AUTHORS & SPEAKERS

ASHLEIGH BRYANT PHILLIPS

Author, SLEEPOVERS

Ashleigh Bryant Phillips is from Woodland, North Carolina. Her debut collection, Sleepovers, won the C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize. It was longlisted for The Story Prize, and stories from it appeared in The Paris Review and The Oxford American. Her fiction has been translated into Urdu and an Italian translation of Sleepovers is forthcoming this year. Ashleigh teaches fiction at West Virginia Wesleyan College’s low residency MFA and is a Southern editor for Joyland Magazine.

BARBARA BOURLAND

Author, FAKE LIKE ME; I’LL EAT WHEN I’M DEAD

Bourland’s novels use imaginative escapism to process an emotional condition (in chronological order: I’ll Eat When I’m Dead, the compulsion to control our appearance; Fake Like Me, the worry that we aren’t good enough; The Force of Such Beauty, the desire to be special) endemic to contemporary women’s lives. Cast in the mold of universal literary forms—the detective story, the thriller, the fairytale—they weave in and out of their genres, until the plot turns inside out and the narrative, upon reflection, appears to be something else entirely.

She’s at work on her fourth novel, Fields and Waves, forthcoming from Dutton in 2024.

She lives in Baltimore.

BAYNARD WOODS

Author, INHERITANCE: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF WHITENESS

BAYNARD WOODS is a freelance writer living in Baltimore. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and many other publications. He is coauthor, with Brandon Soderberg, of I Got a Monster: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Corrupt Police Squad.

BRANDON SODERBERG

Journalist & Author, I GOT A MONSTER

Brandon Soderberg is a reporter covering cops, drugs, and guns in Baltimore and the Director of Operations for Baltimore Beat. He writes about Baltimore for The Real News Network and is the co-author with Baynard Woods of I Got a Monster: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Corrupt Police Squad. Formerly the editor-in-chief of Baltimore City Paper, his work has also appeared in The New York Times, Huffington Post, Vice, Village Voice, the Appeal, and many other publications.

CARA OBER

Publisher, BMORE ART

Cara Ober writes about Baltimore’s unique cultural landscape from the perspective of an artist and feminist. She approaches all kinds of cultural production from a constructive and critical perspective informed by material and pop culture, history, social movements, and politics. Over the past decade, Ober’s critical reviews, essays, and interviews have explored the political and economic impact of the arts in Baltimore and the way artists maintain a professional practice and thrive in a city full of rich and diverse cultural traditions as well as serious social issues.

She writes regularly about artist and museum culture and and the way they intersect and collide, assessing how this impacts art communities and establishes hierarchies of value.

D’MANDA MARTINI

Performer, Singer

The Chanteuse of Southern Maryland: Drag performer, cosplayer, theater artist, hostess of Eleanor’s New Deal Cabaret, & Captain Green Lantern 2018

Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) is just what it sounds like—drag queens reading stories to children in libraries, schools, and bookstores. DQSH captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models. In spaces like this, kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where people can present as they wish, where dress up is real.

D. WATKINS

Author, BLACK BOY SMILE; WE SPEAK FOR OURSELVES

D. Watkins is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of The Beast Side, The Cook Up, Where Tomorrows Aren’t Promised and We Speak for Ourselves, which was a One Book, one Baltimore selection. He is Editor at Large for Salon. He is featured in the HBO documentary The Slow Hustle and is a writer on We Own the City, an HBO miniseries from David Simon. 

Watkins work has been published in the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, and other publications. He is a college lecturer at the University of Baltimore and holds a Master’s in Education from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Baltimore. Watkins’ awards include the BMe Genius Grant for dynamic Black leaders, the City Lit Dambach Award for Service to the Literary Arts, the Maryland Library Association’s William Wilson Maryland Author Award, and the Ford’s Men of Courage award for Black male storytellers. He was also a finalist for a 2016 Hurston Wright Legacy Award and The Cook Up was a 2017 Books for a Better Life finalist. He is lives in Baltimore, MD with his wife and daughter.

DANIELLE EVANS

Author, THE OFFICE OF HISTORICAL CORRECTIONS, BEFORE YOU SUFFOCATE YOUR OWN FOOL SELF

Danielle Evans is the author of the story collections The Office of Historical Corrections and Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. Her first collection won the PEN American Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Hurston-Wright award for fiction, and the Paterson Prize for fiction; her second won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and The Bridge Book Award and was a finalist for The Aspen Prize, The Story Prize, and The LA Times Book prize for fiction.

