January 25, 2014 Readings: Rafael Alvarez, Clarinda Harris, David Belz, and Eric D. Goodman

Many happy returns for 2014! We are taking the month of December off but will return in January, starting the new year with some of Baltimore's favorite sons (and daughters): Rafael Alvarez, Clarinda Harris, David Belz, and Eric D. Goodman. See you there!

Rafael Alvarez is a lifelong Baltimorean with a single subject at the heart of his fiction, journalism, and screenwriting: Crabtown, USA on the shores of the Patapsco River. Educated at Mt. St. Joseph High School in Irvington, Alvarez learned to write on the City Desk of the Baltimore Sun and practiced the craft while laboring on ships with the Seafarers International Union. The son of a Fells Point tugboat engineer, his waterfront experiences were used extensively in the second season of HBO's The Wire, during which he served as staff writer. The author of eight books—including the fiction collections The Fountain of Highlandtown (1997) and Orlo and Leini (2000)—Alvarez released a new anthology of stories in 2014 called Tales From the Holy Land. He recently completed a screenplay with his daughter, the actress Amelia Alvarez [Baltimore School for the Arts, 1999.] Alvarez can be reached via orlo.leini@gmail.com

Baltimore satirist and fiction writer D.R. Belz has published widely in newspapers, literary journals, and online. His work has appeared in such publications as The Baltimore Sun, The Baltimore Examiner, The Patch, The Loch Raven Review, The Antietam Review, Smile, Hon, You’re in Baltimore, and The MacGuffin. He studied fiction writing with novelists James M. Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice) and J.R. Salamanca (Lilith) at the University of Maryland. A collection of his essays, poetry, and fiction, White Asparagus, is available from Amazon.com in both print and e-book. Reach him at dbelz@aol.com.

Eric D. Goodman is the author of Tracks: A Novel in Stories (Atticus Books, 2011), winner of the 2012 Gold Medal for Best Fiction in the Mid-Atlantic Region from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. He’s also author of Flightless Goose (Writer’s Lair Books, 2008) a storybook for children. Eric's work has appeared in The Baltimore Review, Pedestal Magazine, Writers Weekly, The Potomac, Barrelhouse, JMWW, Scribble, Slow Trains, and New Lines from the Old Line State: An Anthology of Maryland Writers, among others. Learn more at www.EricDGoodman.com or connect at www.Facebook.com/EricDGoodman.

Clarinda Harriss, professor emerita of English at Towson University, is the longtime director of BrickHouse Books, Inc., Maryland's oldest small press, recently named "Best of Baltimore" by Baltimore Magazine in 2013. She and Moira Egan recently co-edited Hot Sonnets: An Anthology (Entasis Press). Her published books include poetry collections The Bone Tree, The Night Parrot, License Renewal for the Blind, Air Travel, Dirty Blue Voice, and Mortmain. A new poetry collection working-titled Goddam (its theme being mistakes of all kinds) is under way. The White Rail is her first collection of short stories.

November 16th Readings: Michael Landweber, Joanna Luloff, Julie Wakeman-Linn, and Melissa Wyse-McCaul

Sure, it's getting cooler, but the 510 Readings is as hot as ever! Don't believe us? Check out our November lineup, guest-hosted by acclaimed novelist Susi Wyss (The Civilized World):

Michael Landweber lives in Washington, D.C. He is the author of the novel, We (Coffeetown Press, 2013). His short stories have appeared in literary magazines such as Gargoyle, Fourteen Hills, Fugue, Big Lucks, Ardor, Barrelhouse, and American Literary Review. He is an Associate Editor at Potomac Review and a contributor for Pop Matters and the Washington Independent Review of Books. More on Mike can be found at mikelandweber.com.

Joanna Luloff received her MFA from Emerson College and her PhD from The University of Missouri. Her short story collection, The Beach at Galle Road (Algonquin Books, 2012), was a Barnes and Nobel Discover Great New Writers selection and received the 2013 Maria Thomas Fiction Award. She is an Assistant Professor at SUNY Potsdam.

