The Last 510 of 2012

Jen and I have been hosting the 510 for 5 full years now. It's exhausting at times, organizing people, but we both love bringing so many good words to stand up in front of you. So the latest greatness will be Matt Bell, Amber Sparks, Robert Kloss, and Julian Berengaut. That's November 17th, 5pm, at the usual place, Minas.

Matt Bell is the author of Cataclysm Baby, a novella, and How They Were Found, a collection of fiction. His debut novel In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods will be published by Soho Press in June 2013. He is the Senior Editor at Dzanc Books, where he also edits the literary magazine The Collagist, and he teaches creative writing at Northern Michigan University.

Amber Sparks’s short stories have appeared in New York Tyrant, Unsaid, Gargoyle, Barrelhouse, The Collagist and elsewhere. Her first full-length story collection, May We Shed These Human Bodies, was recently published by Curbside Splendor. She lives with a husband and two beasts in Washington, DC. You can find her at ambernoellesparks.com or follow her on Twitter @ambernoelle.

Robert Kloss is the author of How the Days of Love & Diphtheria and The Alligators of Abraham. He is found online at robert-kloss.com.

Julian Berengaut is the author of The Estate of Wormwood and Honey, a novel about 19th century Russia. Berengaut was born in Poland. He was educated at universities in Warsaw, Jerusalem, Waltham, Massachusetts and Madison, Wisconsin. He worked for many years as an international debt negotiator. He has written poetry and short stories.

October 20th Readings--UPDATED

For October, we're so pleased to welcome Karl Taro Greenfeld, James Magruder, Adam Prince, and Mikita Brottman. See you then! Bring your cider and candy corns.

Karl Taro Greenfeld is the author of six books: the novel Triburbia (2012); the much-acclaimed memoir Boy Alone; NowTrends; China Syndrome; Standard Deviations; and peed Tribes. His writing has appeared in Harper's, the Paris Review, Playboy,One Story, Bloomberg Businessweek, Time, Sports Illustrated, GQ, the New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Best American Short Stories, and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories. Born in Kobe, Japan, he has lived in Paris, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. He currently lives in Tribeca with his wife, Silka, and their daughters, Esmee and Lola.

James Magruder’s adaptations of Marivaux, Molière, Gozzi, Labiche, Lesage, and Dickens have been produced on and off-Broadway, across the country, and in Germany and Japan. His fiction has appeared in New England Review, The Gettysburg Review, Subtropics, The Normal School, and elsewhere, and his début novel, Sugarless, was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Current projects include a new version of The Madwoman of Chaillot for American Conservatory Theatre and Das Bourgeois Bigshot for Princeton University. He teaches at University of Baltimore, Princeton, and Swarthmore College.

Born and raised in Southern California, Adam Prince earned his BA from Vassar College, his MFA from the University of Arkansas, and his Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee. His award-winning fiction has appeared in The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, and Narrative Magazine, among others. His first book, a short story collection called The Beautiful Wishes of Ugly Men, has just been published with Black Lawrence Press. He is married to the poet Charlotte Pence and is currently serving as the 2012-2013 Tickner Fellow at the Gilman School. You can find his website at adamprinceauthor.com.

Mikita Brottman is an author, critic, psychoanalyst, and true crime aficionado. She teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her new book, Thirteen Girls, was published in August. 

The 510 Is Back

The 510 is back for the fall series and we're opening with one that is going to be so great: Noy Holland, Laura van den Berg, Sam Michel, and Lauren Bender. It's upstairs at the Minas Gallery, at 5pm, just like you like it.

Noy Holland’s collections of short fiction and novellas include Swim for the Little One First (FC2),What Begins with Bird (FC2), and The Spectacle of the Body (Knopf.) She has published work in Conjunctions, The Quarterly, Ploughshares, Milan Review, Western Humanities Review, The Believer, NOON, New York Tyrant, and Post Road, among others. She was a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council award for artistic merit and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She has taught for many years in the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts, as well as at Phillips Andover and the University of Florida. She serves on the board of directors at FC2.

