he phrase “the new normal” has been thrown around since the COVID-19 pandemic began, and as America struggles to define—and design—what that is exactly, colleges are paving the way for what it might look like.

After the chaos and uncertainty of 2020, colleges and universities throughout the Baltimore region began to find their groove as they moved into the 2021-2022 school year. Coronavirus safety committees had been erected, new mandates put in place, safety protocols implemented—everything from vaccine requirements to temperature checks to quarantine procedures and wastewater testing that can pinpoint a COVID infection before anyone is symptomatic.

By some counts, colleges may very well be the safest places to live and work.

“Just following simple rules of wearing face masks and social distancing, using wastewater management and testing when we need to, we have, in many ways, been able to return to normal life,” says Goucher College President Kent Devereaux. “Full athletics, student clubs, dining in the dining hall, use of the library—everything that you’d normally have, we’ve been able to return to.”

Despite the challenges and anxieties faced by students, staff, and faculty alike, some unexpected silver linings have emerged.

“It’s just incredible to watch how it’s grown into the vision that we, as a group of students, had.”

The widespread adoption of technology across college campuses has proven to provide more flexibility, efficiency, and innovation—and even accessibility, in some cases. Counseling sessions, for example, began to be conducted remotely during the pandemic and many students found that they preferred it to in-person sessions. Students who cannot, for whatever reason, make it to an in-person class can now study from anywhere.

Challenging times, combined with advances in technology and the general acceptance of it, have also brought more cooperation and collaboration among schools. It’s becoming more common, for example, for schools that offer complementary programs to partner with one another to offer students an educational pathway to continue studies in their chosen areas. That may mean a discounted tuition rate, a transfer of class credits, or an internship through a partner school.

Maybe most importantly though, schools, at their best, foster an environment where students are supported, expand who they are, and connect with like-minded people. At a time when gathering together is not always safe, being in a community has become even more precious, and students have found new ways to connect.

OCA Mocha, a coffeehouse in Arbutus founded by University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) students, is one example of how effective a gathering place can be at a time when people are craving human connection. What started as a class assignment—to design a community center of some sort—has become a gathering place not just for UMBC students and alumni, but the Arbutus community at large.

“We’ve heard a lot of stories from people who are extremely grateful to have this space,” says Michael Berardi, UMBC class of 2019 and co-founder and general manager of OCA Mocha, which stands for Opportunities for Community Alliances. The coffee shop includes a stage, a community room, and an art gallery, employs UMBC students and alumni, and provides internship opportunities for current UMBC students.

“We have local groups and organizations that meet regularly in our community space and are grateful to not have to meet in someone’s living room or church basement,” says Berardi. “We see a lot of connections being made. It’s just incredible to watch how it’s grown into the vision that we, as a group of students, had.”

We checked in with colleges and universities throughout the region to find out what’s new and what campus life and classes look like, two years into the pandemic.

COPPIN STATE UNIVERSITY
A historically Black institution founded in 1900, Coppin State University is situated in the heart of Baltimore City in the Mondawmin neighborhood. Part of the University System of Maryland in Baltimore, the school offers 32 undergraduate and 11 graduate degrees, along with nine certificate programs and one doctorate degree. It’s been rated No. 4 Best HBCU in the Nation (College Consensus), the Top 5 Best Value Online Program (Online School Center), and No. 17 Best Value in the Nation (College Consensus).

In the summer of 2021, CSU announced its Student Debt Relief Initiative, which clears roughly $1 million in student balances and provided a $1,200 credit to every student enrolled in the fall 2021 semester. CSU also created the Freddie Gray Student Success Scholarship, which is available to graduates of Carver Vocational-Technical High School, where Gray was a student.

Coppin also takes esports (competitive video gaming) seriously. In the fall of 2021, Coppin became the first HBCU to open a building on campus exclusively devoted to esports. The Premier Esports Lab opened in September with a guest appearance from Grammy-nominated artist Cordae.

• SIZE OF STUDENT BODY: 2,383 undergraduates, 341 graduates
• STUDENT TO FACULTY RATIO: 13:1
• ANNUAL TUITION: $6,809 in-state, $13,334 out-of-state
• ACCEPTANCE RATE: 40%
• POPULAR AREAS OF STUDY: Nursing, Business, Biology, Education, and Criminal Justice, Rehabilitation Counseling

DICKINSON COLLEGE
Founded in 1783, Dickinson College is a liberal arts college in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, with a suburban campus that spans 144 acres. The school offers 41 undergraduate degrees within 17 fields of study.

It’s been rated as one of the best schools in the country for its sustainability efforts, which include an 80-acre, USDA-certified organic farm. Princeton Review rated it No. 2 in the Top 50 Green Colleges, and it was rated No. 2 in Overall Top Performers among baccalaureate institutions in the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education’s “Sustainable Campus Index” in 2019 and 2020.

• SIZE OF STUDENT BODY: 2,345
• STUDENT TO FACULTY RATIO: 9:1
• ANNUAL TUITION: $58,708
• ACCEPTANCE RATE: 52%
• POPULAR AREAS OF STUDY: International Business, Economics, Political Science & Government, International Relations & National Security, General Psychology

GETTYSBURG COLLEGE
Gettysburg College, a private, liberal arts school, sits on 225 acres adjacent to the historical Gettysburg Battlefield in Pennsylvania. Many of the buildings on campus are historically significant, so it’s no wonder that it draws students interested in studying history.

The school offers 65 academic programs, more than 120 campus clubs and organizations, and 800 events on campus each year, plus more than 100 study-abroad opportunities open to students.

Its Majestic Theater serves as a venue for the greater Gettysburg community, hosting national acts as well as performances by the school’s Sunderman Conservatory of Music students.

It’s ranked No. 12 for “students who study the most” by the Princeton Review, which also ranked Gettysburg College’s dining hall No. 9 in the country for best campus food.

• SIZE OF STUDENT BODY: 2,600
• STUDENT TO FACULTY RATIO: 10:1
• ANNUAL TUITION: $59,960
• ACCEPTANCE RATE: 56%
• POPULAR AREAS OF STUDY: Political Science, Economics, Health Sciences, Organization and Management Studies, History, Psychology

GOUCHER COLLEGE
A private, liberal arts college in Towson, Goucher College prides itself on its close-knit community.

Goucher was extremely proactive when it came to COVID-19 precautions, being the first in the state to implement wastewater testing, which is able to isolate COVID infections by dorm.

