a variety of literary magazines, including New York Tyrant, Unsaid, elimae, Everyday Genius, and Taint. In 2002, Devine was awarded the Riddley Walker Prize (for a work that ignores conventional rules of grammar and punctuation). In 2007, he published his first chapbook, “As Day Same That the the Was Year” (Publishing Genius). In 2009, Devine was awarded The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Award (for fiction in the face of adversity). WORDS (2010, Publishing Genius) is his first book. Andy Devine Avenue — in Flagstaff, Arizona — is named after him.

Geoffrey Becker’s new novel, Hot Springs (Tin House Books, 2010) received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly, which called it “a remarkably taut narrative and a rousing testament to humanity’s capacity for resilience.” He is also the author of Black Elvis (U. of Georgia Press, 2009), a collection which won the Flannery O’Connor Prize for Short Fiction, and two previous books of fiction, Bluestown and Dangerous Men. Geoff’s awards and honors include an NEA Fellowship, the Drue Heinz Prize for Literature, the Nelson Algren Award, inclusion in the Best American Short Stories anthology, and two Maryland Arts Council Prizes. He lives in Baltimore and teaches at Towson University.

March 20th Readings

2010-03-25T16:57:00.002-04:00

The March installment of the 510 Readings was a blast! But you knew that, because you were there:

Baltimore author/poet Ashlie Kauffman began the evening by reading an excerpt of her novel-in-progress.

Jamie Iredell, who visited from Atlanta, followed, reading from Prose. Poems. A Novel (Orange Alert Pres), an innovative hybride of the aforementioned, and also a bit from his forthcoming book, The Book of Freaks (Future Tense).

After the break, Baltimore's own Todd Whaley read a story about schizophrenia and riddles entitled "What Am I?"

Finally, Molly Gaudry, down from Philadelphia, closed the show by reading from her prose-poem novella, We Take Me Apart, a Stein-like play of images and words.

Come visit us April 17th at the central branch of the Enoch Pratt Library during the CityLit Festival, where we'll welcome Sam Lipsyte, Dawn Raffel, Geoffrey Becker, and Andy Devine.

March 20th Readings: Molly Gaudry, James Iredell, Todd Whaley, and Ashlie Kauffman

2010-02-28T11:00:00.017-05:00

Molly Gaudry is the author of the verse novel We Take Me Apart (Mud Luscious, 2009), and the editor of Tell: An Anthology of Expository Narrative (Flatmancrooked, 2010). She is the curator of Walking Man Gallery, the editor of Willows Wept Press and Willows Wept Review, co-founding editor of Twelve Stories, and associate editor for Keyhole Magazine. She contributes to the arts and culture site Big Other and writes reviews for East&West Magazine. Find her online at http://mollygaudry.blogspot.com.

Jamie Iredell is the author of Prose. Poems. a Novel. (2009), and The Book of Freaks, which is forthcoming in late 2010. His writing has also appeared in JMWW, The Literary Review, Lamination Colony, and in many other literary magazines. He lives in Atlanta with his wife.

Ashlie Kauffman is a freelance writer and an adjunct instructor at the Community College of Baltimore County. She has a Master of Fine Arts in poetry from New York University and a Master of Arts in fiction from the Johns Hopkins Advanced Academic Programs. Her writing recognitions include a Semi-Finalist nomination for the Ruth Lilly Fellowship for Younger Poets and an Independent Artist Award in fiction from the Maryland State Arts Council. She writes book reviews for jmww and interviews poets for jmwwblog.

A 2008 Finalist for The Flannery O’Connor Award for Fiction, Todd Whaley lives in Baltimore and works for an international architectural firm in Washington, DC. He has stories in a number of journals, including Berkeley Fiction Review, Louisiana Literature, The Baltimore Review, Fourth River, Pisgah Review, Soundings East, Quercus Review, REAL: Regarding Arts and Letters, Licking River Review, Compass Rose, and others. He has been honored as a finalist in Glimmer Train Stories and nominated to the Best New American Voices.

2010-02-22T17:16:00.002-05:00

Thanks for joining us for the February 20th reading, an evening of fiction and nonfiction.

Meghan Kenny, Ron Tanner, Jane Satterfield, and Kevin Sampsell were our featured readers:

Meghan Kenny began the evening reading from her novel in progress.

Ron Tanner read from his prize-winning chapbook, Wheels, available soon from Gertrude Press.

After the intermission, Jane Satterfield read from her acclaimed memoir, Daughters of Empire, available from Demeter Press.

Finally, Future Tense Press publisher Kevin Sampsell made the trip from Portland to read from his newly released memoir, A Common Pornography, from Harper Perennial.

Join us next month for Molly Gaudry, Jamie Iredell, Ashlie Kauffman, and Todd Whaley!

Season 3, Episode 2, Feb. 20th: Kevin Sampsell, Jane Satterfield, Ron Tanner, Meghan Kenny

2010-02-08T11:44:00.008-05:00

Kevin Sampsell has been the publisher of the micro-press, Future Tense Books, since 1990. He has also worked at Powell's Books since 1997, as an events coordinator and the head of the small press section. His writing has appeared in various newspapers, web sites, and literary journals. His books include Creamy Bullets, Portland Noir (as editor), and the new memoir, A Common Pornography. His website is www.kevinsampsell.com.

Jane Satterfield is the author of Daughters of Empire: A Memoir of a Year in Britain and Beyond (Demeter Press, 2009) and two books of poetry: Assignation at Vanishing Point (Elixir, 2003) and Shepherdess with an Automatic (WWPH, 2000). She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature, three Maryland State Arts Council grants in poetry, and the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society’s Gold Medal for the Essay. She lives in Baltimore with her husband, poet Ned Balbo, and her daughter Catherine, and teaches at Loyola University.

Ron Tanner has published stories widely in such magazines as The Iowa Review, New Letters, and West Branch. His awards for short fiction include a Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society gold medal, a Pushcart Prize, a New Letters Award, a Best of the Web Award, and many others. His collection of stories, A Bed of Nails, won both the G.S. Sharat Chandra award and the Towson Prize for Literature and is now in its second printing. His story “Wheels” won the 2009 Gertrude Press award and has been published as a chapbook. Ron teaches writing at Loyola University in Baltimore. Currently he is writing a book about his time in Micronesia.

Meghan Kenny teaches writing at Towson University and for Gotham Writers’ Workshop online. She was the 2008-2009 Tickner Writing Fellow at the Gilman School in Baltimore and a 2008 Peter Taylor Fellow at The Kenyon Review Writers' Workshop. Her stories have appeared in Sonora Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, Cimarron Review, Bound Off, The Kenyon Review, The Florida Review and has one forthcoming in Pleiades. She won the 2005 Iowa Review Award for fiction and received a Special Mention in the 2007 Pushcart Prize Anthology. She received her B.A. from Kenyon College and her M.F.A. from Boise State University. She is working on her first novel.

January 16th Readings

2010-01-20T20:29:00.002-05:00

You'll came back for our third season of the 510 Readings—yay! You were there, and you were there..

And Jane Delury was there, and she read an excerpt from her collection in progress:

And Rachel Sherman was there, and she read from her debut novel Living Room:

And Caryn Coyle was there, and she read her first-place entry in the 2009 Maryland Writers Conference Story Contest:

And James Magruder was also there. He read from his debut novel Sugarless.

Thanks for coming, and see you all next month, when we host Kevin Sampsell, Ron Tanner, Meghan Kenny, and Jane Satterfied!

January 16th Readings: Rachel Sherman, James Magruder, Jane Delury, Caryn Coyle

2010-01-04T17:59:00.007-05:00

It's the first episode of Season 3--the same time, the same place, all new writers: Rachel Sherman, James Magruder, Jane Delury, Caryn Coyle.

Rachel Sherman is the author of the The First Hurt (Open City Books, 2006), a book of short stories, and Living Room (Open City Books, 2009), a novel. The First Hurt was a finalist for The 2006 International Frank O’Connor Short Story Award, short-listed for the 2007 Story Award, and was chosen as one of the 25 Books to Remember from 2006 by the New York Public Library. Her fiction has appeared in McSweeney's, Nerve, Post Road, Conjunctions, n+1, Story Quarterly, and Fence among other publications. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and teaches creative writing at Rutgers University and Columbia University.

James Magruder’s short fiction has appeared or will appear in The Gettysburg Review, The Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly, Bloom, Subtropics, The Normal School, and the anthology Boy Crazy. His adaptations of Marivaux, Molière, Lesage, Labiche, Gozzi, and Dickens have been produced on and Off-Broadway, across the country, and in Japan and Germany. His Three French Comedies (Yale University Press) was named an “Outstanding Literary Translation of the Year” by the American Literary Translators Association. His writing has been supported by the Maryland State Arts Council, the New Harmony Project, The MacDowell Colony, where he was named a Thornton Wilder Fellow, the Ucross Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation. He teaches translation and adaptation at the Yale School of Drama and production dramaturgy at Swarthmore College. The University of Wisconsin Press published his debut novel, Sugarless, in October of 2009.

Jane Delury’s fiction has appeared in Narrative, The Southern Review and Prairie Schooner, among other publications. She has an essay forthcoming in the anthology, Writers on the Words They Love and Loathe. She is a recipient of an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council and a fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, she is on the faculty of the University of Baltimore’s MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts program.

After three decades of writing press releases, speeches and newsletters to pay the bills, Caryn Coyle tried fiction. Her ninth story was recently accepted for publication in Gargoyle, and her stories have been published in jmww, Loch Raven Review, The Santa Fe Writer's Project Literary Journal, and a few others. She won the 2009 Maryland Writers Association Short Fiction Contest. A graduate of the College of Notre Dame of Maryland and the Johns Hopkins University, she reviews restaurants for the website, Welcome to Baltimore, Hon.

November reading photos

2009-12-01T14:17:00.004-05:00

In case you missed our fabulous double feature in November:

Well, it looks like not many of you did. From the November 14th reading.

Kathy Flann reads from a novel in progress.

Glenn Moomau reads from a novel just completed.

Robin Hemley reads from his latest book, Do Over!

Madison Smartt Bell reads from the newly released Devil's Dream.

Another fine turnout for the November 21st reading.

