Every fall, bibliophiles from all around Maryland flock to the Inner Harbor to experience the annual Baltimore Book Festival presented by the Baltimore Office of Promotion and Arts (BoPA). On September 28-30 there will be more than 100 exhibitors, local authors, and live music along the mile-long stretch of the Inner Harbor.

“We have a really amazing schedule this year,” said book festival organizer Kathy Hornig. “Some years you luck out and things come together in a really cool and special way, and I really think this is one of those years—people are just going to be blown away.”

It can be hard to get in everything in just one weekend, so here’s a list of the must-do and see things at this year’s festival:

The Storybook Parade kicks things off.
The festival wouldn’t be the same without its annual storybook parade. Beginning Saturday morning at 11 a.m. at Rash Field, the parade will feature attendees dressed up as their favorite storybook character marching to the World Trade Center in celebration of literacy. Actors from the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company will also be in attendance dressed as characters from famous plays written by The Bard.

April Ryan chats it up with Bill Whitaker from 60 Minutes.
The Baltimore-born White House correspondent has a unique story to tell as the only black, female reporter in her new book, Under Fire: Reporting from the Front Lines of the Trump White House. She has also authored award-winning books The Presidency in Black and White and At Mama’s Knee: Mothers and Race in Black and White. She will be joined by Bill Whitaker of 60 Minutes to discuss her recent book and the current atmosphere in the White House. “With all the beef and back and forth with Omarosa [Manigault Newman] this summer, it will definitely make for a lively conversation,” Hornig said.

Local chefs whip up dishes in the Food for Thought Demo Kitchen.
Each day of the festival will feature cooking demos from local chefs recreating some of their most popular dishes. On Saturday, chef and co-owner of Gertrude’s Chesapeake Kitchen John Shields will be taking over the stage to debut his new cookbook, The New Chesapeake Kitchen while bringing along a few of his friends to perform some demos as well.

Hosts of Lit!Pop!Bang! record a live podcast.
The Baltimore-based podcast hosted by writers and educators Anthony Moll and CeCe will be recording live from the CityLit stage. The duo discusses everything from what they’re reading now to the latest in pop culture to what literary figure they would have dinner with. During the live episode, they will talk with 2018 Baltimore Youth Poet Laureate Maren Wright-Kerr and 2018 HyperBole Youth Poetry Slam champion Ailish Hopper about racism and intersectional identity.

There will be plenty of books to buy, of course.
With more than 100 exhibitor and author tents lining the promenade where festival-goers can buy any type of book imaginable, the festival’s selection is endless: romance, novels, biography, historical fiction, sci-fi, and more. “One thing that we’re really proud of here is that book festival is not one of those events where folks get to and go, ‘Where are the books?’” Hornig said.

Local food vendors provide day-of grub.
“We’re a literary feast with gourmet eats,” Hornig said of the book festival. Buying books can definitely work up an appetite, so pull up a seat and grab a bite while checking out your latest purchases. Vendors include Crepe, Ekiben, Smokin’ Joe’s, Farm To Face, and Zeke’s Coffee. Charm City Pops, a gourmet ice cream pop company, will also be there to provide the “fruit” for the new Baltimore Book Festival’s signature sangria. “The sales from the bar are one of the ways in which we earn revenue to keep the festival free and open to the public,” Hornig said. “You can enjoy a glass of sangria or a beer and be doing good at the same time.”

Get a birds-eye view atop the World Trade Center.
For the entire weekend, the Top of the World Observation level will be free and open to the public to take in the sweeping views of Downtown Baltimore. As part of this experience, Pets on Wheels will be providing therapy dogs and cats that will sit and listen to children reading them their favorite books.

Students from the University Writers’ Program read their work.
Now in its fourth year, the program features the next generation of poets, memoirists, and fiction writers from ten area schools—Coppin, Goucher, Johns Hopkins, Loyola, MICA, Morgan, Stevenson, Towson, the University of Baltimore, and UMBC—showcasing their talents in this creative writing program.

Hear about a compelling murder case from Tim Junkin.
Author and attorney Tim Junkin wrote a book, Bloodsworth, about the true story of Kirk Bloodsworth’s exoneration—based on DNA evidence—after being sentenced to the gas chamber and spending nine years on death row. Attendees will get a chance to be a part of the conversation between Junkin and the subject of his story in this unique event.

Listen to tunes at the Baltimore Book Festival Music Stage.
Not all who flock to the festival are avid readers so that’s where the music stage comes in handy. With lineups including Baltimore City Public School students, The Shrapnels, Joi Carter, Super City, and Outcalls, there’s something for everyone all weekend long.

