March 21th Readings: Max Weiss, Rafael Alvarez, Baynard Woods, and Abby Higgs

A native of New York, Max Weiss attended Bennington College, where she double majored in music and literature. After graduation, she moved to Baltimore, where she worked as a staff writer, columnist, and film critic for the Baltimore City Paper. She also wrote the award-winning “Nice Girl” humor column for the Baltimore City Paper. In 1992, Max began a longstanding relationship with Baltimore’s talk radio station, AM 1090 WBAL. For six years, she co-hosted a weekly movie review show with host Allan Prell until he left the station. For 15 years, as “Media Max,” she did a bi-weekly pop culture and film segment with WBAL’s “Dave Durian and the Morning Team.” In 1994, Max Weiss was hired by Baltimore Magazine as a staff writer. She now serves as the magazine’s managing editor. From 1998-2006, Max was the co-host of the nationally-syndicated weekly radio show, “Max and Mike on the Movies.” Since 2006, she has also been the weekend film critic for WBAL TV. A member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association and the Women’s Film Critics Circle, Max is also a frequent television guest, emcee, and lecturer in the Baltimore region. She blogs at maxthegirl.com, baltimoremagazine.net/Maxspace, and vulture.com. She is also a serious amateur cellist.

Rafael Alvarez was born in Baltimore in 1958 and educated in local Catholic schools, graduating in 1981 from Loyola University of Maryland with a degree in English. He landed in the sports department of the Baltimore Sun as a teenager and learned to write on the City Desk, where he worked as a neighborhood reporter and rewrite man for the next 20 years. A former staff writer for the HBO drama, The Wire, Alvarez is the author of nine books, all concerned with a single subject: the City of Baltimore. His most recent collection of fiction - Crabtown, USA - was published by PMMP in 2015. His website is alvarezfiction.com.

Baynard Woods writes about Baltimore for The Guardian and is editor at large for the City Paper. He is the author of Coffin Point: The Strange Cases of Ed McTeer, Witchdoctor Sheriff, which is being produced as a television series, and is working on a book about people who believe in the Greek gods. His erstwhile column Conflicts of Interest was awarded Best Column by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. He writes libretti for Rhymes with Opera and sings in the rock 'n' roll band The Barnyard Sharks.

Abby Higgs is a graduate of the University of Baltimore's MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts program. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Guardian, Salon, The Rumpus, Freerange Nonfiction, Catapult, Bustle, VICE, and The Barely South Review. She is the Assistant Editor of Queen Mob's Teahouse - an international online literary journal based in London. More of her words can be found at slowclapabby.com.

November 16th Readings: Lucas Southworth, Andrea Kleine, Susan Muaddi Darraj, and Stephanie Barber

Lucas Southworth's stories are forthcoming from or have recently appeared in TriQuarterly, Meridian, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Web Conjunctions, DIAGRAM, Willow Springs, and others. In 2012, his collection of short stories, Everyone Here Has a Gun, won AWP’s Grace Paley Prize and University of Massachusetts Press published the book in November 2013. He is a professor of fiction and screenwriting at Loyola University Maryland and an editor for Slash Pine Press.

Susan Muaddi Darraj is the author of The Inheritance of  Exile, which was a finalist in the AWP Book Awards Series and named ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year (Short Fiction). She is a former editor for Barrelhouse Magazine and co-founder of the annual Conversations & Connections Conference: Practical Advice on Getting Published. Her new book, A Curious Land: Stories from Home, was named winner of the AWP Grace Paley Award for Short Fiction and will be published in November 2015 by the University of Massachusetts Press.

Stephanie Barber is an American writer and artist. She has created a poetic, conceptual and philosophical body of work in a variety of media. Her film and video work has been screened at MoMA, NY; The Tate Modern, London; The National Gallery, DC; The Paris Cinematheque and other museums and galleries. Her book these here separated to see how they standing alone was published in May 2008 by Publishing Genius Press. Her 2013 book Night Moves is available from Publishing Genius Press as well. Her book of very short stories ALL THE PEOPLE was published by Ink Press Productions in June 2015. Essays and poems can be found at Art21 Magazine, Hobart, Vlak, Aesthetics, Everyday Genius, Proof, H_ngm_n and other places.





Andrea Kleine is a writer and critically acclaimed performance artist. She is a five-time MacDowell Colony fellow and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellow. Her critical writing has been published in PAJ: a journal of performance and art, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and on her blog ,The Dancers Will Win. Her debut novel, CALF, was described by Publishers Weekly as "unsettling, scary, and often brilliant" and was selected as one of their best fiction books of 2015.