Laura van den Berg’s debut collection of stories, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Dzanc Books, 2009), was a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection, longlisted for The Story Prize, and shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Award. She is also the author of the chapbook There Will Be No More Good Nights Without Good Nights (Origami Zoo Press, 2012). She currently teaches creative writing at George Washington University and lives in Baltimore.

Sam Michel is the author of a book of short stories, Under the Light, and the novels Big Dogs and Flyboys and Strange Cowboy: Lincoln Dahl Turns Five. He teaches, works with stone, and makes his home in Massachusetts and Montana.

Lauren Bender is a teacher, student, and twin living and working in Baltimore. Publications include The Dictionary Poems: Some Bees (New Lights Press), Whale Box (Publishing Genius), [there is no YOU in poem] (Big Game Books), and I'AM BORED (Produce Press, with Kevin Thurston). Selected exhibitions/performances include CorpOreo (Transmodern Festival) and Big Pink (The Baltimore Museum of Art). Lauren curated the BOITE: Show&Tell series at Minas Gallery in Hampden and is co-director of Narrow House. She feels pretty good lately.

510 Readings at the Baltimore Book Festivals

Don't forget about us when you're back from the summer! We will have been waiting here the whole time, just for you, dear listener. We are excited to once again to be at the Baltimore Book Festival with a special 510 reading—look for us on Saturday, September 29th, at the CityLit Tent, 6:30-8pm. For now, we're pleased to preview our lineup of great readers—Elissa Schappell, Michael Kimball, Carissa Halston, Patrick King, Nancy Murray, and Robb Todd. See you in September—while you're away, don't forget to write.


Elissa Schappell is the author of two books of fiction, most recently Blueprints for Building Better Girls, which was chosen as one of the “Best Books of the 2011” by The San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, and O Magazine, and Use Me, a finalist for the PEN Hemingway award, and a New York Times "Notable Book" and a Los Angeles Times, "Best Book of the Year.” She is co-editor with Jenny Offill of two anthologies, The Friend Who Got Away and Money Changes Everything. Currently, she is a Contributing Editor at Vanity Fair, and a Founding-editor, now Editor-at-Large of Tin House magazine and formerly Senior Editor of The Paris Review. Her short stories, non-fiction, book reviews, and essays have appeared in such places as The Paris Review, The New York Times Book Review, BOMB, Vogue, SPIN, One Story, GQ.  She lives in Brooklyn.


Michael Kimball is the author of three novels, including Dear Everybody(which The Believer calls “a curatorial masterpiece”) and, most recently, Us(which was named toOprah’s Reading List). His work has been on NPR’s All Things Considered and inVice, as well as The Guardian, Bomb, and New York Tyrant, and has been translated into a dozen languages. He is also responsible for Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard). His new novel, Big Ray, will be published by Bloomsbury in Fall 2012.

Carissa Halston is the author of A Girl Named Charlie Lester and The Mere Weight of Words. She has received grants for her long-form fiction from the Wesleyan Writers Conference and the University of Massachusetts Boston. Carissa’s short fiction has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Precipitate, TRNSFR, > kill author, and The Collagist, among others. She currently lives in Boston, where she edits a literary journal called apt and hosts a reading series called Literary Firsts.



Patrick King has been published in various small press online and print journals. These days he mostly writes silly blog posts over at his humor site and complains about his white people problems. He will die in 2043 after which his wife, Katie, will put his remains into a cannon and shoot them to the moon. Exit Nothing is his first, and possibly last, novel.



Nancy Murray is a playwright, theater director and story teller who has recently contributed works of creative non fiction for the Urbanite magazine, performed her storytelling for the Women of the World conference at the Meyerhoff, and wrote two 10 minute plays for the Submit 10 reading series. Her full-length play, 'Asking Questions" was produced at Fells Point Corner Theater last summer. She is working toward an MFA in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts at the University of Baltimore.



Robb Todd, author of the collection Steal Me for Your Stories, is a writer in New York City. He has lived all over the country and was lucky enough to live in Hawaii twice. He also lived in Texas twice. And North Carolina twice. Actually, this is his second stop in New York City, too. He does not do things right the first time. For more, visit www.robbtodd.com

Summer Break

The 510 is at the beach until September, when we have great things planned. See you in the fall.