Also of note: The college recently opened two new residence halls as part of the school’s First-Year Village. One hundred percent of Goucher students study abroad, and the school is committed to sustainability.

Most recently, Goucher has begun exciting partnerships with other schools, such as Johns Hopkins University, Loyola University, and more to come, to provide a pathway for students to continue their education beyond Goucher. For instance, their 4+1 MBA Program allows students to earn an advanced business degree through Loyola via a “Fast Track” admission process, and at a 15% discount on tuition.

SIZE OF STUDENT BODY: 1,100
STUDENT TO FACULTY RATIO: 9:1
ANNUAL TUITION: $48,000
ACCEPTANCE RATE: 79%
POPULAR AREAS OF STUDY: Psychology, International Relations, Economics, Political Science, Business Administration

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
Johns Hopkins University (JHU) offers nine academic divisions and hundreds of courses of study, with campuses spread throughout Baltimore, including the Peabody Institute, a music and dance conservatory in Mount Vernon. Its main Homewood campus is located on North Charles Street.

The prestigious, world-renowned university has a strong reputation for its public health and medical studies and has been compared to Ivy League schools.

One of its points of pride is its financial aid program, which covers 100% of calculated need for every admitted student, without loans. This means JHU works with families to calculate what they can afford to contribute toward the total cost of attendance—including meals, books, travel, and other expenses—and JHU covers the rest with grants that don’t need to be repaid.

This school year, JHU added two new minors: Latin American Studies and Writing Seminars.

It also announced new efforts this year to move toward a broader, more flexible undergraduate educational experience that will include a required first-year seminar and the streamlining of major requirements to allow for greater intellectual exploration.

• SIZE OF STUDENT BODY: 6,333 undergraduates, 22,559 graduates
• STUDENT TO FACULTY RATIO: 6:1
• ANNUAL TUITION: $56,313 for Peabody Institute, $58,720 for the School of Engineering and the School of Arts and Sciences
• ACCEPTANCE RATE: 9%
• POPULAR AREAS OF STUDY: Computer Science, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Neuroscience, Economics, Public Health Studies, International Studies

LOYOLA UNIVERSITY
This private, Jesuit institution offers undergraduate and graduate programs on a beautiful urban campus in northern Baltimore City. Education at Loyola is based in the Jesuit tradition of scholarship cura personalis, or care for the whole person. Loyola is known for its academic rigor while helping students lead purposeful lives. Seventy percent of students study abroad. It currently ranks fourth in best universities in the North region according to U.S. News & World Report.

• SIZE OF STUDENT BODY: 3,787 undergraduates, 1,353 graduates
• STUDENT TO FACULTY RATIO: 12:1
• ANNUAL TUITION: $53,430
• ACCEPTANCE RATE: 80%
• POPULAR AREAS OF STUDY: Business, Management, Marketing, Journalism, Social Sciences, Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Psychology, English Language and Literature, Engineering and Education.

McDANIEL COLLEGE
McDaniel College sits in a bucolic setting near Westminster in Carroll County. The private, four-year liberal arts college offers more than 70 undergraduate programs of study and more than 20 graduate programs. McDaniel’s most recent addition to its curriculum is a National Security Fellows Program that provides students with knowledge, skills, and experience in national security as well as the ability to specialize in an area of interest, such as interstate conflict, intrastate political violence, cybersecurity, ethics, and human rights.

Also new this year, McDaniel appointed an inaugural associate provost for equity and belonging who provides vision and leadership to the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and works in collaboration with the provost to co-lead the college’s diversity, equity, and inclusion administrative committee, and guides the Bias Education Response Support Team.

The school also launched a new STEM Center to serve as a physical hub to support students studying the sciences. It hosts workshops and other events while also supplying online and hybrid support.

• SIZE OF STUDENT BODY: 1,757 undergraduates, 1,324 graduates
• STUDENT TO FACULTY RATIO: 13:1
• ANNUAL TUITION: $46,336
• ACCEPTANCE RATE: 81%
• POPULAR AREAS OF STUDY: Kinesiology, Business Administration, Psychology, Biology, Political Science, International Studies

MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
The largest of Maryland’s HBCU’s (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), Morgan is a public institution founded in 1867. It is situated in northeast Baltimore. As a Carnegie-classified high research (R2) institution, Morgan provides instruction to a multiethnic, multiracial, multinational student body and offers more than 140 academic programs at undergraduate and graduate levels. As Maryland’s Preeminent Public Urban Research University, Morgan fulfills its mission to address the needs and challenges of the modern urban environment through intense community level study and pioneering solutions.

• SIZE OF STUDENT BODY: 6,270 undergraduates, 1,364 graduates
• STUDENT TO FACULTY RATIO: 15:1
• ANNUAL TUITION: $8,008 for in-state and $18,480 for out-of-state
• ACCEPTANCE RATE: 73%
• POPULAR AREAS OF STUDY: Civil Engineering, Communications Engineering, Business Administration and Management, Social Work, Biology/Biological Sciences, Architecture, Finance, Psychology, Sociology

NOTRE DAME OF MARYLAND UNIVERSITY
A private, Catholic liberal arts university in northern Baltimore, Notre Dame of Maryland University offers programs from undergraduate through PhD, as well as Maryland’s only women’s college. It recently launched the first master’s of art degree in Art Therapy program in the state.
The beautiful, wooded campus is just steps from the bustling downtown Baltimore culture. With values rooted in Catholicism, the school focuses on service to others and social responsibility.

• SIZE OF STUDENT BODY: 783
• STUDENT TO FACULTY RATIO: 7:1
• ANNUAL TUITION: $39,675
• ACCEPTANCE RATE: 88%
• POPULAR AREAS OF STUDY: Nursing, Education, Biology, Art Therapy, Pharmacy

TOWSON UNIVERSITY
One of the largest public universities in the state, Towson University offers more than 60 undergraduate majors and continues to draw students from other states, though it remains part of the University System of Maryland.

Its campus continues to expand, with a huge new dining hall, a 23,000-foot recreation and fitness facility with an indoor swimming pool, and its 5,200-seat arena for sporting events and concerts. In 2021, it opened its new Science Complex, the largest academic building on campus at 320,000 square feet.

In September, Towson opened its StarTUp at the Armory, a space for startups and new businesses to engage with the broader community and larger businesses. It serves as a home to Towson’s entrepreneurship programs, as well as student competitions and events.