Josh Weil reads from The New Valley

Laura van den Berg reads from What the World Will Look Like When the Water Leaves Us

Geoffrey Becker reads from his 2009 Flannery O'Connor Award-winning collection, Black Elvis

November 21st Reading, Which Will Be Great: Josh Weil, Laura van den Berg, Geoffrey Becker

2009-11-15T14:15:00.007-05:00

Josh Weil is the author of the novella collection The New Valley (Grove, 2009), a New York Times Editors Choice selection for which he was honored with a “5 Under 35” National Book Award. His fiction has been published or is forthcoming in Granta, American Short Fiction, Narrative, and Glimmer Train, among other journals; he has written non-fiction for The New York Times, Granta Online, and Poets & Writers. Since earning his MFA from Columbia University, he has received a Fulbright grant, a Writer’s Center Emerging Writer Fellowship, the Dana Award in Portfolio, and fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences. As the 2009 Tickner Fellow, he is the writer-in-residence at Gilman School in Baltimore, where he is at work on a novel.

Laura van den Berg was raised in Florida and earned her MFA at Emerson College. She is the recipient of scholarships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences, the 2009 Julia Peterkin Award, and the 2009-2010 Emerging Writer Lectureship at Gettysburg College. Her fiction has appeared in One Story, Boston Review, American Short Fiction, Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008, Best New American Voices 2010, and The Pushcart Prize XXIV: Best of the Small Presses, among others. Laura’s first collection of stories, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Dzanc Books, October 2009), is the winner of the Dzanc Prize and was recently selected by Barnes & Noble for their "Discover Great New Writers" Program. To learn more about Laura, please visit www.lauravandenberg.com.

Geoffrey Becker’s new book of stories, Black Elvis (University of Georgia Press, October, 2009), won the 2008 Flannery O’Connor Prize for Short Fiction. His novel, Hot Springs, is forthcoming from Tin House books. He is the author of two previous books, Dangerous Men, a collection that won the Drue Heinz Prize, and Bluestown, a novel. His other awards and honors include an NEA fellowship, selection for the Best American Short Stories anthology, the Nelson Algren Award from The Chicago Tribune, and the Parthenon Prize. He teaches writing at Towson University in Maryland, where he also directs the graduate program in Professional Writing.

Special November 14th Reading: Kathy Flann, Glenn Moomau, Robin Hemley, and Madison Smartt Bell

2009-10-27T15:09:00.003-04:00

We have a special, extra reading in November on the 14th, and you'd be crazy to miss it: Kathy Flann, Glenn Moomau, Robin Hemley, and Madison Smartt Bell. Same time (5 pm), same place (Minas Gallery), same lovely hosts (Michael, Jen, Peggy, and Minas), and same well-cultured and discerning attendees (you). See you then!

Kathy Flann's fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The North American Review, Shenandoah, Crazyhorse, The Barcelona Review, The Adirondack Review, Quarterly West, Blackbird, The Del Sol Review, Yemassee, Southern Humanities Review, The Texas Review, The O. Henry Festival Stories, and New Stories from the South. A novella won the AE Coppard Prize for Long Fiction and was published by White Eagle Coffee Store Press in 2008. A short story collection entitled Smoky Ordinary won the 2008 Serena McDonald Kennedy Award and was published by Snake Nation Press. Currently, she is an assistant professor of creative writing at Goucher College in Baltimore.

Glenn Moomau teaches at American University and is the author of Ted Nugent Condominium, From Boston to Austin with the Glenmont Popes, a book that novelist Howard Norman called a “searing anti-memoir.” His fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in Link, Bomb, The Westminster Review, Gargoyle, and The Washington Post, among other publications. He is also a musician whose work has appeared on numerous recordings. Most recently, his life as a teacher, writer, and musician was profiled on NPR radio show, The Signal, and he was a featured performer in the award-winning documentary, Euphoria.

Robin Hemley is the winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship for his work on DO-OVER!. He has published seven books, and his stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, Chicago Tribune, and many literary magazines and anthologies. Robin received his MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop; he currently directs the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa and lives in Iowa City, IA.

Madison Smartt Bell is the author of 13 novels, including SOLDIER's JOY, which received the Lillian Smith Award in 1989. Bell has also published two collections of short stories: ZERO DB (1987) and BARKING MAN (1990). In 2002, the novel DOCTOR SLEEP was adapted as a film, Close Your Eyes, starring Goran Visnjic, Paddy Considine, and Shirley Henderson. Bell's eighth novel, ALL SOUL'S RISING, was a finalist for the 1995 National Book Award and the 1996 PEN/Faulkner Award and winner of the 1996 Anisfield-Wolf award for the best book of the year dealing with matters of race. All Souls Rising, along with the second and third novels of his Haitian Revolutionary trilogy, Master of the Crossroads and The Stone That The Builder Refused, is available in a uniform edition from Vintage Contemporaries. Toussaint Louverture: A Biography, appeared from Pantheon in 2007. Born and raised in Tennessee, he has lived in New York and in London and now lives in Baltimore, Maryland, along with his wife, the poet Elizabeth Spires, and daughter. He is currently Director of the Kratz Center for Creative Writing at Goucher College, and has been a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers since 2003. DEVIL'S DREAM, a novel based on the career of Confederate Cavalry General Nathan Bedford Forrest, will be published by Pantheon in November 2009.

October 17th Reading

2009-10-20T12:10:00.003-04:00

It was rainy Saturday, but we were packed and dry at Minas Gallery to hear Dylan Landis, Sherrie Flick, and Elise Levine!

This is not a staged photo—people are always this happy at the 510.

Dylan Landis recounts the exploits of Angelina and Leah in her collection of short stories NORMAL PEOPLE DON'T LIVE LIKE THIS.

Sherrie Flick discusses the things couples can do in laundromats in her novel RECONSIDERING HAPPINESS.

Baltimore favorite Elise Levine delights with an excerpt from her new novel in progress.

See you on November 14th for a special evening with Robin Hemley, Glenn Moomau, Kathy Flann, and Maddison Smartt Bell!

510 Reading: October 17th

2009-10-06T01:26:00.007-04:00

Dylan Landis is the author of Normal People Don't Live Like This (Persea), a debut novel-in-stories that has won praise from Vanity Fair, More, and Booklist. Her fiction has appeared in Bomb, Tin House and Best American Nonrequired Reading, and she has won the Poets & Writers California Exchange Award and an NEA-funded Fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Normal People was a finalist for the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction.

Sherrie Flick’s debut novel Reconsidering Happiness is just out with University of Nebraska Press. I Call This Flirting, her awarding-winning chapbook of flash fiction, was published in 2004 (Flume Press). Her work appears in the anthologies Flash Fiction Forward (Norton) and New Sudden Fiction (Norton) as well as You Have Time For This (Ooligan Press). A recipient of a PA Council on the Arts grant, she lives in Pittsburgh where she works as a freelance writer and directs the Gist Street Reading Series. www.sherrieflick.com

Originally from Toronto, Elise Levine was named by Margaret Atwood as one of Canada’s most important emerging women writers. Reviewers have called Levine “a cutting-edge literary sensation” and “one of Canada’s finest fiction writers … a sensitive, cagey dominatrix of literary form and human psychology.” She is the author of the story collection Driving Men Mad and the novel Requests and Dedications. Her poems, fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous periodicals including Hotel Amerika, Gargoyle, Prairie Schooner, Best Canadian Stories, the Journey Prize Anthology, and Canada’s The National Post. She is the recipient of a Canadian National Magazine Award for Fiction, and many awards including ones from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council, as well as residency fellowships from, among others, the McDowell Colony and Yaddo, where she was an Eli Cantor Fellow. She currently resides in Baltimore, where she teaches creative writing at Towson University and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

510 Readings at the Baltimore Book Festival!

2009-09-21T20:57:00.009-04:00

We've hosting our second 510 reading this September at the Baltimore Book Festival, and here's what you need to know:

When? Saturday 26th, 5 pm
Where? Baltimore Book Festival, CityLit Tent (near east side of the monument)
Who? Terese Svoboda, Shanthi Sekaran, John Dermot Woods, Dan Fesperman, Justin Sirois, Savannah Schroll Guz, Michael Kimball, and Jen Michalski
Why? Because we are the only dedicated fiction reading series in Baltimore

AUTHOR BIOS:

Terese Svoboda is the author of eleven books of prose and poetry, most recently Weapons Grade, her fifth book of poetry, and a reissue of Trailer Girl and Other Stories, her third book of fiction forthcoming this fall. “Astounding!” wrote the NY Post about her 2008 memoir, Black Glasses Like Clark Kent that won the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize. Her writing has been featured in the TLS, New Yorker, New York Times, the Atlantic, Slate, Bomb, Columbia, Yale Review, and the Paris Review. Her honors include an O. Henry Prize for the short story, a nonfiction Pushcart Prize, a translation NEH grant, three New York Foundation for the Arts grants in poetry and fiction, a New York State Council for the Arts and a Jerome Foundation grant in video, the John Golden Award in playwriting, a Bellagio residency, the Bobst Prize in fiction and the Iowa Prize in poetry.

Shanthi Sekaran was born and raised in Northern California. After graduating from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins, she moved to Germany, then England, and now lives between London and Berkeley. Her short story, Stalin, was included in Best New American Voices 2004 (Harcourt). Her debut novel, The Prayer Room, was released in 2009 from MacAdam/Cage.

John Dermot Woods draws comics and writes stories in Brooklyn, NY. He is the author of the novel The Complete Collection of people, places & things (BlazeVOX Books) and the comic chapbook The Remains (Doublecross Press). He edits the arts quarterly Action,Yes and organizes the online reading series Apostrophe Cast. He is a professor of English at Nassau Community College in Garden City, NY.

Dan Fesperman's six novels of international intrigue have captured acclaim in eleven different languages while winning a Dashiell Hammett Award in the United States and two Dagger awards in the United Kingdom. Dan's newest novel, The Arms Maker of Berlin, is now available in the both the US and UK.

Justin Sirois is founder and codirector of Narrow House, an experimental writing publishing collective. He received Maryland State Art Council grants for poetry in 2003 and 2007. His books include Secondary Sound (BlazeVOX Books) and MLKNG SCKLS (Publishing Genius). Currently, Justin is trying to find a publisher for his latest novel written in collaboration with Iraqi refugee Haneen Alshujairy about displaced Iraqis living in Fallujah in April of '04. He also is a designer for Edge Books.