Julie Wakeman-Linn’s stories have appeared in Santa Clara Review, Enhanced Gravity, Rosebud, A Prairie Journal, JMWW, and several other publications. Her first novel, Chasing the Leopard Finding the Lion, was a finalist for Barbara Kingsolver’s Bellwether Prize. She is a professor of English at Montgomery College, editor in chief of Potomac Review, and editor of the anthology Their Voices, Their Stories: Fiction by Bethsaida Orphan Girls’ Secondary School.

Melissa Wyse McCaul’s work has appeared most recently in such publications as Shenandoah, Urbanite, and decomP. She was a fellow at the MacDowell Colony last fall and received her MFA from American University. A selection of her short fiction was awarded the Myra Sklarew Award. She is currently completing a collection of short stories set in World War II Hawaii.

October 19 Readings: Sheri Booker, Danielle Ariano, Kelcey Parker, Danuta Hinc, and Marion Winik

Danielle Ariano received her MFA in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts from the University of Baltimore. She is the author of Getting Over the Rainbow, her debut book that recounts her humorous experiences as a lesbian, from her initial, uncertain utterance of the terrifying phrase “I’m gay,” all the way to her more recent declaration of “I do.” Her work has appeared on various online publications including Baltimore Fishbowl and Huffington Post and in literary journals such as the light ekphrastic, Cobalt Review, Welter and Rufous City Review. She is a frequent contributor to Baltimore Gay Life, where starting in January, she will have a monthly column chronicling her quirky experiences as a married gay woman. Her website is www.daniwrites.org.

Kelcey Parker’s first book, For Sale By Owner (Kore Press), won the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Award in Short Fiction and was a Finalist for the 2012 Best Books of Indiana. She directs the creative writing program at Indiana University South Bend. During the summer of 2012, she worked as an Ask-Me Guide at Fallingwater, where she asked as many questions as she answered, helped visitors get the perfect photo of Fallingwater, and always kept an eye out for Liliane’s ghost. Visit Kelcey’s website.

Sheri J. Booker is a writer, poet, spoken word artist, and teacher. She is the author of the poetry book, One Woman, One Hustle (2003), Vook, I am the Poem (2011) , and memoir Nine Years Under: Coming of Age in an Inner City Funeral Home (2013) . She has traveled the U.S. speaking, reciting and performing her poetry. In 2007, she lived in rural South Africa where she helped to teach journalism skills to African women and worked as an editorial assistant for an international literary magazine. Sheri has written for Urbanite, Channel, The Amazwi Villager, a. magazine and The East County Times. Most recently, Sheri has discovered a passion for teaching. She currently teaches Creative Writing at Stevenson University and a refreshing course called Mind, Body, Soul at the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women.She has an M.F.A. in creative nonfiction from Goucher College. Visit her online at sheribooker.co

Danuta Hinc (http://danutahinc.com) holds an M.A. in Philology from the University of Gdansk. She completed three years of postgraduate studies at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences under the direction of distinguished Professor Dr. Maria Janion. She is a Lecturer at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she teaches Professional Writing.Hinc is the author of To Kill the Other, (Tate Publishing 2011) the fictionalized life story of one of the 9/11 hijackers. Hinc has published short fiction and essays in the Little Patuxent Review, The Muse, Litteraria, Word Riot Inc., and numerous features in the newsletter of the Polish Library in Washington, D.C. She is currently working on a fictionalized memoir, Angels in the Forest, which is based on the life of her grandfather, Józef Król (Joseph King) and World War II. She is also working on a collection of short stories based on people and events in her family and the history of 20th century Europe, titled, Europe Without a Name. Hinc lives in Ellicott City, Maryland.

Marion Winik is the author of the new memoir, Highs In The Low Fifties: How I Stumbled Through the Joys of Single Living. It joins Telling, First Comes Love, The Lunch-Box Chronicles, The Glen Rock Book of the Dead and others in the ongoing saga of her life. She writes a column at BaltimoreFishbowl.com, reviews books for Newsday, and contributes to The Sun. Lots more info at MarionWInik.com.