While Towson remains the largest supplier of medical professionals and educators in the state, the university has also built a strong reputation for its College of Fine Arts and Communication, as well as its Asian Arts & Culture Center, both of which bring students into the wider community and the Baltimore community to Towson for enriching performing arts, music, and visual art programs.

• SIZE OF STUDENT BODY: 17,907 undergraduates, 2,949 graduates
• STUDENT TO FACULTY RATIO: 16:1
• ANNUAL TUITION: $7,100 in-state, $22,152 out-of-state
• POPULAR AREAS OF STUDY: Business Administration, Education, Nursing, Exercise Science, Psychology, Sociology and Anthropology, Biology, Computer Science, Information Technology

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, BALTIMORE
University of Maryland, Baltimore is Maryland’s only public health, law, and human services university. Located in downtown Baltimore, it offers 86 degree and certificate programs through its six nationally ranked professional schools—dentistry, law, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and social work—and an interdisciplinary graduate school.

The school’s 14-acre BioPark is Baltimore’s biggest biotechnology cluster, employing 1,000 people, and remains on the cutting edge of new drugs, treatments, and medical devices.

• SIZE OF STUDENT BODY: 7,244
• ANNUAL TUITION: Varies by school
• POPULAR AREAS OF STUDY: Medicine, Law, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Nursing, Social Work

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, BALTIMORE COUNTY
University of Maryland, Baltimore County educates a campus of more than 10,000 students in programs spanning the arts, engineering, information technology, humanities, sciences, preprofessional studies, and social sciences. Located on the edge of Baltimore County, it allows easy access into the city and all the conveniences of suburban life and housing. It also offers plenty of opportunities for study abroad.

In the fall of 2021, UMBC opened the Center for Well-Being, a new two-story complex that houses Retriever Integrated Health, Student Conduct and Community Standards, and i3b’s Gathering Space for Spiritual Well-Being. UMBC’s already significant NASA partnerships have continued to grow. In October, NASA announced a major award of $72 million over three years for the new Goddard Earth Sciences Technology and Research II center. UMBC is leading the national consortium and will receive over $38 million. The GESTAR II consortium will support over 120 researchers, creating extensive opportunities for breakthroughs in Earth and atmospheric science research, and providing major opportunities for students to conduct research and be mentored by NASA scientists and engineers.

• SIZE OF STUDENT BODY: 13,638
• STUDENT TO FACULTY RATIO: 17:1
• ANNUAL TUITION: $12,280 in-state, $28,470 out-of-state
• ACCEPTANCE RATE: 81%
• POPULAR AREAS OF STUDY: Computer and Information Sciences and Support Services, Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Social Sciences, Psychology, Visual and Performing Arts

 

Cited tuition costs exclude room and board and books.

It goes without saying that Baltimore is a place with a unique character, and unique characters, literary and otherwise. But who can resist quoting John Waters?

“I would never want to live anywhere but Baltimore,” the renowned filmmaker and writer, whose stories have helped define the city, once said. “You can look far and wide, but you’ll never discover a stranger city with such extreme style. It’s as if every eccentric in the South decided to move north, ran out of gas in Baltimore, and decided to stay.”

So it only makes sense that a city of characters (and great storytellers) would play host to a plethora of independent bookshops. Here, we’ve rounded up 19 of the best places in the area to find your next read:

Baltimore Architecture Foundation
The Baltimore Architecture Foundation is home to a small but excellent bookstore specializing in the city’s architectural heritage. 100 N. Charles St., Suite P101 

Atomic Books
All you need to know is that John Waters receives his fan mail through the Hampden bookstore and stops by regularly to pick it up. 3620 Falls Rd.

Barnes & Noble Johns Hopkins
The official bookstore for Johns Hopkins University is also open to the general public—with all the coffee, snacks, and amenities you’d expect from the national bookseller. 3330 St. Paul St.

Bird in Hand Café & Bookstore
This Charles Village café, with a tea bar and an espresso bar, is the perfect stop for a bite and a book. 11 E. 33rd St. 

The Book Escape 
The cozy storefront in Federal Hill has the new titles that you’re looking for and is crammed with thousands of used and unexpected finds. 925 S. Charles St. 

The Book Thing of Baltimore
What’s not to love about free books? The beloved Baltimore institution is currently open one day a month, so check their website for upcoming dates. 3001 Vineyard Lane

Busboys and Poets
Founded in D.C. in 2005, the restaurant, bar, small bookstore, and community gathering place’s name is a homage to Langston Hughes, who worked as a busboy prior to gaining fame as poet. 6251 Mango Tree Rd., Columbia. 

Charm City Books
The historic Seton Hill bookseller has all the character and charm that you’d hope for from an independent, family-oriented bookshop. 426 W, Franklin St. 

Co_Lab Books
The bookstore offers an eclectic selection of art, architecture, and design titles. 2209 Maryland Ave. 

Everyone’s Place
This warm, inviting space in West Baltimore is the place for books on local Black history and remains a broader center of African American culture in the city, offering music, art, jewelry, and more. 1356 W. North Ave.

Greedy Reads
Opened in Fells Point in 2018, and in Remington in 2019, both shops are curated for readers looking for books from Baltimore writers and national titles. 1744 Aliceanna St. | 320 W. 29th St. 

The Ivy Bookshop
Long a Baltimore favorite, the Ivy not too long ago moved to a new home, a renovated Mt. Washington house, with one of the best backyards for reading—and readings—in the city. 5928 Falls Rd. 

Normals Book & Records
For more than 30 years, Normals has remained an eclectic and essential wonderland of used books and music. 425 E. 31st St.

Protean Books & Records
A massive warehouse space filled with a curated collection of new and used books, records, movies, video games, nostalgia, and curiosities. 836 Leadenhall St.

Red Emma’s
The 21-year-old community coffeehouse, bookstore, event space, and worker cooperative recently moved to Waverly. 3128 Greenmount Ave. 

Snug Books
Snug Books, which opened in November 2021, replaces The Children’s Bookstore, a beloved Northeast Baltimore institution. 4717 Harford Rd. 

Station North Books
Open until the early afternoon, the fun, quirky, shop is a can’t-miss collection of art, literature, fine binding, and Marylandia artifacts. 34 E. Lanvale St. 

Urban Reads
A community bookstore, café, and event space—not far from Waverly’s Saturday farmers’ market—dedicated to Black authors and prison authors. 3008 Greenmount Ave.

Viva Books
A small downtown storefront with a low-key vibe offering a range of used books, with a specialization in the arts. 800 N. Charles St. 