Michael Kimball’s third novel, DEAR EVERYBODY, was recently published in the US, UK, and Canada (http://michael-kimball.com/). The Believer calls it “a curatorial masterpiece.” Time Out New York calls the writing “stunning.” And the Los Angeles Times says the book is “funny and warm and sad and heartbreaking.” His first two novels are THE WAY THE FAMILY GOT AWAY (2000) and HOW MUCH OF US THERE WAS (2005), both of which have been translated (or are being translated) into many languages. He is also responsible for the collaborative art project--Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard).

Jen Michalski is the author of the short story collection CLOSE ENCOUNTERS (So New Media). Her work has appeared in more than 50 publications, including McSweeney's Internet Tendency, failbetter, storySouth, Gargoyle, Hobart, The Potomac Review, 42opus, and others. She is the editor of the online lit zine jmww.

Savannah Schroll Guz is author of the short story collections, The Famous & The Anonymous (2004) and American Soma (2009). She is also editor of the theme-based fiction anthology, Consumed: Women on Excess (2005). Previously, her reviews and cultural criticism have appeared in Sculpture, ZMag, The European Journal of Cultural Studies, Modernism/Modernity, Bitch Magazine, Popmatters, Pittsburgh City Paper, and Library Journal, where she has a monthly column. She teaches at West Virginia Northern Community College and is The New Yinzer's fiction editor. Savannah and husband Michael live in West Virginia.

September 18th Reading

2009-09-21T20:36:00.002-04:00

Thanks to everyone who came out for Sam Lignon, Robert Lopez, Blake Butler, Johannah Rodgers, and Donald Breckenridge. It was an amazing, strange, fabulous display of voices, a big, big love.

Sam Lignon pondered whether the Pixies sing "bone mashing" instead of "bone machine" in his blunt, powerful piece from DRIFT AND SWERVE:

Johannah Rodgers mused about code partners and identity theft in her novel-in-progress:

Robert Lopez drew us an stick-figure air conditioner, among other things, in his latest book, KAMBY BOLOGNO MEAN RIVER:

Donald Breckenridge wonders what we talk about when we talk about love in New York City in his latest novel, YOU ARE HERE:

Blake Butler assaults us with apocalyptic visions and bloody babies from his new collection, SCORCH ATLAS. And then we were off to dinner:

September 19th Readings: Blake Butler, Robert Lopez, Johanna Rodgers, Sam Ligon, Donald Breckenridge

2009-09-08T13:50:00.005-04:00

Blake Butler is the author of EVER (Calamari Press) and Scorch Atlas (Featherproof Books). He edits HTML Giant and blogs here.

Robert Lopez is the author of two novels, Kamby Bolongo Mean River and Part of the World. His fiction has appeared in dozens of publications. He teaches at The New School, Pratt Institute, and Columbia University.

Johannah Rodgers has been living and writing in Brooklyn for the last fifteen years. Her book, sentences, a collection of short stories, essays, and drawings, was published by Red Dust in 2007, and her chapbook, “necessary fictions,” was published by Sona Books in 2003. Her short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in Fence, Bookforum, Fiction, CHAIN Arts , Pierogi Press, and The Brooklyn Rail, where she is a contributing editor. She teaches writing and literature courses at The City University of New York, where she is an assistant professor in English and is working on a project that investigates experimental approaches to storytelling and narrative through the use of "generated" and found language.

Samuel Ligon is the author of a collection of stories, Drift and Swerve (Autumn House 2009), and a novel, Safe in Heaven Dead (HarperCollins 2003). His stories have appeared in The Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, StoryQuarterly, Noise: Fiction Inspired by Sonic Youth, Post Road, Keyhole, Gulf Coast, New England Review, and elsewhere. He teaches at Eastern Washington University's Inland Northwest Center for Writers, in Spokane, Washington, and is the editor of Willow Springs.

Donald Breckenridge is the fiction editor of The Brooklyn Rail, editor of The Brooklyn Rail Fiction Anthology (Hanging Loose Press, 2006) and co-editor of the InTranslation website. In addition, he is the author of more than a dozen plays as well as the novella Rockaway Wherein (Red Dust, 1998), and the novel 6/2/95 (Spuyten Duyvil, 2002). His novel This Young Girl Passing is forthcoming from Autonomedia and his novel YOU ARE HERE is out now on Starcherone Books.

August 15th Reading

2009-08-17T20:51:00.006-04:00

Hi, everybody,

Thanks so much for coming out Saturday. Even though Tania James was unable to make it, it was all good: she was detained in DC, receiving an award from the Kerala Tristate Association for Atltas of Unknowns. We promise we'll have her back in early 2010, and you can see what all the excitement is about her debut novel yourself.

Jason Tinney, Michael Pollock, and Paula Bomer were there, though, and they were awesome!

Jason Tinney entertained us with tales of lawn movers and yellowjackets, washing machines and drying machines, and the do's and dont's of microwaving underwear.

Michael Pollock, editor of First City Review and native of Philadelphia, was up next. We were treated to many things that we shouldn't try at home, such as driving in the dark with the headlights off.

Paula Bomer, who came down from New York to read, wrapped up the show, continuing on the theme of "do as I say, not as I do." In fact, I cannot repeat here almost any of the words she spoke. If you want to read it yourself, look up the last issue of New York Tyrant.

Hope you can join us next month! We have FOURTEEN (yes, FOURTEEN) authors lined up, at our regular reading on September 19th (Sam Ligon, Robert Lopez, Blake Butler, Johannah Rodgers, and Donald Breckenridge) at Minas and the Baltimore Book Festival on September 26th (Savannah Schroll Guz, Dan Fesperman, Terese Svoboda, Shanthi Sekaran, John Woods, Justin Sirois, Michael Kimball, and Jen Michalski) in Mount Vernon.

August 15th Readings: Tania James, Paula Bomer, Michael Pollock, and Jason Tinney

2009-07-28T17:56:00.006-04:00

Tania James is the author of a debut novel Atlas of Unknowns (Knopf). Raised in Louisville, Kentucky, she splits her time between New York City and Washington, DC, and has much love for the Bolt Bus that ferries her back and forth. She has been published in One Story magazine and The New York Times. Visit her at www.taniajames.com.

Paula Bomer's fiction has appeared in Open City, Fiction, Nerve, The Mississippi Review, The New York Tyrant, First City Review, Storyglossia, juked, Best American Erotica 2002, 2003(S&S), Word Riot, Sub-Lit, and elsewhere. You can find out more about her or reach her by commenting on her blog at:
http://www.paulabomer.com

Michael Pollock is the editor of First City Review, a literary magazine out of Philadelphia. His work has appeared in Inside Magazine.

Writer/Performer Jason Tinney was born in Frederick, MD. His first book LOUISE PARIS AND OTHER WALTZES (poetry/prose) was published in 2002. BLUEBIRD (short stories and poems) was published in 2003. Three of his short stories were published in the anthology, OUT OF TUNE in 2007. He performs with two Baltimore-based bands, The Donegal X-Press and The Wayfarers. Tinney and artist Brian Slagle have collaborated on The Swinging Bridge, a traveling literary and visual arts show, since 2003. Tinney’s writing has appeared in magazines such as Maryland Life, Style, Chesapeake Life, Urbanite, and Baltimore Magazine. For more information about books by Tinney, visit Hilliard and Harris Publishing at www.hilliardandharris.com.

July 18th Readings: John Barry, Scott Price, Ivy Goodman, Jamie Gaughran-Perez

2009-07-20T21:02:00.009-04:00

Although Artscape held Baltimore in its intoxicating grip this past weekend, some of us were not deterred from July 18th's 510 reaing. They were not disappointed.

John Barry began the evening reading a new piece about life, love, and death at the National Arboretum.

Next, Scott Price followed, dissecting the life (and death) of minor-league baseball players. Here, he reads from his latest book, The Heart of the Game.

After the break, Ivy Goodman read from a work in progress about property lines, bad neighbors, bratty children, and whistling teeth.

Finally, Jamie Gaugran-Perez closed the night with excerpts from his novel in progress, a pastiche of events that circle and ultimately connect to each other.

Thanks for another great reading. See you next month for Tania James, Paula Bomer, Michael Pollock of First City Review, and Jason Tinney.

July 18th Readings: Jamie Gaughran-Perez, S.L. Price, Ivy Goodman, and John Barry

2009-06-05T10:10:00.005-04:00

Fresh from our June hiatus, we're keeping Minas Gallery hot with readings from Jamie Gaughran-Perez, S.L. Price, Ivy Goodman, and John Barry. Don't worry; we'll have plenty of words to quench your thirst.

Jamie Gaughran-Perez lives in Baltimore, works in D.C., and is part of the tripartite leadership behind Narrow House. His work has appeared in various journals and other places. He’s been playing bass in Sweatpants (the band, not the article of clothing) lately.

S. L. Price is a senior writer at Sports Illustrated, where he has worked since 1994. Price has authored two previous books: Pitching Around Fidel, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Far Afield, which was named one of the five best reads of 2007 by Esquire magazine. He lives in Washington, DC, with his family.

Ivy Goodman has published two collections of short stories, Heart Failure (University of Iowa Press, 1983), which is part of the Iowa Award Series, and A Chapter from Her Upbringing (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2001). Individual stories have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies.

John Barry is a Baltimore writer. He has written extensively on theatre and arts, as well as tax sales, city planning, aging rock stars, the decline of the Sun, mayoral candidates you never heard of, why he has so many books that he hasn't read, and anything else he's thinking of at the time. He has written for Baltimore City Paper, as well as Urbanite, Style, Chesapeake, Washington Post, Smart Set, n + 1 online, and elsewhere.

2009-05-17T22:15:00.003-04:00

In case you missed Saturday's 510 reading at Minas Gallery, here are a few highlights:

Another standing-room crowd joined us instead of going to Preakness. But we could really, really brag if some horses had shown up, too:

Ric Royer started the evening off by literally turning us on our head. From the back of the gallery, Ric and special guest Temple Crocker (left) read from Ric's work in progress, She Saw Ghosts, He Saw Bodies:

Leslie F. Miller decided to read in the front, whetting our appetites for all things cake. Here she reads from the newly released Let There Be Cake:

After the break, Geoffrey Greif discussed the secrets of male friendships. Here he reads excerpts from his nonfiction release, The Buddy System:

Thad Rutkowski ruminated on the origins of his name and other names he has been called. He forgot to mention a few: delightful and mesmerizing. Here he reads from his "novel in fractuals" Tetched:

Although we will be on vacation the month of June, don't forget to come back in July, when we mix it up again with Scott Price, Ivy Goodman, Jamie Gaughran-Perez, and John Barry.