Gwendy’s Button Box

By Stephen King and Richard Chizmar (Cemetery Dance Publications)

Co-authoring a book can be a risky endeavor, particularly when your writing partner is acclaimed, best-selling author Stephen King. There’s a natural fear that his voice could take over the prose and dominate. But that’s not the case with this new novella, which the master of horror co-wrote with Baltimore author Richard Chizmar, who also owns and operates the Harford County press that published Gwendy’s Button Box. Though there are hints of King classics—it’s no carbon copy of “Stand By Me” or IT. This creation is an ideal read for summer—the pacing is so good that readers will breeze through the pages. And perhaps the greatest strength of Gwendy’s Button Box, like much of King’s work, is its versatility, as it’s a suitable read for both young adults and those who are young at heart. Plus, it’s nice to know that King plays well with others.

See our full interview with writer Richard Chizmar.

At Mama’s Knee

By April Ryan (Rowman & Littlefield)

With all the national news coming from the Oval Office lately, you’ve likely heard of April Ryan. She’s the veteran journalist who has covered the White House for 20 years for the American Urban Radio Networks and who remained staunchly professional amid attacks from President Donald Trump’s supporters and his staff. You might not know that she is a Baltimore native and an alumna of Morgan State University. Ryan still lives in the area with her two daughters, and it is this part of her life that she explores in her second book. Through her own experiences—and those of other mothers like former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett and Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin’s mother—she chronicles what it is like to have to explain race and race relations in America to your children. It is an enlightening, engrossing read, and Ryan’s commentary is vital to understanding the problems we face as Americans if we can ever expect to end our divisiveness. As Chris Matthews, host of TV’s Hardball, writes in the book’s foreword, “The stranger this world is to us, the more important it is for us to learn it.” 

See our full interview with journalist April Ryan. 

You’ve been at the epicenter of all the political news in Washington since President Donald Trump’s election. What has that been like for you?
It’s a lot. The uptick is extreme, and we’ve never had an uptick like this before. I’ve been in the middle of watching politics for 20 years in Washington, but this is definitely different. We’re bombarded with everything now. Typically, during the course of the day, there would be two to three stories that would circulate, but now it’s everywhere, everything, all day, all night, and on weekends. And Twitter is now more relevant than ever before. I was talking to a friend who actually has an audio alert for when the president posts something. As I’m talking to you, that reminds me that I need to do that.

As someone who’s covering the news, what do you make of this change?
The way we used to cover news is no more. I grew up in the era of Walter Cronkite where you didn’t know the journalists’ political persuasions. You trusted them. There was no social media; we didn’t have to think about Twitter, or the internet. I remember in college they told us, “Be ready for the information superhighway,” and now it’s here. They should have told us not just to be ready, but beware.

It’s extreme, and there’s a hunger now for immediacy, be it news, or responses from people. And that has caused the news cycle—the news machine—to go into overdrive. This is the first time in history where a newsmaker, a high-profile person, can talk directly to their constituency, their fan base, without going through the filter of the media. We used to be the ones who would ask the questions that we heard from the groundswell of Capitol Hill. And now, you don’t have to read the story because you can watch it happening.

Trump seems to have taken it to another level. You could argue that Barack Obama had access to the same type of technology.
But the issue is we didn’t see him tweeting everything. He didn’t watch a TV show and tweet about it, or tweet something that would throw firebombs everywhere and people were scrambling to determine if it was real, if it happened, what does it mean. He wasn’t a president who would be his own press secretary. Now, you have the day’s activities set, then all Trump has to do is send out a tweet and the whole day has changed. And these are big news pieces, so then the question becomes, what do you as a journalist focus on? It’s tough.

It also seems like there has to be scrutiny of what the White House is saying.
This president doesn’t believe in being politically correct. He goes from the gut, and what he thinks comes out. And this is what some people love about him—the realness of him. He is one of the people, but there’s a flip side, too, because your words can change markets. It can cause anxiety from other world leaders. Words mean something.

You’ve been in the news yourself lately, whether that was when Trump asked you to set up a meeting with black lawmakers, or reality TV star Omarosa Manigault claimed you were being paid by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Obviously that’s not something that normally happens with journalists covering the White House. What has that been like for you?
[Laughs] It’s been rough. I choose not to talk about the particular situation that happened between me and Omarosa, but what I will tell you is there were plenty of people who saw it. Yes, we had been friends for 20 years. Yes, during the summer she had asked me to be in her wedding, but yes, also in October, she started sending me these crazy emails saying things that were not true. It’s about my career, my journalistic integrity, that I’ve built for 20 years. And I’m not going to lose that for someone who comes back to Washington who’s trying to smear the media. This is all part of a campaign, but for a friend to do this to a friend? That’s a problem. You don’t want them asking questions? You don’t want them being a part of the White House press corps? The press is a part of the framework of this country. We were built into the Constitution by our founding fathers. It makes no sense to me.

