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.

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.