May 16th Readings: Ric Royer, Leslie F. Miller, Geoffrey Greif, and Thaddeus Rutkowski

2009-04-29T20:10:00.007-04:00

Ric Royer is a writer, performer, writer of performances and performer of writings. Works of literature include The Weather Not The Weather (Outside Voices, 2008), Hystery of Heat (Publishing Genius, 2007), There Were One and It Was Two (Narrow House Records 2007) and Anthesteria (Bark Art Press, 2001). He is also a founding editor of Ferrum Wheel and co-organizer (with Catherine Pancake and Bonnie Jones) of the Transmodern Performance Festival in Baltimore. He teaches in the film, video, theatre department at Stevenson University. For more words and works, visit www.ricroyer.com

Leslie F. Miller is a poet, essayist, and author of the new Simon & Schuster book, Let Me Eat Cake: A Celebration of Flour, Sugar, Butter, Eggs, Vanilla, Baking Powder, and a Pinch of Salt. She likes breaking things and putting them back together in a random, yet tasteful, order. She loves beer and cake. Even at the same time.

Geoffrey L. Greif, DSW, LCSW-C, is professor at the School of Social Work University of Maryland and has authored more than 100 journal articles and book chapters, as well as ten books. His books include being co-editor of Group Work with Populations at Risk and co-author of Beating the Odds: Raising Academically Successful African American Males and Overcoming the Odds: Raising Academically Successful Females His most recent book, Buddy System: Understand male friendships, was published September, 2008. He is married to Dr. Maureen Lefton-Greif, associate Professor Johns Hopkins Medical School, and is the father of two daughters, a social worker and a psychologist.

Thaddeus Rutkowski grew up in central Pennsylvania and is a graduate of Cornell University and The Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of the novels Tetched (Behler Publications) and Roughhouse (Kaya Press), Both books were finalists for an Asian American Literary Award; Tetched was chosen as one of the best books reviewed in 2006 by Chronogram magazine. His stories and poems have been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize. His book reviews have appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Daily News and other papers. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and daughter.

April 18th Reading: CityLit Festival!

2009-04-06T20:43:00.011-04:00

This is the 510's first year at the CityLit Festival, and we hope it's the beginning of a beautiful friendship!

What does it mean for you? It means two hundred seats of comfort in the Poe Room (no sitting on the floor, we hope). It means a whole day of readings from the likes of Mark Doty, Junot Diaz, and our own 510 series. We have Christian Bauman, Thomas Glave, Chad Willenborg, and Michael Kimball lined up ready to enchant you, make you cry, make you do the hokey pokey. That's what it's all about.

So here's what you need to know:

New Fiction from the 510 Reading Series
CityLit Festival, April 18th
Enoch Pratt Free Libray
400 Cathedral Street, Baltimore
Poe Room, 1:00 - 2:00 pm

Christian Bauman's latest novel In Hoboken, about a group of young musicians and the mental health facility where one of them works, has been described by critic Paul Constant as "one of those books—like Lethem when he's cooking or Chabon at his most vibrant—when every line snaps and propels you forward...Bauman is an incredible writer." Christian Bauman's first two novels—the critically acclaimed The Ice Beneath You and Voodoo Lounge were loosely based on his experiences as a soldier in Somalia and Haiti. An occasional contributor to NPR's All Things Considered and an editor-at-large for IdentityTheory.com, Bauman lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and daughters. [christianbauman.blogspot.com]

Thomas Glave was born in the Bronx and grew up there and in Kingston, Jamaica. A graduate of Bowdoin College and Brown University, Glave traveled as a Fulbright Scholar to Jamaica, where he studied Jamaican historiography and Caribbean intellectual and literary traditions. While in Jamaica, Glave worked on issues of social justice, and helped found the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals, and Gays (J-FLAG, www.jflag.org). Glave is the author of the collection Whose Song? and Other Stories (City Lights), which was nominated by the American Library Association for their “Best Gay/Lesbian Book of the Year” award and by the Quality Paperback Book Club for their Violet Quill/Best New Gay/Lesbian Fiction Award. His essay collection Words To Our Now: Imagination and Dissent was published in November 2005 by the University of Minnesota Press. His edited anthology, Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles, was published by Duke University Press in 2006. He has recently completed a second collection of fiction, and is working on a longer fictional work.

Chad Willenborg teaches at the Art Institute of Philadelphia, although he was raised in a family of gravediggers and tombstone makers in central Illinois. His fiction appears in First City Review, Philadelphia Stories, Fugue, and McSweeney's,. He has just completed a novel called Seether.

Michael Kimball's third novel, DEAR EVERYBODY, was recently published in the US, UK, and Canada (http://michael-kimball.com/). The Believer calls it a "curatorial masterpiece." Time Out New York calls the writing "stunning" and the Los Angeles Times says the book is "funny and warm and sad and heartbreaking." His first two novels are THE WAY THE FAMILY GOT AWAY (2000) and HOW MUCH OF US THERE WAS (2005), both of which have been translated (or are being translated) into many languages. He is also responsible for the collaborative art project Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard).

March 21st Reading

2009-03-25T18:04:00.003-04:00

If you missed the 510 Reading featuring Marion Winik, Rupert Wondolowski, Leni Zumas, and Deb Olin-Unferth, this past Saturday, maybe someone in this photo can tell you how it was:

Or maybe you should just watch this space, get on our email list, mark your calendars, and watch the phases of the moon so you do not miss the best scene (as ordained by The City Paper) next month.

The evening began with noted memoirist (and UB professor) Marion Winik reading excerpts from her latest collection, The Glen Rock Book of the Dead (Counterpoint, 2008):

Local treasure Rupert Wondolowski made his second appearance at the 510, promoting his new book, The origin of paranoia as a heated mole suit (Publishing Genius 2008):

Leni Zumas traveled down from Brooklyn to read the title story from her quirky and disquieting collection, Farewell Navigator (Open City, 2008):

Deb Olin-Unferth, author of Vacation and Minor Robberies (both McSweeneys) closed the reading with a cautionary tale about turtles ("Pets"):

REMEMBER: The April 18th reading will be at the Enoch Pratt Library in conjunction with the 2009 CityLit Festival. Thomas Glave, Christian Bauman, Chad Willenborg, and Michael Kimball will be our featured readers. See you then, promise?

March 21st Reading: Leni Zumas, Marion Winik, Rupert Wondowski, and Deb Olin-Unferth

2009-03-01T13:04:00.010-05:00

If you thought last month was a blast, check our our March 21st reading, featuring Leni Zumas, Marion Winik, Rupert Wondolowski, and Deb Olin-Unferth! All are marvelously talented, acclaimed writers that you won't see together anywhere else!

Deb Olin-Unferth is the author of the novel, VACATION, and the story collection, MINOR ROBBERIES, both from McSweeney's.

Leni Zumas is the author of the story collection FAREWELL NAVIGATOR (Open City, 2008). Her work has appeared most recently in New York Tyrant, Quarterly West, Harp & Altar, and New Orleans Review. She is a 2008 Fellow in Fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts and an Artist-in-Residence in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Workspace program. She teaches at Columbia University.

Rupert Wondolowski is making his second appearance at the 510 with the release of his newest book, THE ORIGIN OF PARANOIA AS A HEATED MOLE SUIT (Publishing Genius, 2008). He also is the author of THE WHISPERING OF ICE CUBES, HUMANS GO OUTSIDE TO HURT YOU, and a few others. His work has appeared in Murdaland, Lost and Found Times, Rampike, Open 24 Hours, Fell Swoop, Rock Heals, Peek Review, and many other literary journals. He is the editor of The Shattered Wig Review and host of the erratically held Shattered Wig Nights at the glorious 14 Karat Cabaret. He occasionally gets to read his work on WYPR's treasured program "The Signal" and to pass judgment on authors far more accomplished than himself in book reviews in Baltimore's City Paper.

Marion Winik writes creative nonfiction, and teaches in the MFA programs at the University of Baltimore and Carlow University in Pittsburgh. Among her eight books are TELLING, a collection of essays(Random House, 1994), FIRST COMES LOVE, a memoir of her first marriage and her husband's death (Random House, 1996), ABOVE US ONLY SKY (Seal, 2005) and her latest, THE GLEN ROCK BOOK OF THE DEAD (Counterpoint, 2008). Winik’s essays and articles have been published in The New York Times Magazine, O, Salon, Travel+Leisure, Real Simple, and many other newspapers, magazines, web sites, and anthologies; she currently has a monthly column in Ladies Home Journal. She was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Non-Fiction and has appeared on the Today Show, Politically Incorrect, and Oprah. She lives in Baltimore

February 21st Reading

2009-02-25T11:34:00.004-05:00

It was a packed house for our February 21st reading:

Filmmaker, performance artist, and member of the Degenerettes Rahne Alexander reads from her work. She also performed a small acoustic set which, sadly, we do not have video of:

Kyle Minor reads from his collection of short fiction In the Devil's Territory:

Shane Jones reads from his new novel Light Boxes:

Kathleen Rooney shares the secrets of an art model from Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object:

Blake Butler reads from the first of his two publication this year, Ever:

See you next month for Leni Zumas, Marion Winik, Deb Olin-Unferth, and Rupert Wondowlowski!

Molly Gaudry Says Nice Things About the 510

2009-02-23T18:25:00.004-05:00

Last Saturday was a really great reading. Shane Jones was great. Blake Butler was great. Rahne Alexander was great. Kyle Minor and Kathleen Rooney were great. Molly Gaudry says a bunch of nice things about February's 510 Reading over here.

February 21st Readings (It Is Going to Be So Great)

2009-01-22T13:03:00.013-05:00

Blake Butler is the author of Ever (Calamari Press 01/09) and Scorch Atlas (Featherproof Books 09/09). Brian Evenson calls Ever "a strange, visionary ontological dismemberment that takes you well beyond what you'd ever expect." Blake Butler's work has appeared in Fence, Willow Springs, Ninth Letter, Unsaid, and etc. He edits No Colony and HTMLGiant, lives in Atlanta, and blogs at blakebutler.blogspot.com.