Coffee table books, though they don’t technically need to be stacked on a table, are both delightful to look at and make quite a statement about your varied interests. Here are a few recommendations that can be found at local shops:

Books pictured from top to bottom:

• 1000 Record Covers by Michael Ochs ($20) at Atomic Books.
• Inspire Your Home by Farah Merhi ($35) at The Ivy Bookshop.
• Birds of North America edited by Francois Vuilleumier ($40) at Charm City Books.
• Glory: Magical Visions of Black Beauty by Kahran and Regis Bethencourt ($30) at Charm City Books.
• Mid-Century Modern Design: A Complete Sourcebook by Dominic Bradbury ($50) at The Ivy Bookshop.
• Living with Nature: Decorating with the Rhythms of the Seasons by Marie Masureel ($42.50) at The Ivy Bookshop.
• The Look of the Book: Jackets, Covers, and Art at the Edges of Literature by Peter Mendelsund and David J. Alworth ($50) at Atomic Books.
• The Monocle Book of Japan by Tyler Brûlé, Andrew Tuck, Fiona Wilson, and Joe Pickard ($65) at Atomic Books.
• Atlas of Animal Adventures: A Collection of Nature’s Most Unmissable Events, Epic Migrations and Extraordinary Behaviours by Rachel Williams, Emily Hawkins, and illustrated by Lucy Letherland ($35) at The Children’s Bookstore.

Heywood Wakefield lounge chair sourced and reupholstered by 605 Mod ($950) at Taken: Forever Reinventing. Dracaena Marginata plant ($40) and wicker basket ($12) from B.Willow.

As we roll through week 11 (yes, you read that correctly) of quarantine, you’ve probably blown through a good chunk of your watchlist, read a stack of books you never thought you’d have time to crack open, or picked up a new hobby or two. If you’re in need of some more inspiration while we await the next phase of Governor Hogan’s reopening plan, here are a few ways that Baltimore staffers have been passing the time at home:

Deborah Best, Advertising Operations Manager

In addition to enjoying the extra time with my baby son, this has become a time to revisit old epics! My husband and I have rewatched (among other things) the first six Star Wars movies, and I’m two-thirds of the way through a re-read of The Lord of The Rings trilogy. It’s somehow fitting and comforting to visit tumultuous times in imaginary lands.

Amanda Brown, Director of Marketing and Audience Development

I started making bracelets and keychains inspired by my son, Harrison, who a few months ago asked to make rainbow bracelets for our whole family. Friends then started asking for them, so I bought more sophisticated beads and, at night when the kids went to sleep, I started playing around with things (glass of wine in tow).

It quickly became something I looked forward to doing every night—it’s helped me to wind down, relax, use my creative energy, and most of all, it’s been an amazing distraction. My talented husband kindly said, “I’m going to take pictures of a bunch of these bracelets for you, you should start an Instagram account.” And that I did! I’ve been using a platform we used a bit at the magazine to schedule posts, did some hashtag research, and have been getting orders from both friends and family I know, as well as those I don’t. Many are ordering for gifts and sending directly to loved ones as an “I miss you” gesture.

I’ve really enjoyed bringing some bright colors, fun, and smiles to people during this unbelievable challenging time.

Ron Cassie, Senior Editor

In lieu of actual baseball, I started reading the old daily game accounts of the 1970 Baltimore Orioles in April. Right now, they’re in first place in the AL East and Boog Powell looks like he could win the MVP award. Ain’t the beer cold? Can’t wait to see how the rest of the season turns out.

Lauren Cohen, Digital Senior Editor

After 11 weeks I finally finished all seven seasons (plus the Netflix mini-series) of Gilmore Girls. The famous mother-daughter banter has provided many much-needed laughs throughout the lockdown. I’m also enjoying going on walks, getting out of my comfort zone in the kitchen (cocktails included!), and hanging around our backyard fire pit.

Emily Kunisch, Marketing Coordinator

I’ve been diving into some great books—like Valentine and one of my favorites, Cat’s Cradle. I’m also in the midst of an A24 movie marathon, watching some greats like Midsommar, Lighthouse, and Hereditary (with just 88 movies left to watch!)

Angeline Leong, Assistant Art Director

I’ve been a bit hooked on River Monsters, pun intended! Nature is wild. Pun also intended. Besides that: I’ve been cooking quite a bit more since I’m quarantining with a couple of friends. Learning new recipes has been fun—I even made (and tried) gnocchi for the first time a couple of weeks ago.

Jane Marion, Food and Dining Editor

With the help of my daughter, Sophia, I have Marie Kondo-ed my closet. I am also re-growing scallions, binge-watching Mad Men and drinking martinis (they go together), and developing a huge crush on Chris Cuomo. It’s an odd assortment of activities that provide escape—and a sense of comfort and control.

Jennifer Marsh, Senior Account Executive

I’ve been eating lots of cheese, talking to my cats like they are people, and learning how to TikTok! Watch out!

Linda Mileto, Integrated Advertising Executive

I’m a little late to the party but, I binge-watched The Handmaid’s Tale and loved it! I’ve also been playing H-O-R-S-E outside and spending a lot of time in the garden, as well.

Zach Papesh, Finance Manager

During quarantine, I’ve been binge-listening to Audible audio books. Specifically, the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child and the Mitch Rapp series by Vince Flynn.

Stephanie Shapiro, Director of Advertising

I’ve watched Unorthodox, Ozark, Hollywood, and Dead to Me all on Netflix. And I’ve been playing Hearts with cards.

Michael Teitelbaum, President

I take a one-hour walk every day to separate the work day from my evening. Otherwise they just blur together. Besides that, I’m doing a lot of Facetiming/Zooming with my brand new grandbabies.

Max Weiss, Editor-in-Chief

Like everyone else, I’ve been watching lots of TV during the dog days of quarantine. My favorite, so far, was Mindy Kaling’s Never Have I Ever (Netflix), about Devi (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), a brainy Indian-American teenager grieving the death of her father, crushing on a popular boy, bonding with (and fighting with) her two best friends, and clashing with her strict mother.

Another one I loved was also on Netflix: Unorthodox, which takes you deep inside Brooklyn’s cloistered Hasidic Jewish community. We follow Esther (Shira Haas), who tries to escape this oppressive community. It’s exciting, involving, and manages to show compassion for all involved. Then there’s Normal People, on Hulu, an adapation of Sally Rooney’s great novel about star-crossed lovers. The two young actors are amazing, they create an intimacy that almost makes us feel like voyeurs.