Nationally, it seems like respect for journalism is on the rise, with readership at The New York Times and The Washington Post increasing. Still, it must be difficult to continue working with what appears to be an increasingly hostile White House.
I do the job that I’ve been doing. I talk to my sources and newsmakers, people from other presidential administrations, Democrats and Republicans. It’s the same job, we’re just under attack. Why? I’m still trying to figure that one out. There’s anxiety, but you know what, I still have a job to do. My company is 1,000 percent behind me, flatfooted. It means a lot to have that support.

I wanted to talk about your book, At Mama’s Knee, which looks at race relations through the lessons that mothers teach their children. How did it come to be?
Since I was a kid, there was something in my spirit about writing a book, but that didn’t come back into my mind until I started working at the White House. A friend of mine who really inspires me and he’s been a mentor to me—his name is Norman Hall and he works at The Associated Press—said to me once, “You cannot sit next to the seat of power and not write a book. You see things and experience things other people will never experience.” And he was right. So I started writing my first book, The Presidency in Black and White, and it took about 17 years to write.

History hit me hard personally, not just at the White House, because I had to talk to my children about race. They attend a predominantly white, wealthy school where people don’t normally have to talk about it. But that school, along with other schools in the area, closed early because of what happened after the funeral of Freddie Gray in 2015, and I had to talk to them. I can’t just talk to presidents of the United States or newsmakers and leaders around the world about issues of race. I would be remiss if I had not talked to my children and told them why they were being dismissed from school early and why this was happening. It really started one day when I was at work and my baby daughter called me and said, ‘Mommy, is it true that a kid got killed because he was playing with a gun?’ And the reason she called was because my aunt told her to bring her toy Nerf gun in the house because she did not want it to be misconstrued as a real gun because of what happened [to Tamir Rice in Cleveland in 2014.] My 6-year-old’s mind did not understand the dynamics, and I had to explain to her that this was very real. She was nervous, she was scared, and she didn’t believe me. I had to show her the video, walk it through with her. But I also had to tell her that at the end of the day, there was hope.

The day of Freddie Gray’s funeral, I was watching what happened in the White House. I was screaming, ‘That’s Mondawmin Mall, that’s Monroe Street!’ These were the haunts I used to go to as a kid—I remember going to piano practice on Tioga Parkway, next to Mondawmin Mall. This is my town. My family kept telling me, ‘Get home, get home, get the girls.’ So I drove home, with tears in my eyes. I was so scared that night. The next day, I decided not to go to work, and sure enough, school was let out early again. So we drove up the street to the local grocery store and I tried to keep it light, set a tone that we were going to be ok. Then I saw this Confederate flag on the back of a pick-up truck, brandishing around in the wind as the truck was driving around this maze of a parking lot. I looked out the window at these other women who were by the store, and I said, ‘Is that what I think it is?’ My oldest daughter did not know what it was, so I had to tell her, and she started to cry. I tried to get a picture of this person and the license plate and I called the police. By waving that flag, they were adding fuel to a fire. I believe in freedom of expression, but this was not the time. Wisdom was needed. And I was very fearful that something could erupt. I still have pictures of it in my phone.

How have things changed for you and your family since Freddie Gray’s death?
My kids are more aware now. I love the way my oldest approaches it. She has friends from every walk of life, but when there are questions from other communities, she breaks it down in a non-threatening but informative way, as a 14-year-old. I’ve had teachers from her school call me and tell me how they’re so happy at how she is able to talk to kids from other communities who don’t understand. It makes me feel great that my kids understand that we live in the world that we live in, but that there’s still hope. They have Jewish friends, Asian friends, white friends, black friends. And I love the fact that they are able to come together and say, ‘Hey we’re different but we celebrate each other.’ That’s the world that I hope for. That’s the United States that I’m desperately hoping for.

Did you ever consider leaving Baltimore, especially since your work is in D.C.?
I did. But my family and my friends are here. Baltimore’s a real town. I love Baltimore. I’ve been here pretty much my whole life. . . . We have a lot of hurts in Baltimore, but we also have a lot of greatness. And there will be a time, I believe, that Baltimore will have its renaissance. Yeah, we’ve got Band-Aids on some of the ugly things, but we are rising. And that’s one of the reasons why I won’t leave. 

Do you see any other books in your future?
Yes. [Laughs] It won’t be a surprise when it comes out, but it will be a page-turner, that’s all I’m going to say.