Shane Jones was born in Albany, New York, the first child of Marcia and Dennis Jones. Educated at Buffalo University, he studied with Robert Creeley, Charles Bernstein and Susan Howe. He is the author of the short collections Maybe Tomorrow and I Will Unfold You With My Hairy Hands. Work has appeared widely online and in print. Of his first novel, Deb Olin Unferth said his "imaginative voice is like some winged thing . . . Light Boxes is a beautiful, heartful work."

Rahne Alexander is a writer and a multimedia artist from Baltimore. She is the vocalist and songwriter for the all-girl garage rock trio, The Degenerettes; she is also a producer of the Charm City Kitty Club, Baltimore's long-running queer cabaret. Rahne is a frequent contributor to City Paper and Smile Hon, You're In Baltimore and her award-winning films have screened in festivals across the US. www.rahne.com

Kathleen Rooney is the editor of Rose Metal Press and the author of the nonfiction books, Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object and Reading with Oprah: The Book Club That Changed America, as well as the poetry collections Oneiromance (an epithalamion) (Switchback Books, 2008), Something Really Wonderful, and That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness (the latter two written collaboratively with Elisa Gabbert). Her essay Live Nude Girl appeared in the anthology Twentysomething Essays for Twentysomething Writers, and other essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Sycamore Review, Another Chicago Magazine, and Gettysburg Review.

Kyle Minor is the author of In the Devil's Territory, a collection of short fiction just out from Dzanc, and co-editor of The Other Chekhov, an anthology of Anton Chekhov's lesser-known and more lurid stories. His recent work appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2008, The Southern Review, and Random House's Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers. A Florida native, he now lives in Ohio, where he is at work on a novel and a nonfiction account of a kidnapping in Haiti.

You do not want to miss this reading.

January 17th Readings

2009-01-19T17:10:00.004-05:00

Thanks for helping us kick off the second season of the 510 Readings! Watch this space for our 2009 schedule or pick up a copy from Minas Gallery and Boutique.

The crowd fills in.

Susan McCallum-Smith reads from her new collection, Slipping the Moorings.

Richard Peabody reads his story, "Future Tango," speculating that "libraries are time machines."

Patricia Schultheis reads her story, "Downward Drifting" from Fiction.

Tim Wendel reads from his latest novel, Red Rain.

Join us next month for Blake Butler, Shane Jones, Kyle Minor, Kathleen Rooney, and Rhane Alexander!

January 17th Readings: Susan McCallum-Smith, Richard Peabody, Patricia Schultheis, and Tim Wendel

2008-12-22T15:46:00.007-05:00

We are please to begin our second season of the 510 Readings with Susan McCallum-Smith, Richard Peabody, Patricia Schultheis, and Tim Wendel. Come and help us bring in the new year, and pick up our 2009 schedule!

Susan McCallum-Smith is the literary editor of Urbanite magazine and a contributing reviewer to Maryland Public Radio. Her work has also been featured, or is upcoming, in The Scottish Review of Books, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Gettysburg Review. She received her degrees in creative writing from Johns Hopkins and Bennington College, and currently teaches in the Odyssey Program at Johns Hopkins. Her short story collection, Slipping the Moorings, will be available in January 2009. She was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and currently lives in Baltimore.

Richard Peabody, a prolific poet, fiction writer and editor, is an experienced teacher and important activist in the Washington, DC community of letters. He is editor of Gargoyle Magazine (founded in 1976), and has published a novella, two books of short stories, six books of poems, plus an e-book, and edited (or co-edited) seventeen anthologies including: Mondo Barbie, Mondo Elvis, Conversations with Gore Vidal, A Different Beat: Writings by Women of the Beat Generation, and Kiss the Sky: Fiction and Poetry Starring Jimi Hendrix. Peabody teaches fiction writing for the Johns Hopkins Advanced Studies Program. You can find out more about him at: www.gargoylemagazine.com or www.wikipedia.org

Patricia Schultheis has had several essays and nearly two dozen short stories published in national and international literary journals. She has served on the editorial board of The Baltimore Review and currently serves on the editorial board of Narrative. She is a member of The Author’s Guild and a voting member of The National Book Critics Circle. Her pictorial local history titled Baltimore’s Lexington Market was published by Arcadia Publishing of South Carolina in 2007, and her collection of short stories about a fictional street in Baltimore named St. Bart’s Road was a finalist for the 2008 Flannery O’Connor Award. She recently was a writing consultant for the Fitzgerald Literary Conference. Patricia holds two graduate degrees from The Johns Hopkins University and an undergraduate degree from Albertus Magnus College in New Haven.

Tim Wendel is an award-winning novelist and journalist. His books include Red Rain, Castro’s Curveball, and Far From Home. In early 2009, a limited edition about the Buffalo Braves' basketball team, Buffalo, Home of the Braves, will be released by Sun Bear Press. Tim’s stories have appeared in The Potomac Review and Gargoyle, while his articles have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, USA Weekend, Esquire, Washingtonian, and GQ. His columns appear on the USA Today op-ed page, where he is on the Board of Contributors. Tim teaches fiction and nonfiction writing at Johns Hopkins University.

A Very Special Thank You

2008-12-10T12:05:00.002-05:00

Thank you Madeleine Mysko, Savannah Schroll Guz, Joseph Young, David R. Matthews, Rachel Bradley, Luca Dipierro, David Housley, Christine Stewart, Maud Casey, Michael Downs, Geoff Herbach, Betsy Boyd, Adam Robinson, Susan Muaadi-Darraj, Lalita Noronha, Rosalia Scalia, Sean Carman, Rupert Wondolowski, Larry Doyle, Jackie Corley, Linda Franklin, Jessica Anya Blau, Tita Chico, Merrill Feitell, Stacey D'Erasmo, Rafael Alvarez, Madison Smartt Bell, William Henry Lewis, Dan Fesperman, Karen Lillis, Charles Rammelkamp, Brian Evenson, A.E. Peterson, Darcelle Bleau, Deborah Rudacille, Lia Purpura, Brian Eden, Peggy Hoffman, Minas Konsolas, and YOU for making our inaugural season of the 510 Readings such a success.

The 510 Readings will be on hiatus the month of December. See you in January 2009!

510 Readings on YouTube

2008-11-25T22:12:00.001-05:00

For your viewing pleasure, or in case you missed it, the November 15th 510 Reading in its entirety is available on YouTube!

Brian Eden reads "Fear the Laundry" and "A Brief and Unpleasant Run-in With My Ex":

"Fear the Laundry"

"A Brief and Unpleasant Run-in With My Ex"

Lia Purpura reads "The Space Between":

"The Space Between," Part 1

"The Space Between," Part 2

"The Space Between," Part 3

Deborah Rudacille reads "Smoke":

"Smoke," Part 1

"Smoke," Part 2

Please note that the 510 Readings will be on hiatus until January 17th. We wish you the happiest of holidays. See you soon!

November 15th Readings: Deborah Rudacille, Lia Purpura, and Brian Eden

2008-11-09T16:22:00.006-05:00

We're pleased to present our first nonfiction installment of the 510 Readings on Saturday, November 15th. We hope you join us for readings from Deborah Rudacille, Lia Purpura, and Brian Eden!

Deborah Rudacille graduated from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University in 1998. Since then, she has published two non-fiction books—The Scalpel and the Butterfly (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000) and The Riddle of Gender (Pantheon, 2004). Her history of Baltimore steelworkers, Roots of Steel, will be published by Pantheon in 2009. She appears regularly in the Urbanite, STYLE, and other magazines.

Lia Purpura is the author of The Brighter the Veil (winner of the Towson University Prize in Literature) and Poems of Grzegorz Musial: Berliner Tagebuch and Taste of Ash, translated on a Fulbright year in Poland. She was awarded a 2004 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Prose. Her essay collection On Looking was published by Sarabande Press in 2006. Her collection of essays, Increase, won the Associated Writing Programs Award in Creative Nonfiction and was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2000. Her collection of poems, Stone Sky Lifting, won the Ohio State University Press/The Journal Award and was also published in 2000.

Brian Eden is an advertising copywriter and the author of the blog "Walk a Mile in My Underpants" (walkamileinmyunderpants.com). He has won national and international advertising awards, a fantasy football league, and a few hard-fought games of Jenga. His humor writing has been politely rejected by The New Yorker, McSweeney's, and This American Life. He currently lives in Baltimore and is the #1 ranked Brian Eden on Google.

November 1st: A Very Special Reading

2008-11-03T22:18:00.008-05:00

Saturday was a night of beautiful books, beautiful stories, and beautiful people. Here are some of the highlights:

The crowd filleth.

A.E. Peterson read an excerpt from her novel-in-progress for the first time in public. It's full of beautiful language, some of it from talkative rivers.

Darcelle Blau read three stunning short works, including an overview of poppers and extreme sports.

Aaron Cohick, founder of NewLights Press, previewed THE DROWNABLE SPECIES by Brian Evenson, a handmade, limited-edition release.

Brian Evenson treated the crowd to a selection from THE DROWNABLE SPECIES, an examination of identity and reality with some Poe-like narratives included to haunt us all.

See you November 15th for Brian Eden, Deborah Rudacille, and Lia Purpura!

A Special 510 Reading: November 1, 5pm

2008-10-24T14:14:00.007-04:00

Put this one on the calendar. It's going to be a great 510 reading: Brian Evenson, A.E. Peterson, Darcelle Bleau. Aaron Cohick of NewLights Press is publishing a handmade book by Brian Evenson, THE DROWNABLE SPECIES. The NewLights Press is an independent publisher of experimental literature and artists books, concentrating primarily on where the two can and do overlap. All NewLights Press books are printed and bound by hand, using techniques ranging from the obsolete (letterpress) to the utilitarian (laser printing). The Press was founded in Baltimore in 2000, and currently resides in San Francisco.

Brian Evenson is the author of seven books of fiction, most recently The Open Curtain (Coffee House), which was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an IHG Award and was among Time Out New York's top books of 2006. He lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, where he directs Brown University’s Literary Arts Program. Other books include The Wavering Knife (which won the IHG Award for best story collection) and The Brotherhood of Mutilation. He has translated work by Chrstian Gailly, Jean FrÈmon and Jacques Jouet. He has received an O. Henry Prize as well as an NEA fellowship. A novel, Last Days, and a new collection of stories, Fugue State, are forthcoming in 2009.