October 26th Readings: Laura Bogart, Elisabeth Dahl, Christine Grillo, and Kathy Flann

Kathy Flann’s fiction has appeared in Shenandoah, The North American Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, New Stories from the South, and other publications. A short story collection, Smoky Ordinary, won the Serena McDonald Kennedy Award and was published by Snake Nation Press. A second collection entitled Get a Grip won the George Garrett Award and comes out with Texas Review Press in the fall of 2015. For five years, she taught creative writing at the University of Cumbria in England, where she created mini-courses for the BBC’s Get Writing website and served on the board of the National Association of Writers in Education. She has been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Artsm the Sozopol Fiction Seminars in Bulgaria, and Le Moulin a Nef in France. She is an associate professor at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland.

Laura Bogart is a featured writer for Salon and a regular contributor to DAME magazine. Her work has appeared in IndieWire, SPIN, The Rumpus, and the Nervous Breakdown, among other publications. She has appeared on NPR affiliates and Al-Jazeera English. Laura has recently finished her first novel, titled Don't You Know That I Love You?

Elisabeth Dahl writes for both adults and children from her home in Baltimore. Her short stories, essays, and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Rumpus, Johns Hopkins Magazine, NPR.org, Post Road, the Little Patuxent Review, and other outlets. She's the author and illustrator of the middle-grade novel Genie Wishes, published by Abrams.

Christine Grillo is a science writer and editor at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, where she focuses on food system stories. She also writes about health, parenting, people, and human rights, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Utne Reader, and local magazines like Baltimore Style. Her fiction has appeared in The Southern Review, StoryQuarterly and other journals. She's a graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars in creative writing and a fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

September 21st readings: Melissa Wyse, Anthony Moll, Ashlie Kauffman, and Emily Mitchell

Anthony Moll is a poet, essayist, and military veteran. He writes about books for Baltimore Gay Life, and about queer life for Baltimore City Paper. He has taught writing at University of Baltimore and the University of California, Santa Cruz, and holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts from the former. His forthcoming chapbook of poems,Go to the Ant, O Sluggard, is to be released this fall by akinoga press.

Ashlie Kauffman holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University and an MFA in Fiction from the University of Maryland. Her recognitions include an Individual Artist Award in Fiction from the Maryland State Arts Council as well as residencies from the Vermont Studio Center and the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild. She's had work published in Washington Square, Quarterly West, and The Light Ekphrastic, and is Senior Poetry Editor for the online journal jmww, for which she administers The Claudia Emerson Poetry Chapbook Award, in honor of the late Claudia Emerson.

Melissa Wyse is a fiction writer from Baltimore. Her work has appeared in such publications as Shenandoah, Urbanite, and decomP. She has held Fellowships at the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and received her Master of Fine Arts from American University. She is currently completing a collection of short stories set in World War II Hawaii, titled Moon Over Sand Island. Melissa is a 2014-15 recipient of a Ruby Grant from the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance.

Emily Mitchell’s first collection of short stories, Viral, was published in June 2015. The New York Times Book Review called this collection “[A]lluring…the best stories here push towards true heartbreak,” and, in a starred review, Kirkus Reviews described Viral as “[E]xceptionally readable…A rich collection that takes the familiar obsessions of love and loneliness and views them from uncanny angles in ways that are magical, cutting, and intensely recognizable.” She is also the author of a novel, The Last Summer of the World (W. W. Norton, 2007), which was a finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Award. Her short fiction has appeared in Harper’s, New England Review, Ploughshares, and other magazines. She teaches at the University of Maryland.

August 24 Readings: Jen Grow, Jerry Gabriel, Michelle Brafman, and Nate Brown

Jen Grow’s debut collection, My Life as a Mermaid, won the 2012 Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Competition. She is the Fiction Editor of Little Patuxent Review. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle, Other Voices, The Sun Magazine, The GSU Review, Hunger Mountain, Indiana Review and many others including the anthology City Sages: Baltimore (City Lit Press, 2010). She’s received two Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council and her stories have earned nominations for Best New American Voices and a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Baltimore with the artist Lee Stierhoff and their zoo of cats and dogs. 

Michelle Brafman is the author of the novel Washing the Dead. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Tablet, Lillith Magazine, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Gargoyle, the minnesota review, and elsewhere. She teaches fiction writing at the John Hopkins MA in Writing Program. 

