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.