She is the 2021 winner of The New Literary Project Joyce Carol Oates Prize, a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts fellow, and a 2011 National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree. Her stories have appeared in magazines including The Paris Review, A Public Space, American Short Fiction, Callaloo, The Sewanee Review, and Phoebe, and have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2008, 2010, 2017, and 2018, and in New Stories From The South.

She received an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop, previously taught creative writing at American University in Washington DC and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and currently teaches in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.

DHARNA NOOR

Climate Producer, THE BOSTON GLOBE

Dharna Noor is the Boston Globe’s climate producer. Prior to joining the Boston Globe’s climate team, Dharna worked as a staff writer at Earther, Gizmodo’s climate vertical, where she also co-produced a season of the podcast Drilled on the fossil fuel industry’s influence on education. Before that, she led the climate team at the Real News Network. Her writing has also appeared in publications including In These Times, Jacobin Magazine, and Truthout, and was also featured in a 2021 book from The New Press called The World We Need. She has been interviewed on podcasts and radio programs such as the Times Radio, Vox’s Tell Me More, the Insurgents, Left Reckoning, and NPR’s Living on Earth. She lives in Baltimore.

GRACE LAVERY

Author, PLEASE MISS: A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING PENIS

Grace Lavery is a writer, editor, and academic living in Brooklyn, NY. As an Associate Professor of English, Critical Theory, and Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, her research explores the history and theory of aesthetics and interpretation, with particular interests in psychoanalysis, literary realism, and queer and trans cultures. Her forthcoming speculative memoir, Please Miss, will be published by Seal Press in 2022.

Her first book, Quaint, Exquisite: Victorian Aesthetics and the Idea of Japan, was published by Princeton University Press in 2019, and her scholarly essays have been published in Critical Inquiry, Differences, Social Text Online, Transgender Studies Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is a General Editor of Transgender Studies Quarterly. She writes for non-specialist readerships on queer/trans culture and politics, and has published work in Autostraddle, The Guardian, Gay Magazine, them, and Catapult, where she has an occasional film column entitled “Lurid Speculations.”

Grace has a husband named Daniel and a Japanese Chin named Bon-Bon. She enjoys cooking and walking.

HERNAN DIAZ

Author, TRUST ; IN THE DISTANCE

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award, Hernan Diaz is the author of two novels translated into more than twenty languages. He has published stories and essays in The Paris Review, Granta, Playboy, The Yale Review, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. His first novel, In the Distance, was the winner of the Saroyan International Prize, the Cabell Award, the Prix Page America, and the New American Voices Award, among other distinctions. It was also a Publishers Weekly Top 10 Book of the Year and one of Lit Hub’s Top 20 Books of the Decade.

He is the recipient of a Whiting Award and fellowships from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Ingmar Bergman Estate.

He holds a PhD from NYU, edits an academic journal at Columbia University, and is also the author of Borges, between History and Eternity.

His second novel, Trust, will be released by Riverhead in May 2022.

JEANNIE VANASCO

Author, THINGS WE DIDN’T TALK ABOUT WHEN I WAS A GIRL

Jeannie Vanasco is the author of the memoirs Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl—which was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a best book of 2019 by TIME, Esquire, Kirkus, among others—and The Glass Eye, which Poets & Writers called one of the five best literary nonfiction debuts of 2017. Her third book, A Silent Treatment, is forthcoming. Her essays have appeared in the Believer, the New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement, and elsewhere. She lives in Baltimore and teaches at Towson University.

J.M GIORDANO

Award-Winning Photojournalist

J.M. Giordano is an award-winning photojournalist based in Baltimore and co-host of the photojournalism podcast, 10 Frames Per Second. His book, We Used to Live At Night chronicles 25 years of the city at night. His work has been featured on NPR, ProPublica, Al-Jazeera, GQ, Architectural Digest, Taste, The Observer New Review Sunday Magazine, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, Washington Post. His work, from the Struggle series is in the permanent collections at the Reginald Lewis Museum. In 2015 he was short-listed for the National Gallery’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Prize and his international photographs covering the collapse of the steel industry are the subject of a solo show at the Museum of Industry in Baltimore and second book, Shuttered. He teaches black and white analog photography at the Baltimore School for The Arts.

JUDITH KRUMMECK

Author, OLD NEW WORLDS

Judith is a writer who lives in Baltimore, MD, and was born and raised in Africa.  She graduated from the University of Cape Town with a BA in Drama and History of Art, working as a professional actor before becoming the arts editor for SAfm at the South African Broadcasting Corporation. Judith joined WBJC shortly after immigrating to the United States in the late 1990s.