A.E. Peterson lives and writes in Baltimore. Her short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in Modern Painters, Poets & Writers, Pierogi Press, Brooklyn Review, Center for Digital Storytelling, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from the Sacatar Foundation, Fundacion Valparaiso, Ucross Foundation, and Julia and David White Artists Colony. She teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art and is currently working on a novel.

Darcelle Bleau graduated from the Johns Hopkins MFA program in 2006. Since then, she has participated in a year-long writing residency at Maryland Art Place and edited the visual literary catalogue, Entangled: Art & Word.

October 18th Reading Highlights

2008-10-20T20:36:00.004-04:00

Thanks to everybody who came out Saturday. It was another standing-room only crowd for Charles Rammelkamp, Karen Lillis, and Dan Fesperman. Please remember that we're doubling up in November with readings on November 1st (Brian Evenson, A.E. Peterson, and Darcelle Bleau) and November 15th (Brian Eden, Deborah Radcliffe, and Lia Purpura). Hope to see you then!

Charm City author and poet Charles Rammelkamp, reading from his collection Castleman in the Academy, picks up where last month's Dirty Words reading left off.

Pittsburgh's favorite daughter Karen Lillis joined us to give dynamic, poetic selections from her newest book, The Second Elizabeth.

Baltimore legend Dan Fesperman closes the show with a reading from his novel, The Warlord's Son.

see you in a few weeks!

October 18th Readings: Dan Fesperman, Karen Lillis, and Charles Rammelkamp

2008-10-13T20:37:00.013-04:00

Dan Fesperman’s travels as a writer have taken him to more than 30 countries and three war zones. He spent most of that time as a correspondent for The Sun, and it wasn't until a trip to Sarajevo in the winter of '94 that he began writing his first novel, at the age of 39. His fifth novel, The Amateur Spy, published this year by Knopf, chronicles the wanderings of a disgraced American aid worker who has been forcefully recruited to spy on an old Palestinian friend, an assignment that carries him across Greece, Jordan, and the West Bank. Dan's books have won two Dagger awards from Britain's Crime Writer's Association, and a Dashiell Hammett award in the US. He lives in Baltimore.

Karen Lillis is the author of the novels, "The Second Elizabeth" (Six Gallery Press, 2009), and "i, scorpion: foul belly-crawler of the desert"; and the serialized novella, "Magenta's Adventures Underground." She has been involved in the small press for a number of years as editor, publisher, and blogger, among other roles. In 2000, she embarked on a cross-country reading tour via Greyhound. Her poems and prose have appeared in such journals as Avatar Review, anderbo.com, Keyhole Magazine, Long Shot, nthposition.com, and Pulse Berlin; her writing is included in "Wreckage of Reason: An Anthology of XXperimental Prose from Contemporary Women Writers" (Spuyten Duyvil, June 2008). She has been a photographer in Virginia, a bookseller in New York City, an art critic in Texas, a writer-in-residence in Paris, and is currently a library science student in Pittsburgh. You can find her on myspace at: http://www.myspace.com/eyescorpion.

Charles Rammelkamp has lived in Baltimore for the past twenty-five years. He's been involved with a variety of publications, including being on the editorial board of THE TEACHER'S VOICE, and he edited a collection of essays entitled FAKE-CITY SYNDROME for Red Hen Press on American cultural issues to be used in college composition and rhetoric classes. He currently edits an online "journal of politics and poetry" called THE POTOMAC. He has published a number of works, including a novel, THE SECRETKEEPERS (Red Hen Press), and a collection of poems, THE BOOK OF LIFE (March Street Press), and several chapbooks, including GO TO HELL, a sequence that deals with a semester in the life of an adjunct English instructor. CASTLEMAN IN THE ACADEMY is a collection of eleven interrelated stories, recently published by March Street Press, about Roger Castleman, a writing teacher at a community college in Baltimore.

BBF Baltimore Festival Readings, Sept 26th

2008-09-22T21:24:00.008-04:00

If you missed the titillating Dirty Words reading last Saturday, don't fear; we're double-dipping this month! We'll be at the CityLit tent from 6-8 pm, September 26th at the Baltimore Book Festival! Rafael Alvarez, Maddison Smartt Bell, Michael Kimball, Henry Lewis, Jen Michalski, and Christine Schutt will read. And there's also the matter of free beer, provided by Clipper City Brewery, Aaron Henkin from WYPR's "The Signal," and The CityLit Band!

Rafael Alvarez is a short story writer and screenwriter based in Baltimore and Los Angeles. A former City Desk reporter for the Baltimore Sun, Alvarez wrote for the HBO drama "The Wire" in the show's first three seasons and is the author of ORLO AND LEINI, a collection of short fiction and HOMETOWN BOY, an anthology of his journalism. He can be reached at orlo.leini@gmail.com.

Madison Smartt Bell is the author of 12 novels, including SOLDIER's JOY, which received the Lillian Smith Award in 1989. Bell has also published two collections of short stories: ZERO DB (1987) and BARKING MAN (1990). In 2002, the novel DOCTOR SLEEP was adapted as a film, Close Your Eyes, starring Goran Visnjic, Paddy Considine, and Shirley Henderson. Bell's eighth novel, ALL SOUL'S RISING, was a finalist for the 1995 National Book Award and the 1996 PEN/Faulkner Award and winner of the 1996 Anisfield-Wolf award for the best book of the year dealing with matters of race. All Souls Rising, along with the second and third novels of his Haitian Revolutionary trilogy, Master of the Crossroads and The Stone That The Builder Refused, is available in a uniform edition from Vintage Contemporaries. Toussaint Louverture: A Biography, appeared from Pantheon in 2007. Born and raised in Tennessee, he has lived in New York and in London and now lives in Baltimore, Maryland, along with his wife, the poet Elizabeth Spires, and daughter. He is currently Director of the Kratz Center for Creative Writing at Goucher College, and has been a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers since 2003. For more details, visit http://faculty.goucher.edu/mbell

Michael Kimball’s first two novels are THE WAY THE FAMILY GOT AWAY (2000) and HOW MUCH OF US THERE WAS (2005), both of which have been translated (or are being translated) into many languages. His third novel, DEAR EVERYBODY, has just been published in the US, UK, and Canada (http://michael-kimball.com/). Time Out New York called the writing “stunning” and the Los Angeles Times said the book was “funny and warm and sad and heartbreaking.” Sam Lipsyte has called Michael Kimball “a hero of contemporary American literature.” He is also responsible for the collaborative art project—Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard)--and the documentary film, I Will Smash You (2009).

William Henry Lewis’ first book, IN THE ARMS OF OUR ELDERS, was published by Carolina Wren Press in 1995 and has since seen three printings. His second collection of stories, I GOT SOMEBODY IN STAUNTON, (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2005), has been named by Kirkus Reviews as a Best Book of 2005, and honored as a finalist for the 2006 PEN Faulkner Prize for Fiction. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Maryland, College Park. Recently, Lewis has been awarded a 2008 Creative Writing Fellowship in prose fiction by the National Endowment for the Arts. Lewis’s writing has appeared and forthcoming in many literary journals and several anthologies, home and abroad, including Best American Short Stories of 1996.

Jen Michalski's collection of short fiction, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS (2007), is available from So New Media. Her fiction has appeared in more than 30 publications, including McSweeney's, Failbetter, storySouth, Hobart, Pindeldyboz, Thieves Jargon, Word Riot, and others. She is the editor of the literary e-zine jmww and lives in Baltimore. You can visit her at jenmichalski.com

Christine Schutt is the author of two short story collections and FLORIDA, a novel and National Book Award finalist. Her second novel, ALL SOULS, was published in April 2008, and has been widely praised as "hauntingly unforgettable" and "one of the best private school novels to appear in recent years." Among other honors, Schutt has twice won the O’Henry Short Story Prize. She has taught in the writing programs at Columbia, Barnard, Sarah Lawrence, Bennington, and the University of California-Irvine. In spring she was the Louis D. Rubin, Jr., Writer-in-Residence at Hollins University and this past summer taught at the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Schutt is a senior editor of the literary annual NOON. She lives in New York.

Talk Dirty to Me

2008-09-21T20:20:00.015-04:00

I think the City Paper is onto us. Check out our "Best Scene" mention in their "Best of" edition.

I guess they're not the only ones. A crowd of 60+ got a little closer in the upstairs of Minas Gallery and Boutique on Saturday, September 20th, for Dirty Words: A Literary Encyclopedia of Sex.

Summer of Naked Swim Parties author Jessica Blau started off the night with some musings on adultery.

Maud Casey, author of the novel Genealogy and the collection Drastic tackled pheromones.

Tita Chico, author of Designing Women: The Dressing Room in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture, gave a lecture on the history of the word pornography.

Stacey D'Erasmo, author of the novels Tea and A Seahorse Year, silver-balled us.

Merrill Feitell, author of the collection Here Beneath Low-Flying Planes, got us addicted to lust.

Finally, Michael Kimball, author of Dear Everybody, How Much of Us There Was, and The Way The Family Got Away, gave a handy talk on hand jobs.

A lot of cold showers ensued. But we'll be heating it up again Friday, September 26th, at the Baltimore Book Festival (CityLit Tent). Please join us for free beer, Maddison Smartt Bell, Rafael Alvarez, Christine Schutt, Michael Kimball, Jen Michalski, and William Henry Lewis. Aaron Henkin of WYPR's "The Signal" emcees. Oh, and did we mention free beer, courtesy of Clipper City Brewery?

September 20th Reading: The Dirty Words Anthology

2008-08-28T20:18:00.012-04:00

Join us for a smattering of dirty words as Michael Kimball, Tita Chico, Jessica Anya Blau, Maud Casey, Stacey D'Erasmo, and Merrill Feitell read their entries from Dirty Words: A Literary Encyclopedia of Sex, a playful encyclopedia (edited by Ellen Sussman) of America's real favorite pastime.

Michael Kimball’s third novel, DEAR EVERYBODY, has just been published in the US, UK, and Canada (http://michael-kimball.com/). His first two novels are THE WAY THE FAMILY GOT AWAY (2000) and HOW MUCH OF US THERE WAS (2005), both of which have been translated (or are being translated) into many languages. He is also responsible for the collaborative art project--Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard)—and the documentary film, I Will Smash You.