Jerry Gabriel’s first book, Drowned Boy (Sarabande, 2010), won the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. It was a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection and awarded the 2011 Towson Prize for Literature. His second book, The Let Go, a collection of long stories, was published in May by Queen’s Ferry Press. He lives in Maryland, where he teaches at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and directs the Chesapeake Writers’ Conference. 

Nate Brown’s fiction has appeared in the Iowa Review, Mississippi Review, Five Chapters, the Carolina Quarterly, and elsewhere. He is the managing editor of American Short Fiction and has received fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Vermont Studio Center, the Ucross Foundation, and multiple work-study scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. He lives in Baltimore.

July 20th Readings: Chris Tarry, Barbara Morrison, Judith Krummeck, and Michelle Junot

Chris Tarry is the author of the story collection, How To Carry Bigfoot Home (Red Hen Press, March 2015), and holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia. His fiction, non-fiction, and various screenplays have been published widely. Chris is also a four-time Juno Award winner (the Canadian Grammy), and one of New York’s most sought-after musicians.

Barbara Morrison, who writes under the name B. Morrison, is a poet and writer, a publisher, teacher, and dancer.  In her new poetry collection, Terrarium, she explores the influence of place. Her previous collection, Here at Least, chronicles a journey undertaken in response to Rilke's directive: "You must change your life." She is also the author of a memoir, Innocent: Confessions of a Welfare Mother, a powerful coming-of-age story that dispels some of the myths and misunderstandings about those living in poverty. Barbara's award-winning work has been published in anthologies and magazines. She conducts writing workshops and speaks on women’s and poverty-related issues. She is also the owner of a small press and speaks about publishing and marketing. She has maintained her Monday Morning Books blog since 2006 and tweets regularly about poetry @bmorrison9. For more information, visit her website and blog at www.bmorrison.com.

Judith Krummeck is a writer and broadcaster living in Baltimore. She is the evening drive time host of Maryland’s classical music station, WBJC, and she hold an MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts from the University of Baltimore. Beyondthe Baobab, which she wrote, designed, and published for her graduating thesis, is a collection of essays around her experience of immigrating to America from Africa. She is currently developing the manuscript into a full-length memoir. Judith’s essays have been published by literary journals such as Eight Stone Press, Welter, Plorkology, Passager, and Writers & Words. Her work has also appeared in online publications such as Monologging, Baltimore Fishbowl and The Light Ekphrastic. 

Michelle Junot is the Creative Editor of Writers and Words, a Baltimore reading series, and the author of and the floor was always lava.  She was born and raised in Lafayette, Louisiana where she learned important skills like cajun dancing, crawfish peeling, and reading. She now lives with her six plants inBaltimore, Maryland where she writes and drinks unsafe amounts of coffee

June 15th Readings: Curtis Smith, Dave K, Megan McShea, and Dave Housley

Curtis Smith’s stories and essays have appeared in over seventy literary journals. His work has been named to The Best American Short Stories Distinguished Stories List, The Best American Mystery Stories Distinguished Stories List, and the Notable Writing list of The Best American Spiritual Writing. He lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and son. His most current book of essays, Communion, was published by Dock Street Press (March 2015).

Dave K.'s work has been published in Front Porch Journal, Cobalt, LOOP, Welter, Artichoke Haircut, and on the Station North LED billboard. He is the author of stone a pig and MY NAME IS HATE, both self-published, and was Baltimore's second best local author in 2014, according to Citypaper. When he's not writing, Dave K. is a device often used as part of a wood-turning lathe.

Megan McShea writes poems and experimental prose which has been published in the books How to have a day (Ink Press Productions, 2015), A Mountain City of Toad Splendor (Publishing Genius Press, 2013), Ancient Party: Collaborations in Baltimore 2000-2010 (editor and contributor, Thingy Press, 2014), and numerous online and print journals. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland and works as an archivist. You can follow her archival, political, and poetical leanings at https://twitter.com/meganmcshea.

Dave Housley's third collection of short fiction, If I Knew the Way, I Would Take You Home, was published by Dzanc Books in January 2015. He is the author of Commercial Fiction (Outpost 19), and Ryan Seacrest is Famous (Impetus Press, Dzanc Books eBook Reprint). He is one of the founding editors of Barrelhouse magazine and a co-founder of the Conversations and Connections writer’s conference. Sometimes he drinks boxed wine and tweets about the things on his television at @housleydave.