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.

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.

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.

November 20th Highlights

Thanks for attending the last 510 Reading of 2010. You were there. We saw you:



Four amazing women writers rocked the house, first of whom was Amber Sparks. She read two pieces, including "The Monstrous Sadness of Mythical Creatures," which can be found in the April 2010 issue of matchbook.



Jenny Hollowell was up next, and she read from her debut novel, Everything Lovely, Effortless, Safe (Henry Holt & Co., 2010).



Jen Michalski, 510 cohost, led off after the break. She read excerpts from May-September, which won first place in the 2010 Press Open Awards (novella) and appears in the anthology of the same title.



Janice Shapiro capped the evening with a story from her debut collection, Bummer (Soft Skull Press, 2010).


Join us in 2011 to kick off our first reading of the year. It promises to be excellent: Ken Sparling, Shya Scanlon, Megan McShea, and Robin Black read on January 15th.

The Season Finale: November 20th @ 5pm @ Minas

The season three finale of the 5ive:ten Readings is November 20th with Jenny Hollowell, Amber Sparks, Jen Michalski, and Janice Shapiro. Janice Shapiro will be reading from her new book of stories, Bummer. Jenny Hollowell will be reading from her novel, Everything Lovely, Effortless, Safe. Jen Michalski will be reading from her new novella, May-September. And Amber Sparks will be reading from work that will surely be collected into a book in the near future. Plus, there will be prizes.

Jenny Hollowell’s short fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, Scheherezade, and the anthology New Sudden Fiction, and was named a distinguished story by Best American Short Stories. She received an MFA from the University of Virginia, where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow in Fiction and recipient of the Balch Short Story Award. She has received fellowships from Ledig House International Writers Residency and the Vermont Studio Center, and was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the 2007 Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her debut novel, Everything Lovely, Effortless, Safe, was published by Henry Holt & Company in June 2010. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.

Amber Sparks's work is featured or forthcoming in various places, including New York Tyrant, Unsaid, Lamination Colony, The Collagist, Annalemma, and PANK. She is also the fiction editor at Emprise Review. She lives in Washington, DC with two beasts and a husband, but most days you can find her here.



Jen Michalski's first collection of fiction, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, is available from So New (2007), her second is forthcoming from Dzanc (2013), and her novella MAY-SEPTEMBER (2010) will be published by Press 53 in October as part of the Press 53 Open Awards. Her chapbook CROSS SECTIONS (2008) is available from Publishing Genius. She also is the editor of the anthology CITY SAGES: BALTIMORE (CityLit Press 2010), which won a 2010 "Best of Baltimore" award from Baltimore Magazine. She edits the literary quarterly jmww, and is cohost of the monthly reading series The 510 Readings in Baltimore.


Janice Shapiro studied film at UCLA where she won first prize in The Samuel Goldwyn Screenwriting Competition. The short films she directed were screened widely at film festivals around the world and she was a recipient of an AFI Filmmakers’ Grant. She has written scripts for numerous studios and independent producers including the cult film, Dead Beat that she co-wrote with her husband, Adam Dubov. Janice’s short stories have been published in The North American Review, and The Santa Monica Review. A graphic memoir of hers was included in the anthology, What Were We Thinking? Another graphic memoir appeared in The Seattle Review. She is currently working on a novel, Bad Baseball, a second collection of short stories, a collection of food essays entitled, Eat Like Me, and a book length graphic memoir, Crushable – My Life In Crushes From Ricky Nelson to Viggo Mortensen. Janice lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son and dog. Bummer and Other Stories is her first book.

September 25th Readings, Baltimore Book Festival

Thanks for visiting us at the Baltimore Book Festival! We had a great group of readers to kick off the fall and great weather as well. Here, Michael Kimball emcees and also reads an excerpt from a work-in-progress:



Jen Michalski reads an excerpt from her novella, MAY-SEPTEMBER (Press 53, 2010)



Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch read a selection from their co-authored book, Ten Walks/Two Talks (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010)



Paula Bomer reads a story from her forthcoming story collection, Baby (Word Riot Press, 2010)



Justin Kramon reads an excerpt from his novel, Finny (Random House, 2010)



Aryn Kyle reads a story from her collection, Boys and Girls Like You and Me (Scribner, 2010)



Next month (October 16th), we'll be back at Minas Gallery. Don't miss Brian Evenson, Carolyn Parkhurst, Joanna Howard, Matt Bell!