Tita Chico is Associate Professor of English and Associate Director of Graduate Studies at the University of Maryland-College Park. She is the author of Designing Women: The Dressing Room in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture (2005) and Editor of the scholarly journal, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation.

Jessica Anya Blau is the author of THE SUMMER OF NAKED SWIM PARTIES (HarperPerennial 2008). Her short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appeared in numerous publications in the U.S. and Canada. She is currently teaching at Johns Hopkins University.

MAUD CASEY (maudcasey.com) is the author of the novels The Shape of Things to Come, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and Genealogy, a New York Times Editor's Pick, and an award-winning story collection, Drastic. She is the recipient of the Calvino Prize and international fellowships at the Fundacion Valparaiso and the Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers. She is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Maryland and lives in Washington, D.C. [maudcasey.com]

Merrill Feitell's first book, Here Beneath Low-Flying Planes, won the Iowa Award for Short Fiction. She teaches at the University of Maryland in College Park and lives in Baltimore. She is currently working on a novel.

Stacey D’Erasmo is the author of the novels Tea, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; and A Seahorse Year, which was named a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle and Newsday, and won both a Lambda Literary Award and a Ferro-Grumley Award. Her third novel, The Sky Below, will be published in January, 2009. She is currently an assistant professor of writing at Columbia University.

Larry Doyle's 2008 Thurber Prize Nomination

2008-08-25T13:57:00.002-04:00

Congrats to recent 510 guest Larry Doyle (August 16th reading)! He is one of three finalists for the esteemed 2008 Thurber Prize for American Humor. Keep your fingers crossed!

Saturday, August 16th reading

2008-08-18T19:56:00.008-04:00

Welcome to the August installment of the 510 Readings! Saturday, Linda Franklin, Jackie Corley, and Larry Doyle joined Michael and Jen and company at Minas in Hampden:

An audience, darkly.

Linda Franklin reads, with a surprise appearance by Joe Young

Jackie Corley, editor of Word Riot, reads from her short fiction collection The Suburban Swindle.

Larry Doyle reads from his novel I Love You, Beth Cooper, soon to be a major motion picture release in 2009!

Join us next month on September 20th to hear some Dirty Words (readings by Jessica Anya Blau, Maud Casey, Tita Chico, Merrill Feitell, and more) and also at the Baltimore Book Festival on September 26th (featuring readings by Madison Smartt Bell, Rafael Alvarez, Michael Kimball, Jen Michalski, Christine Schutt, and Henry Lewis!)

August 16th Readings: Larry Doyle, Jackie Corley, Linda Franklin

2008-07-28T11:59:00.011-04:00

Larry Doyle is the author of I LOVE YOU, BETH COOPER, soon to be a minor motion picture directed by Chris Columbus and starring Hayden Panettiere in the title role. He was a writer-producer for The Simpsons for four years, and now makes something of a living writing screenplays and allegedly funny things for The New Yorker.

Jackie Corley was born in 1982. She developed Word Riot (www.wordriot.org) in March 2002 with the help of Paula Anderson. Word Riot Press, an independent publishing press, evolved out of the magazine in January 2003. Her writing has appeared on-line at MobyLives.com, 3AM Magazine, and Pequin, among others, and in various print anthologies. Her short story collection, The Suburban Swindle, will be published in October 2008 by So New (www.sonewpublishing.com).

Linda Campbell Franklin has written and/or illustrated 40+ nonfiction books, but she's given up assembling and rearranging facts out of neat file cabinets, and has returned to what's in her messy brain—fiction. Soon she hopes to finish one of the four novels in progress. She teaches creative writing at a re-entry program for ex-offenders. Only one piece of fiction has been published—a short story for children a couple of years ago. She hasn’t tried to publish anything else, so if you have a carrot stick, please use it on her! Her blog is www.barkinglips.blogspot.com.

July 19th Readings

2008-07-21T21:13:00.013-04:00

A happy and hungry crowd

Sean Carman reads a selection of humorous shorts from biblical to Washington Beltway.

Rupert Wondolowski reads his story "Larry the Swollen and Manny the Art Gimp"

The Murdaland raffle, courtesy of Michael Kimball

Savannah Schroll Guz reads an excerpt from her novel in progress.

See you on August 16th for Larry Doyle, Linda Franklin, and Jackie Corley!

July 19th Reading: Savannah Schroll Guz, Sean Carman, Rupert Wondolowski

2008-07-07T20:09:00.006-04:00

Savannah Schroll Guz is author of The Famous and The Anonymous (2004) and editor of the theme-based fiction anthology Consumed: Women on Excess (2005). She has been nominated for a Pushcart and a StorySouth Million Writers Award and is a monthly "Short Takes" columnist for Library Journal. Once upon a time, she worked as a correspondence translator for Bavaria's Prince von Hohenzollern and consequently wore out two very sturdy dictionaries. She now lives on a farm in the Mountain State of West Virginia and is at work on a novel.

Sean Carman has written for McSweeney's, the Comedy Central Television Network, Bookslut, and Maud Newton. He contributed to the McSweeney's anthology Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans and wrote the fake introduction to the anthology Stumbling and Raging: More Politically Inspired Fiction, edited by Stephen Elliott. Sean currently blogs for the Huffington Post and its sister political comedy site 23/6, and for the website for the literary magazine Hobart. Sean is working, very slowly, on a collection of short stories and a novel. He lives in Washington, DC, where he works as an environmental lawyer.

Rupert Wondolowski is the author of The Whispering of Ice Cubes, Humans Go Outside to Hurt You, and a few others. His work has appeared in Murdaland, Lost and Found Times, Rampike, Open 24 Hours, Fell Swoop, Rock Heals, Peek Review, and many other literary journals. He is the editor of The Shattered Wig Review and host of the erratically held Shattered Wig Nights at the glorious 14 Karat Cabaret. He occasionally gets to read his work on WYPR's treasured program "The Signal" and to pass judgment on authors far more accomplished than himself in book reviews in Baltimore's City Paper.

June 21st Reading

2008-06-28T16:25:00.006-04:00

Another fine crowd joined us on Saturday, June 21st at Minas Gallery in Hampden:

Susan Muaddi-Darraj, author of the short story collection The Inheritance of Exile and editor of The Baltimore Review, started us off reading a recent essay. You can hear Susan read her story "sufficing" on The Signal

Rosalia Scalia read her story, "Picking Cicoria," which won first prize in the 2007 Taproot Literary Fiction competition and is published in Taproot The Healing Tree #20.

Lalita Noronha,a two-time Maryland Literary Arts Award winner and author of the short story collection, When Monsoons Cry, reads an excerpt from a novel in progress.

510 Reading on Saturday, June 21st at Minas, 5 pm

2008-06-04T14:22:00.005-04:00

Born in India, Lalita Noronha earned her PhD in Microbiology and is research scientist, writer, poet and teacher at St. Paul’s School for Girls. Her work has been widely published (Baltimore Sun, Crab Orchard Review, Catholic Digest, The Christian Science Monitor, Get Well Wishes [Harper Collins] 2001: A Science Poetry Anthology [Anamnesis] among others). She is a recipient of the Maryland Literary Arts Award twice—(1997 and 2001) and a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in 2002, City Paper, and the National League of American Pen Women. She is a fiction editor for The Baltimore Review and the author of a short story collection, Where Monsoons Cry from Black Words Press (http://www.lalitanoronha.com)

Rosalia Scalia writes both fiction and nonfiction. Her fiction appears in the North Atlantic Review, Pebble Lake Review, Pig Iron Press, and Spout Magazine. Her story “Sister Rafaele Heals the Sick” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her story “Picking Cicoria” is the first prize winner in the 2007 Taproot Literary Fiction competition and is published in Taproot The Healing Tree #20. The first chapter of her novel-in-progress, Delia’s Concerto, was one of seven finalists in a National League of American Pen Women competition. Scalia earned a master’s degree in writing from Johns Hopkins University in 2003. Her nonfiction appears in a variety of publications and web sites; she has contributed to five nonfiction books published by the French Publisher, Editions du Signe.

Susan Muaddi Darraj is the author of The Inheritance of Exile, a collection of short stories published by University of Notre Dame Press in 2007 and a finalist for the AWP Book Awards in Short Fiction. She teaches English and literature at Harford Community College in Bel Air, MD, and is Senior Editor of The Baltimore Review, a journal of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry.

510 Reading, May 17th, Minas

2008-05-19T21:34:00.012-04:00

It was another bright, crowded evening at Minás in Hampden for this little monthly thing we like to call The 510 Reading series. Joining us for installment five were Adam Robinson, Betsy Boyd, and Geoff Herbach. We regret that John Rowell could not make it; we hope to have him in for a reading soon!

Publishing Genius magnate Adam Robinson read his story "Koi."

Betsy Body read her story "Baptist Explorers of East Texas," which you can find in the audioquarterly Verb.

Geoff Herbach, on tour to promote his novel The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg, stopped in to read some excerpts before heading back to Minneapolis. See you June 21st, when we welcome Rosalia Scalia, Lalita Noronha, and Susan Muaddi-Darraj!

510 Reading on Saturday, May 17th at Minas, 5 pm

2008-05-02T16:35:00.006-04:00

Geoff Herbach co-founded the Lit 6 Project (Minneapolis, MN), a group that runs beer-fueled literary events around the Midwest. He is also a founding member of The Electric Arc Radio Show, a literary-musical tragi-comedy, which airs on Minnesota Public Radio, starring four sad writers who live in a decrepit house and spend time fighting over the television remote and stealing appliances from local stores rather than writing. His debut novel, The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg, arrives this April from Crown/Three Rivers Press. Tish Cohen, author of Town House, called the book, “...a darkly comic, extraordinary peek into the delicate mind of a suicidal no-hoper.” Herbach has hope and an MFA in creative writing from Hamline University.

Betsy Boyd was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. A fiction writer and journalist currently living in Baltimore, she has published short stories in Shenandoah, Unpleasant Event Schedule, and on CD through Verb: An Audioquarterly. Betsy received a James A. Michener Fellowship in screenwriting. She will spend February as a writer in residence at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska.