She holds an MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts from the University of Baltimore, and is the author of Beyond the Baobab, a collection of essays about her immigrant experience. Her new book, Old New Worlds, is available from Green Writers Press.

JULIA FLEISCHAKER

Owner, GREEDY READS 

Julia Fleischaker is the owner of Greedy Reads, an independent bookstore with locations in Fells Point and Remington in Baltimore, MD.

JUNG YUN

Author, O BEAUTIFUL; SHELTER

Jung Yun was born in Seoul, South Korea and grew up in Fargo, North Dakota. She is the author of O BEAUTIFUL (St. Martin’s Press, 2021), which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and Group Text selection, and SHELTER (Picador, 2016), which was long-listed for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and a finalist for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award. Her work has appeared in Tin House, The Massachusetts Review, The Indiana Review, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. Currently, she lives in Baltimore and serves as an Assistant Professor of English at the George Washington University. She also serves on the boards of directors at the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and the Alan Cheuse Center for International Writers.

JUSTINA IRELAND

Author, DREAD NATION ; DEATHLESS DIVIDE

Justina Ireland is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous books, including Dread Nation, Deathless Divide, and the Scott O’Dell Award winning middle-grade, Ophie’s Ghosts. She is also the author of numerous Star Wars books and one of the story architects of Star Wars: The High Republic.

You can find her work wherever great books are sold and you can find her on Twitter as @justinaireland or at her website justinaireland.com.

K.M. SPZARA

Author, FIRST, BECOME ASHES ; DOCILE

K.M. Szpara is a queer and trans author who lives in Baltimore, MD, with his tiny dog and pirate cat. He is the author of speculative novels such as FIRST, BECOME ASHES (2021) and DOCILE (2020), and a third in 2023 that follows up on his Hugo and Nebula nominated novelette, “Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time.” They’re about cults and trauma, consent and debt, and a horny trans vampire, respectively. His short fiction appears in Tor.com, Uncanny, Lightspeed, and more. You can find himme on the Internet at kmszpara.com and on Twitter and Instagram at @kmszpara.

KAREN OSBORNE

Author, ARCHITECTS OF MEMORY; ENGINES OF OBLIVION

Karen Osborne is the author of ARCHITECTS OF MEMORY and ENGINES OF OBLIVION from Tor Books, and her short fiction appears in Uncanny Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Fireside Magazine, Clarkesworld, and more. Her work has been nominated for the Nebula, Sturgeon and Locus Awards. She lives in Baltimore with her wonderful family, three cameras, two fiddles and a theremin.

LANE CLARKE

Author, LOVE TIMES INFINITY

Lane Clarke grew up in Richmond, Virginia, where she hung out with her grandma at IHOP every Tuesday night and attended $3 movie nights at the Byrd Theater. Lane has been in love with books since the age of two. Her stories feature Black culture and big-hearted teenagers with self-doubts and big dreams, who—with a little laughter and good friends—can accomplish anything. She eats dessert before dinner and can usually be found rewatching her favorite teen soap operas.

She currently lives in Northern Virginia with her cat, Pickles, and works as an attorney in Washington, D.C.

DR. LAWRENCE T. BROWN

Author, THE BLACK BUTTERFLY

Lawrence T. Brown is an equity scientist, urban Afrofuturist, and the director of the Black Butterfly Academy, a virtual racial equity education and consulting firm.  From 2013-2019, he served as an assistant and associate professor at Morgan State University in the School of Community Health and Policy.  In June 2018, he was honored by OSI Baltimore with the Bold Thinker award for sparking critical discourse regarding Baltimore’s racial segregation. 

In 2020, he directed the US COVID-19 Atlas work and response for the County Health Rankings and Roadmaps program in partnership with the University of Chicago Center for Spatial Data Science.  His first book The Black Butterfly: The Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in January 2021. In 2021-2022, Dr. Brown will be working as a research scientist in the new Center for Urban Health Equity at Morgan State University. 

LAWRENCE JACKSON

Author, SHELTER: A TALE OF BLACK HOMELAND

Lawrence Jackson is the author of the award-winning books Chester B. Himes: A Biography (W.W. Norton 2017), The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics (Princeton 2010), My Father’s Name: A Black Virginia Family after the Civil War (Chicago 2012) and Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius, 1913-1952 (Wiley 2002). 

Harper’s Magazine, Paris Review and Best American Essays have published his criticism and non-fiction.  Professor Jackson earned a PhD in English and American literature at Stanford University, and has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Humanities Center, and the William J. Fulbright program.  He began his teaching career at Howard University in 1997 and he is now Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of English and History at Johns Hopkins University, where he directs the Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts.  His latest books are Hold It Real Still: Clint Eastwood, Race, and the Cinema of the American West (Johns Hopkins University Press 2022) and Shelter: A Black Tale from Homeland, Baltimore (Graywolf 2022). 