The final show I’ve been digging is Hulu’s Mrs. America, about the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment and emergence of Phyllis Schlafly (a deliciously icy Cate Blanchett), who mobilized an army of housewives to oppose the ERA. Once you get past Rose Byrne’s bad wig as Gloria Steinem, it’s pretty riveting stuff.

Oh, favorite new musical discovery: King Princess, who writes dreamy, smart, complex pop music.

Lydia Woolever, Senior Editor

The Sunday edition of The New York Times has been a guidebook through these strange times—a constant source of inspiration, from the words to the photography to the special feature sections, and a reminder of the growing importance of the work of newspapers, and magazines. I’ve also been giving all of the belly rubs to my dog (who doesn’t know what he did to deserve this extra time at home together) and taking advantage of spring produce from the farmers market (lots of radishes, garlic scapes, and strawberries these days).

As “social distancing” continues to be encouraged and more and more workers are told to stay at home, we’ve suddenly found ourselves with more time to catch up on a good book. We spoke with with Ivy Bookshop owner Emma Snyder and Greedy Reads owner Julia Fleischaker about their picks for what to read while we have some time alone.

Don’t forget: You can still order from your local booksellers via their websites, bookshop.org, or Libro.fm, and local libraries continue to offer digital versions of many titles. Enoch Pratt branches have even started offering a digital library card to allow those who weren’t previously registered to get instant access to online materials while the physical branches are closed.

Emma Snyder’s Picks

Weather by Jenny Offil: Heralded as timely and witty, Offil’s newest novel takes the perspective of a university librarian, Lizzie Benson—a mother, a wife, and a caretaker of her “God-haunted” mother and brother, a recovering addict. The story picks up as Benson is tasked by an old mentor to answer emails sent to her in response to her climate change- themed podcast. The job gives Benson a sort of reality check—teaching empathy, self-worth, and perspective on a polarized world. It’s certainly a read that will hit home.

Disturbance: Surviving Charlie Hebdo by Phillipe Lançon: In 2015, Paris was attacked. Terrorists claiming to be from ISIS targeted a weekly publication, Charlie Hebdo. Lançon was a contributing writer on scene who was left gravely injured. This is his story—recovering after his relationships, his writing, and his career are turned upside down. A narrative for those who want to feel inspired by resilience and transformation, Disturbance is a spring must-read.

The Resisters by Gish Jen: A dystopian novel set in a divided “AutoAmerica” run by artificial intelligence follows the story of Gwen, a girl born with a golden arm. She attracts the attention of the olympic team, playing amongst the very people her family is against. Family, values, and the disruption of normalcy, this story is another take on a future America.

The Girl With the Louding Voice by Abi Daré: In her debut novel, Daré tackles self-confidence, resilience, and perseverance as she tells the story of Adunni, a 14-year old Nigerian girl on the search for her own kind of freedom, what her mother calls her “louding voice.” Though wanting to get an education, her father attempts to marry her off. She runs away, but her work in servitude for a wealthy faces her with prejudice and degradation. Readers follow a triumphant story as she finds her “louding voice,” standing up for herself and the women among her.

The Brilliant Darkness by Jeff Sharlet: A writer and author himself, Sharlet has been a storyteller his whole career. Yet, after his father has a heart attack, and he himself later suffers one, he turned to photographs. First on Instagram and then beyond, Sharlet has captured images of people, forming a photojournalistic book taking on the concept of suffering and how we cope.

Julia Fleischaker’s Picks:

Severance by Ling Ma: This sci-fi satire set in a world stricken by a pandemic called “Shen Fever” may seem a little on the nose for the current moment, but if you need to laugh in the face of danger, this is the book to read.

How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell and Silence: In the Age of Noise by Erling Kagge: Both of these picks encourage us to slow down and log off. With a world that seems to be yelling about just about everything, Odell and Kagge offer a small respite and some guidance for those who want to pursue the quiet.

Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote by Ellen Carol Dubois, Hood Feminsim: Notes From The Women That A Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall, and Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman: With the news dominated by pandemic updates, Women’s History Month has been moved to the back burner for most. Take some time with these titles to remind yourself what this month was supposed to be about.

The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel and My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell: These two new releases are some of the most anticipated of the year and are both on sale now. Whether Mantel’s tale of the fall of Thomas Cromwell or Russel’s #MeToo-era novel is more your speed, they’ll both give you plenty to talk about once everyone returns to their water coolers.

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi: With the kids out of school and stuck at home, take some time with this educational young-adult nonfiction selection. It’s full of important history and conversations dissecting how racist ideas came to be and the ways they manifest in the present.

The works of D. Watkins, Kondwani Fidel, R. Eric Thomas, Dora Malech, and Elizabeth Hazen: Both stores and local authors are feeling the effects of author talk and event cancellations. Show your local talents some love by picking up their books in the meantime.

[Editor’s note: We will continue to update this space as more information becomes available.]

Following an announcement by Governor Larry Hogan on March 12 that all gatherings of 250 people or more are to be postponed, many of Baltimore’s venues and art spaces have announced cancellations and rescheduled events. Here’s what’s still open, what’s coming later this year, and what to expect from the weeks ahead.

Visual Arts

The JHU Museums have announced that, as of March 16, all locations will be closed and public programs through April 12 are postponed or canceled. The American Visionary Art Museum has closed through March 31, with public programs and tours cancelled through April 12. The previously scheduled Logan Visionary Eco-Conference has been postponed to a later date.

Leadership teams are hoping that the BMA’s 2020 Vision Community Celebration and the opening for Brice Brown’s PROSCENIUM at Evergreen Library and Museum can be rescheduled for later in the year.

The Walters Art Museum and The Baltimore Museum of Art have closed to the public through March 31 and cancelled all events and programming through April 12. The Reginald F. Lewis Museum is also closed to the public, and a reopening date has yet to be released.

Some options remain for viewing museum collections. The Walters’ St. Francis Missal can be viewed in full on the museum’s Ex Libris site along with many other precious manuscripts.

The Baltimore Office of Promotion & Arts announced that all galleries and attractions will be closed starting March 14.

Events related to Maryland Art Place’s Out of Order and Merkin Dream have been postponed, with new dates TBA. Y:Art Gallery has cancelled its March 21 artist talk with Maureen Delaney, Erin Raedeke, and Richard Townsend but will remain open for regular business. Please check with your local galleries for information on postponements and adjusted hours.