510 Readings at the 2013 Baltimore Book Festival!

All right, we all had a great summer, but now it's back to work! We're kicking off the Fall 2013 season of The 510 Readings at the Baltimore Book Festival in spectalofastic fashion, welcoming writers Jessica Anya Blau, Simon Fruelund, Aubrey Hirsch, Heather Rounds, Noel Sloboda, and the 510's own Jen Michalski. We honored and super excited that The Chesapeake Wine Company will be sponsoring the reading. Come out, have a free drink, and listen to this knockout lineup. Hosted by Jen Michalski at 6:30 pm, CityLit Stage. For the full CityLit Stage schedule, go here.

Nick Hornby said of Jessica Anya Blau’s third novel, The Wonderbread Summer “[it’s] picaresque, properly funny, unpredictable, and altogether irrepressible … it made me so happy that after I’d read it, in two days flat, I bought everything I could find by the same author.” She is also the author of Drinking Closer to Home and The Summer of Naked Swim Parties, all from Harper Collins.

Simon Fruelund is the author of five books, among them Mælk (1997) and Panamericana (2012). His work has been translated into Italian, Swedish, and English from the original Danish, and his short stories have appeared in a number of magazines across the U.S, including World Literature Today, Redivider, and Absinthe.

Aubrey Hirsch’s stories, essays and poems have appeared in American Short Fiction, Third Coast, Hobart, and The Los Angeles Review, among others. Her short story collection, Why We Never Talk About Sugar, is available now from Braddock Avenue Books.





Jen Michalski’s debut novel The Tide King is available from Black Lawrence Press. She is the author of two collections of fiction, Close Encounters and From Here and a collection of novellas, Could You Be With Her Now. In 2013 she was voted one of "50 Women to Watch" by the Baltimore Sun and "Best Writer" by Baltimore Magazine. She also is the editor of the anthology City Sages: Baltimore, which won a 2010 “Best of Baltimore” award from Baltimore Magazine. She is the founding editor of the literary quarterly jmww and a co-host of the monthly reading series The 510 Readings in Baltimore.

Heather Rounds’ debut novel There, based on her experiences in Iraqi Kurdistan between 2007 and 2008, won Emergency Press’ 2011 International Book Award and will be published by the Press in October. Her poetry and short works of fiction have appeared in such places as PANK, The Baltimore Review, and Big Lucks. She’s a co-founder of the roaming curatorial collective The Rotating History Project. She lives in Baltimore but you can visit her from anywhere—http://snap-shotsofearthlyglitches.blogspot.com/.

Noel Sloboda earned his PhD in English and American literature from Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of the collections Shell Games (2008) and Our Rarer Monsters (2013) as well as several chapbooks, most recently Circle Straight Back (2012). Sloboda has also published a book about Edith Wharton and Gertrude Stein. He teaches at Penn State York.

April 13th Readings (City Lit Festival: Andrew Keating, Nathan Leslie, C. L. Bledsoe, Rob Roensch)

Greetings dear Baltimore,

The 510 Readings are taking its yearly pilgrimage downtown on April 13th as part of the CityLit Festival at the Central Branch of Enoch Pratt Library. Headlined this year by George Saunders, the festival is in its 10th year (and we are in our fifth in partnership). 

The 510 Readings will held in the FINE ARTS DEPARTMENT (2ND FLOOR), 11:30-12:30 510 AT THE FESTIVAL (FICTION). We will be hosting readers Andrew Keating, Nathan Leslie, C. L. Bledsoe, and Rob Roensch. 

Reader bios and listings of other events can be found in the CityLit Festival brochure and complete schedule, downloadable here.

See you then!

Season 6, Episode 2: March 16

Last month Joe Young killed it in his guest-hosting duties, so we're doing it again in March. Your guest host will be the wonderful Laura van den Berg and she will be introducing Elliott Holt, Marie-Helene Bertino, Meghan Kenny, and Scott McClanahan.