LESLIE GRAY STREETER

Author, BLACK WIDOW

Born in hood-adjacent Baltimore City, Leslie is a University of Maryland College Park graduate, a veteran journalist and someone always looking for new ways to tell stories, both her own and those in her communities. She also really likes vegan cheese, because she’s a now a vegan and can’t eat real cheese anymore. But she’s mostly cool with it.

Leslie has done a lot of cool media situations, mostly from some bedroom or other, since “Black Widow” came out. It’s not the tour she chose, or even the world she thought she or anyone else were living in, but this book has found people in their lowest moment and helped them feel they were a little less alone.

LISA SNOWDEN

Editor in Chief, THE BALTIMORE BEAT

Lisa Snowden-McCray is the Editor in Chief of Baltimore Beat, an alternative newspaper in Baltimore City. Snowden-McCray has been working as a journalist for almost 20 years. She has written for Baltimore City Paper, where she was a reporter and food editor. She has contributed to The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, Essence magazine, the Columbia Journalism Review, and more. She has written about a wide variety of things, but the bulk of her work is trained on race, inequality, and policing in the United States in general, and how these things play a role in the stories we tell to and about each other. In 2021, she received a Best of Baltimore award from Baltimore Magazine. She’s also been honored by the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association.

LYTA GOLD

Podcast Host, ART FOR THE END OF TIMES

Lyta Gold is a freelance writer and editor. She hosts the podcast Art for the End Times on the Real News Network. You can find her on Twitter @lyta_gold.

MARIA BROOM

STORYTELLER, PERFORMER, ACTRESS

Although nationally known as an actress for her recurring roles in HBO’s “The Wire” and “The Corner”, Maria is also a storyteller and dancer with more than forty years of performing and teaching in the US and across the globe. She is a Fulbright scholar and former news reporter for the ABC affiliates in Miami and Baltimore. Currently, she is on the theater faculty at the Baltimore School for the Arts. A native of Baltimore, Maria has received many awards and honors including the Eubie Blake Award, the Sarah’s Circle Award and the 2004 Governor’s Arts Award for Individual Artist. In 2007, she was named, Artist of the Year by Young Audiences of Maryland, Inc.

In addition to her work as performer and educator, Maria is much requested as a speaker and presenter. With a background in yoga, meditation, Homa therapy and dance therapy, she conducts staff retreats, workshops and weekly classes that help people to release stress and feel at peace. Formerly, the diversity coordinator for the Park School in Baltimore, she has been a consultant since 2006 for Maryland Public Television’s Campaign for Love and Forgiveness, sponsored by Fetzer Institute.

As a recipient of an Open Society Institute community fellowship grant, Maria established a unique mentoring program in the inner city schools, and beyond, called the Dance Girls of Baltimore. It is through this vehicle that she passes on the values of self-discipline and thoughtful behavior. In 2007, Maria worked in Poland and Czechoslovakia co-directing the independent film “Soul Immortal” to be released in 2010.

MARK ALICE DURANT

Editor & Publisher, ST. LUCY JOURNAL,  ST.LUCY BOOKS

Mark Alice Durant is a photographer whose photographs, installations, and performances have been presented internationally including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and Artist’s Space in New York. In 1991, he co-founded the performance duo ‘men of the world’ that for 10 years performed on the streets of Chicago, Toronto, Seattle, New York, Houston, San Francisco, and other cities. He has written extensively on the nexus of photography, performance and cultural phenomena with essays appearing in such journals as Art in America, Art on Paper, ArtUS, Art Journal, Afterimage, Dear Dave, Exposure, New Art Examiner, and PLUK.

Durant is the publisher of Saint Lucy Books, launched in 2011 and devoted to writing about photography and contemporary art. Saint Lucy features essays, portfolios and wide-ranging conversations with artists, writers, and curators.

MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ

Editor-In-Chief, THE REAL NEWS NETWORK

Maximillian Alvarez is editor in chief of The Real News Network and a former associate editor of The Chronicle Review.

MEGAFAUNA

Musician

MEGAFAUNA is a slacker rock, electronic solo project created by Morgan Spaner from Baltimore, MD. Musically influenced by bands like The Breeders, MEGAFAUNA employs a 90’s surf rock structure and melodic sound, while providing a dance-able, rhythmic beat reminiscent of the Alternative R&B sound from LA bands like The Internet and Thundercat or one found in a house track by Kaytranada.