Music

Creative Alliance has instituted a new full refund/exchange policy during the month of March and fully canceled the March 21 performance by the Marja Mortensson Trio. The annual Baltimore Old Time Music Festival has been postponed, and the leadership team is currently looking at new weekends, likely in the summer, to hold the event. Tickets will be transferred to the new date once it is confirmed, and refunds will be available at that time for those who do not wish to attend.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and other events scheduled at both the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall and The Music Center at Strathmore are cancelled through March 21. BSO president and CEO released the following statement regarding the closure: “Of course, as recent history has shown us, the BSO has navigated challenging times thanks to the collective support and strength of our community. In addition to inviting patrons to exchange into future programs, we are also deeply appreciative to those patrons who would consider donating their tickets to support the BSO at a pivotal time in our transformation.”

The Modell Performing Arts Center at The Lyric has postponed all events through March 18, and some performances have already begun being rescheduled for this summer.

Horse Lords, Mdou Moctar, Versus, and Joy Postell have postponed their upcoming shows at the Ottobar, though the venue remains open at this time. According to the Ottobar Facebook page, “Our plan is to remain open this weekend in full capacity, and evaluate throughout. We’ll then start the new week studying the news and continue on from there…We will post online and our website any sudden changes that may arise. If you do not feel comfortable attending a show, you have the option to adjust or refund your ticket.”

Rams Head Live! has closed indefinitely in response to the 250+ gathering rule, and will work to reschedule impacted performances. Tickets for performances that are rescheduled will remain valid, and tickets for shows that cannot be rescheduled will be refunded within 30 days of an announcement of cancellation. Baltimore Soundstage and Metro Gallery have also postponed events through late March.

Sound Garden announced today that Record Store Day will be moved to June 20, 2020, affecting all area record stores.

Literature

Enoch Pratt Libraries has closed to the public, and all public programs, including the CityLit Festival, are postponed or cancelled through March 31.

According to a statement from Enoch Pratt CEO Heidi Daniel, the library is expanding programs for those stuck at home, including instituting a digital library card program to offer those without library cards the opportunity to register for instant access to online materials and databases. The Books by Mail program for homebound customers will also be expanding and can be initiated by contacting the library’s circulation department.

Greedy Reads has closed to the public and suspended all events through the month of March at both locations, but patrons can still make purchases via phone/email for pick up or delivery, or through bookshop.org and Libro.fm. Charm City Books announced that all events are cancelled. In addition, all Charm City Books stock will be available for purchase online, and delivery within Baltimore City is available for free. For those outside the city, delivery is still an option at the cost of $5 or less. Events at The Ivy Bookshop and Bird in Hand are cancelled through March 30, and updates will be posted as soon as new dates are scheduled.

Theater

As of March 12, the Hippodrome Theatre has cancelled the upcoming Celtic Woman and The Band’s Visit touring dates and shared the following: “If you are a ticket holder for one of these events, please hold onto your tickets as we work to reschedule their performances in Baltimore. We will be in touch in the next 7-14 days with more information on the status of this event.”

Everyman Theatre has waived ticket exchange fees and upgrade charges for the remainder of the New Voices Festival, and the two remaining shows in the festival, Cry It Out and Berta, Berta, have been postponed to the summer. Queens Girl: Black in the Green Mountains will be suspended following the March 14 performance and resume on April 15. The theater’s annual gala, originally scheduled for March 14, has also been postponed. Center Stage has postponed the Baltimore Butterfly Session previously scheduled for March 14, but is organizing with local artists to hold a virtual discussion about responses to the current public health crisis within the creative community. More information about this online gathering can be found here.

Charm City Players’ production of Matilda originally scheduled for March 14-29 is postponed, and CCP has encouraged ticket holders to keep their tickets while they work to reschedule show dates. Announcements regarding the status of the show will be communicated over the next two weeks.

Baltimore Improv Group’s managing director Terry Withers announced on Thursday that it would suspend all performances starting March 16 and reevaluate the following week. This includes practices, meetings, and unofficial gatherings at BIG’s theater and training center. Classes will continue but switch to larger venues to enable distance between performers beginning March 16.

Vagabond Players will suspend the remaining performances of Constellations, which were originally scheduled through March 22. The Fells Point company will offer ticket holders refunds or exchanges for future performances.

Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, which had previously reduced seating capacity to promote social distancing, has suspended The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) and March student matinees for Romeo and Juliet after March 15. Those with tickets to this weekend’s shows are asked to make responsible choices about their attendance. Options for ticket holders beyond those dates are outlined here, and the company hopes to continue with Studio classes.

The closing weekend of The Mineola Twins at Fells Point Corner Theatre has been suspended, and plans for the upcoming production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf are to be determined. Tickets for the current production can be exchanged for future performances.

Arena Players is suspended through March 27 and has also reduced seating capacity for its shows effective immediately. Spotlighters Theatre has delayed the opening of its Dogfight until March 26. The Strand remains open with increased sanitation measures.

Film

The SNF Parkway Theatre is closed from March 13-March 26, and the theater will be deep-cleaned before staff and patrons return at the end of the month. The Charles, CinéBistro at The Rotunda, The Landmark Harbor East, and The Senator Theatre will be closing by end of day March 16 in response to the latest announcement by Gov. Hogan.

Packing for a beach vacation always starts off simple: sunscreen, a beach towel, that hot new bikini, and a good book. Except, when you reach for a good book, you may notice your reading list has gone off the page with titles you meant to read this winter but never really got a chance to reading. So, how do you choose?

We’ve consulted with Julia Fleischaker of Baltimore’s beloved Greedy Reads to get her take on this season’s reads, including both local writers and some other popular titles from around the globe. “These are perfect summer reads,” says Fleischaker, “whether you’re on an exotic beach or taking your lunch break on a park bench.”

FOR THE BOOK OF THE SEASON
Normal People by Sally Rooney
According to Fleischaker, this is a summer go-to. Running in different social circles, Connlel and Marianne’s connection is both confusing and undeniable. Readers follow the two as they grow up through college, navigating the emotional rollercoasters of first-loves, the intricacies of social class, and the value of friendship.

FOR A TRIP TO THE PAST
Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
So vividly depicted and wildly imaginative, this coming-of-age novel feels more like a true biography. Reid crafts together a story from fictional anecdotes as told by Daisy, her band, and the comers and goers of her fantastical rise (and fall) to fame that transports readers to the heights of the 1970s rock ‘n’ roll scene. It’s a novel that’s spellbinding, that’s fun, and a perfect read to just let loose.