September 25th Readings (at the Baltimore Book Festival)

We're back after a summer hiatus (miss us?) and will open our fall 2010 schedule at the Baltimore Book Festival, September 25th, 5-6:30 pm, CityLit Tent. You can find information about the Baltimore Book Festival here. you can find out about our amazing lineup here:

Paula Bomer is a writer, the co-publisher at Artistically Declined Press, and the supervising editor at the literary journal, Sententia. Her collection of stories, BABY, is available from Word Riot Press (2010).


Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch are the authors of Ten Walks/Two Talks (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010). They recently completed another collaborative manuscript called Conversations over Stolen Food. Fitch’s Not Intelligent, but Smart: Rethinking Joe Brainard is forthcoming from Dalkey Archive. Cotner lives in Brooklyn, NY; Fitch, in Laramie, WY, where he’s an assistant professor in the U. of Wyoming’s MFA Program.

Michael Kimball’s third novel, Dear Everybody, was recently published in the US, UK, and Canada. The Believer calls it “a curatorial masterpiece.” Time Out New York calls the writing “stunning.” And the Los Angeles Times says the book is “funny and warm and sad and heartbreaking.” His first two novels are The Way the Family Got Away (2000) and How Much of Us There Was (2005), both of which have been translated (or are being translated) into many languages. His work has been on NPR’s All Things Considered and in Vice, as well as The Guardian, Prairie Schooner, Open City, Unsaid, and New York Tyrant. He is also responsible for Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard) and the documentary films, I Will Smash You (2009) and 60 Writers / 60 Places (2010).

Justin Kramon is the author of the novel Finny (Random House 2010). A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he has published stories in Glimmer Train, Story Quarterly, Boulevard, Fence, TriQuarterly, and others. He has received honors from the Michener-Copernicus Society of America, Best American Short Stories, the Hawthornden International Writers' Fellowship, and the Bogliasco Foundation. He teaches at Gotham Writers' Workshop in New York City and at the Iowa Young Writers' Studio. He lives in Philadelphia.


Aryn Kyle is the author of the internationally bestselling novel The God of Animals (Scribner, 2007) and the short story collection Boys and Girls Like You and Me (Scribner, 2010). Her fiction has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, Best American Short Stories 2007, and elsewhere. Aryn is the recipient of an American Library Association's Alex Award, a Rona Jaffe Award, and a National Magazine Award in fiction. She lives in New York City.

Jen Michalski's first collection of fiction, Close Encounters, is available from So New (2007), her second is forthcoming from Dzanc (2013), and her novella May-September (2010) will be published by Press 53 in October as part of the Press 53 Open Awards. She also is the editor of the anthology City Sages: Baltimore (CityLit Press 2010) and edits the literary quarterly jmww.

August 15th Reading

Hi, everybody,

Thanks so much for coming out Saturday. Even though Tania James was unable to make it, it was all good: she was detained in DC, receiving an award from the Kerala Tristate Association for Atltas of Unknowns. We promise we'll have her back in early 2010, and you can see what all the excitement is about her debut novel yourself.

Jason Tinney, Michael Pollock, and Paula Bomer were there, though, and they were awesome!

Jason Tinney entertained us with tales of lawn movers and yellowjackets, washing machines and drying machines, and the do's and dont's of microwaving underwear.




Michael Pollock, editor of First City Review and native of Philadelphia, was up next. We were treated to many things that we shouldn't try at home, such as driving in the dark with the headlights off.



Paula Bomer, who came down from New York to read, wrapped up the show, continuing on the theme of "do as I say, not as I do." In fact, I cannot repeat here almost any of the words she spoke. If you want to read it yourself, look up the last issue of New York Tyrant.



Hope you can join us next month! We have FOURTEEN (yes, FOURTEEN) authors lined up, at our regular reading on September 19th (Sam Ligon, Robert Lopez, Blake Butler, Johannah Rodgers, and Donald Breckenridge) at Minas and the Baltimore Book Festival on September 26th (Savannah Schroll Guz, Dan Fesperman, Terese Svoboda, Shanthi Sekaran, John Woods, Justin Sirois, Michael Kimball, and Jen Michalski) in Mount Vernon.