The Season 4 Finale: November 19th

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.