FOR A VOICE FROM BALTIMORE
We Speak for Ourselves by D. Watkins
“What a wealth of talent we have in this city,” Fleischaker reflects. Her first recommendation for a voice of Baltimore is a collection of essays by D. Watkins. In this book, we are given truths of the economically disadvantages communities and lessons learned from Watkins’ journey between his world at home and the world of the public figures.

FOR AN ADVENTURE
The River by Peter Heller
Nature versus man, Heller’s adventure story follows two college friends on a trek up the Hudson Bay. Along the way, the boys are matched with the unrelenting temperament of the woods, suspicious strangers, and the haunting realities of home. It’s a novel that will captivate you into the whirlwind of survival that Jack and Wynn must endure.

FOR AN INSIDE SCOOP
The Ghosts of John Hopkins by Antero Pietila
Not much is known about John Hopkins’s personal life other than that he was incredibly wealthy and had much to do with the development of Baltimore City. Pietila digs into history, telling a story of how Baltimore became what we know it as today: its social history, its infrastructure, and its politics.

FOR FAMILY TRIUMPH
The Care And Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray
Anissa Gray’s debut novel is timeless story of triumph over strife that you won’t want to put down. Told from the perspectives of three sisters, the book follows a family navigating heartbreak, unfurling secrets, mental health, and the true meaning of family. Though emotionally gripping, it’s an entrancing read you can breeze through.

FOR A MURDER MYSTERY
The Suspect By Fiona Barton
The mystery around two missing teenage girls in Thailand unravels as a reporter digs into the case with a personal agenda attached—to find her son who had set out to explore Thailand and whom she hasn’t heard from in months. A timeline that jumps and perspectives from heart-sick parents, a determined reporter, and a detective needing a distraction will keep readers wondering at the edge of their seats.

FOR BALTIMORE NOIR
Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman
Out in July, Lady in the Lake is set to be a fascinating look at 1960s Baltimore from the prolific local writer. Fleischaker describes the book as “a murder mystery with the noir elements that Lippman does so well, and an affectionate ode to local newspapers and the people who work there.”

If eating at Ida B’s Table conjures feelings of being in the kitchen of its namesake heroine, then stepping into The Archive on the far side of the downtown restaurant feels like being in her living room. With dark bookshelves lined with titles by black authors, soul tunes crooning through the speakers, and framed pictures of the legendary journalist and civil rights activist atop a weathered piano, the spirit of Ida B. Wells fills every corner of the snug space.

The Archive, which quietly opened in November, is a collaboration between Ida B’s and building co-tenants The Real News Network to supplement the restaurant’s mission of serving as a community hub. “It’s a step back in time,” says Eddie Conway chairman of Ida B’s restaurant board and executive producer at TRNN. “The piano, the bar, the period furniture—it’s all to capture what [Wells] would’ve had in her Chicago home.”

Although it has been more than a year since the modern soul food eatery opened its doors, the concept of The Archive—a social space where patrons can work at communal tables or enjoy coffee or cocktails—was always part of the plan.

Inspired by the suffragist’s famous words, “The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press,” the management team stocks The Archive with a collection of the written word, including novels, nonfiction, and kids’ books, as well as politically inspired recommendations from TRNN staff and biographical and cooking-related choices from the Ida B’s team. The wide variety of reading materials are available for guests to page through during their visit or purchase for their own libraries.

“People can take their time browsing—they can read for hours if they want to,” says Conway. “We’d rather people come in, read these books, and put them back than not read them at all.”

In keeping with the restaurant’s commitment to educating, feeding, and empowering guests, The Archive also acts as a cozy gathering space for activists, organizations, and even book clubs. Since the room is practically teeming with reminders of Wells’ legacy—from black-and-white family photos to her anti-lynching newspaper clippings—Conway hopes it will inspire the next generation of local change-makers to follow her lead and organize for a cause.

“That’s what we’re trying to do—not just educate people, but encourage them to get involved,” says Conway. “Hopefully someone will call a meeting in this room and, who knows, become the next great leader of a cause that could make real change.”

Art direction, prop and set styling: Limonata Creative
Hair and makeup: Janet Stephens & Rachael Weaver from Studio 921
Location: Home of Judy Sulisufaj Kelly, co-owner of Studio 921
Book club host: Katharine Scrivener from @readwithkat and @thebooklyclub
Guests: Krystal Mack, Marisa Dobson, Jenné Afiya, and Anastasia Keramidas.
Cocktail: Baltimore Spirits Co. Szechuan “BaltAmaro”
Book club finger food: Anastasia Keramidas from @landofpleasanteating
Interior Design: Stephanie Bradshaw

Some of Our Favorite Baltimore Bookshops

• Greedy Reads
• Red Emma’s Bookstore
• Coffeehouse
• The Book Thing of Baltimore
• Atomic Books
• The Children’s Bookstore
• in Lauraville
• Old Fox Books &
• Coffeehouse
• Bird in Hand
• The Ivy Bookshop

We traveled to Appalachia to sit inside the last honky-tonk bar in Winchester, Virginia, and took a ride back in time to learn about Maryland’s rich history in music. We were mesmerized by the timeless mystique of mermaids and disheartened by the dire state of the Chesapeake Bay. We got perspective into our city’s history, through stories of the 1968 riots after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, the Baltimore Uprising of 2015, and the aftermath of both.

And we did this all through books that were penned by Baltimore authors.

We pored over poetry, novels, art books, children’s books, collected essays, memoirs, and handbooks, all of which provided insight into understanding our world and ourselves. Here are our top picks for the must-read books of the 2018. (Spoiler alert: in the case of Michael Northrup’s book, it’s a must-see.)

I Wrote This Book Because I Love You
Tim Kreider (Simon & Schuster)

It’s no surprise that when he’s not writing for The New York Times, Tim Kreider is also a cartoonist (many in Baltimore may know him for his dark-humor comic strip “The Pain—When Will It End?,” which ran for 12 years in City Paper). The Baltimore native’s second collection of essays is chock full of laugh-out-loud moments, mostly at his own expense, as he puts his love life on display with stark honesty. Like the time he briefly dated a prostitute (er, fetish model), or when he followed a girl to the circus and posed as her husband, or when he tracked down the psychologist who tested him as a child for the renowned Strange Situation study that’s used to predict attachment issues into adulthood. All the while, he’s discovered a thing or two. Kreider isn’t solely a humorist—he’s also part philosopher, part psychologist, part poet. Paired with his depth of insight into the human condition and startlingly sharp observations, this intimate collection is as hilarious as it is poignant, as it explores what it means to love and be loved—even if it’s love shared with your 19-year-old cat.