Elliott Holt's short fiction has appeared in The Pushcart Prize XXXV (2011 anthology) among other places. Her debut novel You Are One of Them will be published by The Penguin Press in May. [Photo credit Rebecca Zeller]



Marie-Helene Bertino's debut collection of short stories SAFE AS HOUSES received The 2012 Iowa Short Fiction Award and was long-listed for The Story Prize. She received The Pushcart Prize in 2007 and a Special Mention in 2011. She has taught for The Gotham Writer's Workshop and One Story's Emerging Writer's Workshop and was an Emerging Writer Fellow at NYC's Center for Fiction. She hails from Philly and lives in Brooklyn. Currently, she is a biographer for people living with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). For more information, visit www.mariehelenebertino.com, or follow her @mhbertino.



Scott McClanahan is the writer of Stories V! and the Collected Works of Scott McClanahan, Vol. 1. Two Dollar Radio is putting out Crapalachia in 2013. Tyrant Books is putting out Hill William in 2013.



Meghan Kenny received her MFA from Boise State University and her fiction has appeared in Hobart, Pleiades, The Gettysburg Review, The Kenyon Review, The Cincinnati Review and elsewhere. She won the 2005 Iowa Review Award, held the 2008-2009 Tickner Writing Fellowship at The Gilman School, was a fiction scholar at Bread Loaf in 2010, and recently won second place in Glimmer Train’s Fall Fiction Open. She teaches English at Gerstell Academy and fiction writing for Gotham Writers’ Workshop. She lives in Baltimore and is working on a novel.

February 16, 2013 Readings

Welcome to the 2013 season of the 510 Readings! This is our sixth year hosting the series in Baltimore, and we're excited to bring you another season of local, regional, national, and global writers. We're starting this season with a quartet of regional awesomeness: Roy Kesey, series cohost Jen Michalski, Justin Sirois, and Tara Laskowski. We hope you can stop by and welcome in  the new year with this amazing group of writers. Hosted by special guest, writer Joseph Young.

Roy Kesey's latest book is a short story collection called Any Deadly Thing, published by Dzanc Books in February 2013. His other books include a novel called Pacazo (the January 2011 selection for The Rumpus Book Club, and winner of the Paula Anderson Book Award), a collection of short stories called All Over (a finalist for the Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award, and one of The L Magazine's Best Books of the Decade), a novella called Nothing in the World (winner of the Bullfight Media Little Book Award), and two historical guidebooks. His short stories, essays, translations and poems have appeared in more than a hundred magazines and anthologies, including Best American Short Stories, The Robert Olen Butler Prize Anthology and New Sudden Fiction. He has won two Pushcart Prize Special Mentions, the Jeffrey E. Smith Editors' Prize in Fiction, and a 2010 prose fellowship from the NEA. He currently lives in Maryland with his wife and children.

Jen Michalski is author of the novel The Tide King (Black Lawrence Press, 2013), winner of the 2012 Big Moose Prize, the short story collections From Here and Close Encounters, and the novella collection Could You Be With Her Now (Dzanc 2013). She is the founding editor ofthe literary quarterly jmww, a co-host of The 510 Readings and the biannual Lit Show, and interviews writers at The Nervous Breakdown. She also is the editor of the anthology City Sages: Baltimore, which Baltimore Magazine called a "Best of Baltimore" in 2010. She lives in Baltimore, MD, and tweets at https://twitter.com/MichalskiJen. 

Justin Sirois is a writer living in Baltimore, MD. His books include So Say the Waiters, Secondary Sound, MLKNG SCKLS, and Falcons on the Floor written with Iraqi refugee Haneen Alshujairy. Justin has received four individual Maryland State Art Council grants and a Baker "b" grant in 2011.So Say the Waiters book 2 will be out this spring. 

Tara Laskowski is the author of the short story collection Modern Manners For Your Inner Demons (Matter Press). She is the senior editor for SmokeLong Quarterly, which is celebrating its 10th year of publishing this year. Tara is a native of Pennsylvania and earned an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University. Her submission of short fiction won the 2010 literary awards series from the Santa Fe Writers Project, and she has work forthcoming or published in several anthologies. Her story, “Ode to the Double-Crossed Lackey in ‘Thunderball’” was nominated for Dzanc’s Best of the Web series for 2009, and her short stories “They” and “Like Everyone Else” were recognized by storySouth as notable 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, son Dashiell, and their two cats.