MEGHA MAJUMDAR

Associate Editor, CATAPULT; Author, A BURNING.

MEGHA MAJUMDAR was born and raised in Kolkata, India. She moved to the United States to attend college at Harvard University, where she was a Traub Scholar, followed by graduate school in social anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. She works as an associate editor at Catapult, and lives in New York City. A Burning is her first book. Follow her on Twitter @MeghaMaj and Instagram @megha.maj

MICAH E. WOOD

Photographer, Artist, Storyteller

Micah E Wood’s portrait photography flows with the vibrancy of the Baltimore music scene. Exploding with color, the work builds a sense of belonging and intimacy to the subject that can only be achieved by a thorough understanding of the specialness and sense of place in Baltimore. His portrait work from 2012-2016 culminated in his book ‘Features’, in which Micah turns his gaze adoringly on his favorite artists. Over the past eight years, Micah has only continued to document individuals of the microcosmic Baltimore music scene, such as emerging hip hop artists such as JPEGMAFIA to underground post punk bands to electropop legend Dan Deacon. 

Micah disarms people, and curates intimate moments with the artists he photographs, and you can see that in his work. His approach to using light as a 3-dimensional or sculptural form on the human is a playful feature that links both his portrait and landscape work.

R. ERIC THOMAS

Author, KINGS OF B’MORE ; HERE FOR IT

R. Eric Thomas is the national bestselling author of Here For It, or How to Save Your Soul in America, a Read with Jenna book club pick featured on Today and “a laugh-out-loud memoir strongly recommended for everyone” (Library Journal). His biography of Rep. Maxine Waters, Reclaiming Her Time, co-authored with Helena Andrews-Dyer, makes “the case that political biographies shine bright when they have as much panache as their subject” (Washington Post). He is also a television writer (AppleTV+’s Dickinson, FX’s Better Things), a playwright, and the long-running host of The Moth in Philadelphia and D.C.. For four years he was a Senior Staff Writer for Elle.com where he wrote “Eric Reads the News“, a daily current events and culture column. He won the 2016 Barrymore Award for Best New Play and the 2018 Dramatists Guild Lanford Wilson Award.

He has been published multiple times in The New York Times, TIME, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Magazine, and others. He has been heard on Pop Culture Happy Hour, It’s Been a Minute with Sam Sanders, Jen Hatmaker’s For the Love, and other podcasts.

Eric is an alumnus of The Foundry, a Philadelphia playwrights lab and InterAct Theatre Company’s Core Playwrights program. In 2017, he received a 2017/2018 National New Play Network Commission in conjunction with InterAct. He was a 2017 Lambda Literary Fellow, a 2018-2019 Ingram New Works Fellow, a member of Baltimore Center Stage’s Playwright’s Collective and the Cohesion Theater Company 2017 Playwright’s Fellowship.

RON CASSIE

Batimore Magazine

Ron Cassie is a senior editor for Baltimore, where he’s has worked since 2012, covering the environment, education, medicine, politics, and city life. Before becoming a journalist, he swung a hammer, poured drinks, and pedaled a bike for a living. He’s still slightly uncomfortable sitting at a desk and needs to get outside every day.

SARAH PINSKER

Author, SOONER OR LATER EVRYTHING FALLS INTO THE SEA

Sarah Pinsker’s most recent novel is We Are Satellites. Her novel A Song For A New Day won the Nebula Award, and her short fiction collection, Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea, won the Philip K Dick Award. Her stories have won two additional Nebulas and a Hugo. She is also a singer/songwriter who toured nationally behind three albums on various independent labels; a fourth, Something To Hold, was released in 2021. She has wrangled horses, managed grants, taught college writing workshops, and tended bar badly. She lives with her wife and two weird dogs in Baltimore, Maryland.

SIMONE PHILLIPS

Editor, CHARM CITY TABLE

Food blogger, Simone Phillips, better known as Charm City Table is one of the area’s most recognizable “foodies” who highlights cuisine from breakfast, lunch, fast-casual to fine dining, and everything in between.

SYDNEY J ALLEN

Photographer

Sydney J. Allen, also known as a Baltimore Griot, is a Baltimore native who uses photography to center black folk, community, and culture. She is one of many recreating a narrative of life in Baltimore City.

TONI TIPTON MARTIN

Author, JUBILEE

Toni Tipton-Martin is an award-winning food and nutrition journalist using cultural heritage and cooking for social change.  As Editor in Chief of Cook’s Country Magazine, Toni shares the  stories behind America’s favorite dishes.  Her books  celebrate the professional skills and kitchen wisdom of  invisible black cooks as culinary role models from whom everyone can learn.