John Rowell is the author of the short story collection The Music of Your Life (Simon and Schuster), which was named a Dazzling Debut/Breakout Book of Spring, 2003 at Amazon.com, and was also a finalist for the 2004 Ferro-Grumley Prize for Best Fiction Book of the Year. He is the recipient of fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, The Sewanee Writers Conference (Walter E. Dakin Fellow, 2004), The Edward F. Albee Foundation and the Kimmel-Harding-Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska City, Nebraska. John served two years as the Reginald S. Tickner Fellow/Writer-In-Residence at The Gilman School of Baltimore, Maryland, where he is now a member of the permanent Upper School faculty, teaching English and Creative Writing and directing in the theater program. John’s fiction, essays and reviews have been featured in such publications as Tin House, Bloom and Show Business Weekly, among others.

Adam Robinson has published poetry in the Baltimore journals, The Shattered Wig Review and Rock Heals, and has earned a grant from the Chicago Union League for his fiction writing. He writes articles on Christian rock for HM Magazine and poetry reviews for JMWW. He is the editor of Publishing Genius, a chapbook press that also distributes the outdoor journal Baltimore Is Reads and the ePress series, This PDF Chapbook. In 2005 his play, The Professor, was staged in Milwaukee. He performs artsy rock-hop with filmmaker Stephanie Barber in their duo, Cardinal.

April 19th Reading

2008-04-20T21:34:00.009-04:00

Another big crowd at Miná's Gallery in Hampden to hear Michael Downs, Maud Casey, and Michael Kimball.

Jen Michalski took over hosting duties for the evening.

Michael Downs read "At the Beach," featured in The Missouri Review.

Maud Casey read "Fugueur," selected by Rick Moody as a finalist in The Bellevue Literary Review's Goldenberg Prize for Fiction and published in Spring 2008 issue of the Bellevue Literary Review.

510's own Michael Kimball read excerpts from his forthcoming novel, Dear Everybody, available September 1st.

Thanks again for coming out, and join us on May 17th for John Rowell, Geoff Herbach, Betsy Boyd, and Adam Robinson!

510 Reading on Saturday, April 19th at Minas, 5 pm

2008-03-25T20:43:00.006-04:00

Michael Kimball has published two novels, The Way the Family Got Away (2000) and How Much of Us There Was (2005), both of which have been translated (or are being translated into) many languages. His third novel, Dear Everybody (2008), was published in March in the UK and will be published in September in the US and Canada. He has won a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Boswell and Johnson Award, and the Lidano Fiction Prize. Recently, Stephen King short-listed one of his stories for Best American Short Stories, as did Dave Eggers for Best American Nonrequired Reading. He has also published many pieces in many literary magazines, including Open City, Prairie Schooner, Post Road, and New York Tyrant. [myspace.com/michaelkimball]

Maud Casey is the author of the short story collection, Drastic, and two novels, The Shape of Things to Come, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and Genealogy, a New York Times Editor's Pick. Her fiction and essays have appeared in such places as The Threepenny Review, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, Confrontation, American Short Fiction, Post Road, and Poets & Writers. An excerpt from Genealogy received The Jane Geske Award from Prairie Schooner; her essay "The Rise From the Earth (So Far)" was a Salon Editor's Pick 2006; and her short story, "Fugueur," was selected by Rick Moody as a finalist in The Bellevue Literary Review's Goldenberg Prize for Fiction and will be published in BLR, Spring 2008. She has received fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, UCross, Fundacion Valparaiso, and Ledig International Writers House. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Maryland. [maudcasey.com]

Michael Downs, a former newspaper reporter, teaches creative writing at Towson University. His nonfiction book, House of Good Hope: A Promise for a Broken City, won the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Award in 2006. Downs’ short fiction has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Georgia Review, Five Points, and other literary reviews and has been anthologized in, among other places, the Best American Mystery Stories series. His work won a literary fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. [http://www.michael-downs.net/]

March 15th Readings

2008-03-18T13:12:00.019-04:00

Thanks for attending the March 15th edition of the 510 Series. As the crowd fills up (standing room only, again).

Your MC, Michael Kimball, kicks it off...

Christine Stewart, resident writer at the Creative Alliance, reads excerpts from her novel in progress

Jen Michalski, author of Close Encounters, fights with stage props.

Dave Housley, author of Ryan Seacrest Is Famous goes out with a bang.

See you on April 19th for Michael Kimball, Maud Casey, and Michael Downs!

510 Reading on Saturday, March 15th at Minas, 5 pm

2008-03-03T20:58:00.010-05:00

We are pleased to announce this month's 510 Reading Series lineup:

Dave Housley is the author of Ryan Seacrest is Famous, a collection of short fiction. His work has appeared in Columbia, Hobart, Nerve, Sycamore Review, and some other places. He's one of the founders and fiction editors at Barrelhouse magazine.

Jen Michalski's collection of short fiction, Close Encounters, is available from SoNew Media. Her work has appeared in any publications, including McSweeney's, Failbetter, storySouth, Hobart, Word Riot, and the Summerset Review. She is the editor in chief of the online quarterly JMWW and lives in Baltimore.

Christine Stewart is a resident artist with Creative Alliance, where she leads the Write Here, Write Now workshops cosponsored by CityLit Project. She has a M.A. and M.F.A. in creative writing and poetry and is the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and an Individual Artist Award in Fiction from the Maryland State Arts Council. Some of her work appears in Poetry, Ploughshares, Blackbird, Five Points, Smartish Pace, and The Cortland Review.

Photos from the February 16th Reading

2008-02-17T00:22:00.007-05:00

We had another standing-room-only crowd out for the Santi readings from Black Arrow Press. This photo doesn't even show half the people that were there.

This is Luca Dipierro, the editor of Santi, reading from his story "Ossi."

And this is Rachel Bradley, the designer for Santi, reading from Claudio Morandini's story, "The Cold Fingers."

This is the actor Stephen Thomas reading Dan Chaon's story "St. Dismus"--which he also read for the cd that accompanies Santi, backed by the band Garland of Hours.

And this is David R. Matthews, author of Ace of Spades, reading from his story in Santi, "Seemed Like the Thing to Do at the Time."

Luca Dipierro to Appear on "The Signal"

2008-02-12T12:31:00.000-05:00

Luca Dipierro will be on WYPR's The Signal on Friday, February 15th, at noon and 7 pm to discuss Santi and the upcoming 510 reading on February 16th. Hope you can tune in!

February 16th Reading: The Authors of Santi: Lives of Modern Saints

2008-01-31T22:12:00.000-05:00

We are pleased to feature authors from Santi: Lives of Modern Saints, a 452-page anthology of short stories by some of the most original upcoming American and Italian writers. Published by Baltimore's Black Arrow Studio and Press, Lives is edited by Luca Dipierro and N. Frank Daniels and is illustrated by Rachel Bradley. Lives includes the "CD WHERE'S MY HALO? Five Stories from SANTI" with original soundtracks by Sin Ropas (USA), Blake/e/e/e (USA/Italy), Polmo Polpo (Canada), Garland of Hours (USA), and absinthe (provisoire; France.)

About the Authors:
Rachel Bradley is a visual artist, designer, and photographer. Departing from a background of traditional b/w photography, her work has evolved into more complex multimedia forms. She recently curated an exhibition, Objects of Adoration, at MAP in Baltimore. She’s also editing Homeland, a book of photographs by Chris Brokaw and Chique Pensão, by Portuguese artists Rui Vitorino Santos and Julio Dolbeth. [www.rachelbradley.net]

Luca Dipierro is a writer, filmmaker, and illustrator. In 2007 ,he created Black Arrow Studio & press with his wife Rachel Bradley. A collection of his short stories, Breakfast in America, will be published in 2008. I Probably Should Have Changed My Shirt, a DVD collecting his first short films, is available through Black Arrow. He is currently working on a documentary about crime fiction writer Derek Raymond.
[www.lucadipierro.com]

David R. Matthews lives in Brooklyn. He grew up in Baltimore City, and stopped by several universities without managing to collect any degrees, certifications, or awards. He has appeared on CNN, The CBS Sunday Morning Show, The Tavis Smiley Show, and BET, discussing matters of race and American culture. Ace of Spades is his first book. Look for its follow up, Brother Superior, in 2009.

[www.davidrmatthews.com]

Photos from the January 19th Reading

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Michael Kimball, your MC

Joseph Young

Jen Michalski, subbing for Savannah Sschroll-Guz

Madeleine Mysko

Sargent Slaughter, err, Justin Sirois

January 19, 2008 Readings

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Please join Michael and Jen on Saturday at 5 pm, January 19th, 2008, at Minás Gallery, 815 W. 36th Street to enjoy the following readers:

Madeleine Mysko is a writer who served as an Army nurse on the burn ward in Fort Sam Houston, TX, during the Vietnam War. Bringing Vincent Home, her debut novel, re-enters that time by way of a Baltimore family who must come to terms with the wounding of one of their own. A graduate of The Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, Mysko has published in venues that include The Baltimore Sun, Bellevue Literary, The Hudson Review, River Styx, and Shenandoah. Among her awards in fiction are an individual artist grant from the Maryland State Arts Council and a Baltimore City Artscape Prize.

Savannah Schroll Guz is author of The Famous and The Anonymous (2004) and editor of the theme-based fiction anthology Consumed: Women on Excess (2005). She has been nominated for a Pushcart and a StorySouth Million Writers Award and is a monthly "Short Takes" columnist for Library Journal. Once upon a time, she worked as a correspondence translator for Bavaria's Prince von Hohenzollern and consequently wore out two very sturdy dictionaries. She now lives on a farm in the Mountain State of West Virginia and is at work on a novel.

Joseph Young lives in Baltimore where he co-runs the art blog BaltimoreInterview.com and keeps the microfiction blog verysmalldogs.blogspot.com. Look for his work in such magazines as SmokeLong Quarterly, Mississippi Review, Exquisite Corpse, Rock Heals, Eleven Bulls, JMWW, elimae, and others.

Welcome to the 510 Series!

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The 510 Readings is the only dedicated fiction reading series in Baltimore. The readings will run under an hour and feature at least three writers—from writers you haven't heard of yet (but will soon) to well-known writers (local and nationally known). It happens in the Minás Gallery at 5:00 on every third Saturday of every month—for the rest of your life. Hosted by Michael Kimball (author of Dear Everybody, 2008) and Jen Michalski (author of Close Encounters, 2007).