April 14th 510 Readings: CityLit Festival!

Salutations, faithful listeners, the cruelest month has began, and the 510 Readings is making our annual pilgrimage downtown to the 9th Annual CityLit Festival at Enoch Pratt Library. But not everything about April is cruel; in fact, our lineup of Christine Lincoln, Rachel Demma, Sarah Lippman, and Matthew Norman, is sweet, funny, seductive, alluring, comforting, painful, sad, and sometimes cruel. And wait until you listen to their stories. We'll see you there: 1-1:50 pm in the Fine Arts Department (Enoch Pratt Library). For more information about the CityLit Festival and other readers, including Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Busch, Tania James, Ron Tanner, and Justin Sirois, go here.

Christine Lincoln is the author of Sap Rising, a novel-written-in-stories that has received international acclaim. Her stories have appeared on stage at Symphony Space and Word Theatre, read and performed by Don Cheadle, Gary Dourdan, and Lizan Mitchell. Christine is a recent graduate from the University of Baltimore’s MFA in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts program. Currently she is at work on a collection of stories entitled A Thousand Hills.














Rachel Demma lives and writes in Baltimore, MD. Short prose and poems of hers can be found more than once in Opium Magazine, and online at Ghoti and dcist.
















Sara Lippmann holds an MFA from the New School. Her fiction has been published in WomenArts Quarterly, Slice Magazine, Potomac Review, Big Muddy, Our Stories, PANK, and Smokelong Quarterly, among many others, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and placed on Wigleaf's list of Top 50 [very] short fictions. Her column, "Read it Loud: Notes from Storytime," appears regularly at Used Furniture Review. She co-hosts the Sunday Salon, a monthly NYC reading series, and lives in Brooklyn with her family.


Matthew Norman is an advertising copywriter. He lives with his wife and daughter in Baltimore. Domestic Violets is his first novel.

March 17 @ Minas: Elisabeth Dahl, Justin Sirois, J. R. Angelella, Karen Lillis

February was really great. March will be too.

Elisabeth Dahl's first book, a novel for children entitled AKA GENIE WISHES, will be published by Abrams Books in 2013, and she has just completed her second book, a novel for adults. Her writing has appeared at NPR.org, at TheRumpus.net, and in Urbanite. Elisabeth holds a bachelor's degree from Johns Hopkins and a master's degree from Georgetown, where she was a Writing Center Associate Fellow. A Baltimore native, Elisabeth returned to the city in 2003, after a decade in Berkeley and DC.

Justin Sirois is a writer living in Baltimore, Maryland. His books include Secondary Sound (BlazeVOX), MLKNG SCKLS (Publishing Genius), and Falcons on the Floor (Publishing Genius) written with Iraqi refugee Haneen Alshujairy. He also runs the Understanding Campaign with Haneen and co-directs Narrow House. Justin has received several individual Maryland State Art Council grants and a Baker "b" grant in 2010. He owns a few rifles and will take you target shooting if you pay for ammo.


Karen Lillis writes about women, artists, and other outsiders in fiction and nonfiction. "Watch the Doors as They Close" (Spuyten Duyvil Novella Series, February 2012) is her fourth book of fiction. She blogs at Karen the Small Press Librarian, and she is currently finishing a memoir about her years working at St Mark’s Bookshop, "Bagging the Beats at Midnight.


J. R. Angelella is the author of the novel Zombie, as well as a forthcoming, Southern Gothic, supernatural YA series (Sourcebooks/Teen Fire) co-written with his wife, the writer Kate Angelella. His short fiction has appeared in numerous journals, including Fifth Wednesday Journal, Sou’wester and, most recently, The Coachella Review, where his short story “Sauce” won the 2012 Short Fiction Contest. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Literature from Bennington College and teaches at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop in New York City. Born and raised in Baltimore, he now lives in Brooklyn with his wife and their two ragtag cats, Pacey and Bailey. For more info, check out his website: www.jrangelella.com; or follow him on twitter: @jrangelella.

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

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.