Hummingbirds in the Trenches
Kondwani Fidel (self-published)

Kondwani Fidel’s raw, brutal, and unabashedly honest account of growing up in Baltimore and losing family and friends to murder, drugs, and gang violence is painful to read but also refreshing, uncompromising in its integrity to tell the truth as he sees it. There’s a sensitivity and a fire to the voice of this 25 year old, who has already traveled the country and world to give lectures and readings. His new collection of memoir-esque essays, one-liners, conversation excerpts, and rhythmic poetry—referred to as “The Tracklist” in the table of contents—encompasses the writer’s ruminations and research. Here, he reflects on the repercussions of slavery and systemic racism in America: the toxic lead paint study on black youth; kids suffering in public schools without air conditioning or heat; and general poverty, depression (including his own), suicide, drugs, and blood on the streets of East Baltimore. If you’re not aware of what growing up in a rough neighborhood is like—what it’s like to be a hummingbird in the trenches—this book will pry your eyes wide open.

Clock Dance
Anne Tyler (Knoff)

In Anne Tyler’s latest novel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Baltimore author explores the passage of time and how pivotal moments come to define us. In blocks of narrative that skip ahead 10 to 20 years at a time, she tells the story of a rather ordinary character, Willa Drake, whom we meet as a daughter, wife, and mother of adult children who longs to be a grandmother. We see her through love and loss, from childhood into retirement—and we watch as she evolves (albeit slowly). It’s Tyler’s graceful prose and solid narrative, peppered with her subtle sense of humor, that makes this book a joy to read. Whether it’s Willa’s straight-and-narrow, slightly miserable second husband; her sardonic little sister; or the badass, motorcycle-riding neighbor in leather pants, these characters come to life off the page, another one of Tyler’s gifts.

Dream Away
Michael E. Northrup (Stanley/Barker)

In this limited-edition art book, Baltimore’s Michael E. Northrup presents a series of 66 photographs of his now ex-wife that revolve around femininity, revealing the girl in the woman and the woman in the girl. These portraits also serve as a love story and an intimate look into the photographer’s own life. “As for the subject matter, we met in 1976, married in 1978, and divorced 1988,” Northrup says succinctly. We see her life—and body—change as she goes from lover to mother, from casually smoking cigarettes and skinny dipping to donning a bare-bummed baby over her shoulder and modeling breast pumps. Black-and-white images are juxtaposed with color, giving a sense of reflection on past times. With Northrup’s imaginative experiments with shadow, strategically placed objects, and curated poses, the moments-in-time feel of a family album is elevated to fine art.

Liza Jane & the Dragon
Laura Lippman (Black Sheep/Akashic Books)

The New York Times best-selling author Laura Lippman’s foray into the arena of children’s literature is delightful and yet manages to maintain the author’s quirky sense of humor. In this tale, a little girl named Liza Jane fires her parents and hires a dragon to take their place . . . until she realizes the dragon has only one tactic for solving problems: breathing fire. Late to school? Set the secretary’s desk on fire. Pizza delivery man got delayed? A fiery blast to his car. The picture book is illustrated by Maryland painter Kate Samworth, who brings the characters to life and gives us visual clues for reading this story in a broader context. While this story is a fun romp through what might be the occasional daydream of many children, it also serves as a political allegory. The dragon has a familiar blond mane that swoops between his two horns.

Before and After Loss: A Neurologist’s Perspective on Loss, Grief and Our Brain
Lisa M. Shulman, MD (Johns Hopkins University Press)

This poetic and insightful, if heartbreaking, memoir from neurologist Lisa M. Schulman stems from her own bereavement of her late husband, Bill Weiner, former chair of neurology at the University of Maryland, as she chronicles his diagnosis and eventual succumbing to cancer. His journal entries, her recorded dreams, and photos of meals they shared add a personal touch to the book that illustrates their love for one another, while interspersed quotes from philosophers, mystics, poets, and psychotherapists offer wisdom on death, dying, and grieving. Combined with the latest scientific studies in traumatic brain injury and holistic approaches to healing, Schulman has created a unique book that touches on all aspects of the process of grieving—the psychological, physiological, and overlap between neurology and psychiatry. Ultimately, Shulman points out that whether brain injury is caused by physical or emotional trauma, it results in similar long-term effects—and also that post-traumatic stress can become post-traumatic growth, with the right tools. In short, it could prove to be an invaluable aid to counselors, psychotherapists, and medical doctors, as well as anyone moving through grief toward wholeness.

A Memory of the Future
Elizabeth Spires (W.W. Norton & Company)

In this new poetry collection, Spires seems to channel Rumi or Buddha or both. The poems feel like prayers, and in some cases koans—each unique but all with a timeless, spiritual quality. To say they’re Zen-like would be both literal and figurative; references to Zen Buddhism are strewn throughout Spires’ work, and her verses unfold like meditations. The Goucher College professor of English possesses the rare gift to present lovely, solemn passages with a light touch and deft use of metaphor while simultaneously feeding her readers profound and heady truths. These little nuggets of wisdom come like offerings placed on an altar, quietly, with grace and intention.

Homeplace
John Lingan (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Homeplace is an honest, bittersweet, and at times humorous look at small-town America through the lens of Winchester, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley. Lingan, who grew up in Catonsville and has written for Oxford American and New York Times Magazine, examines Patsy Cline’s hometown and its longtime resident Jim McCoy, the honky-tonk owner who discovered her (and who continued to smoke, drink, and make music well into his 80s). What we ultimately see is a town in the midst of an identity crisis—from a slow-paced, Southern area known for its apple production to a burgeoning suburb of new establishments that have attracted an influx of urbanites from Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia. But the book also feels like a travelogue at times—clearly the observations of an out-of-towner with a voice of his own. His four years of researching and writing it is evident, as he reveals the town’s (and neighboring towns’) quirks while bringing into focus a broader, nostalgic story of a vanishing way of life, as factory farms, opioids, big-box stores, and even music streaming services swallow up what once was.

The Chesapeake in Focus: Transforming the Natural World
Tom Pelton (Johns Hopkins University Press)

Pelton, one the country’s leading environmental journalists, offers us a wealth of knowledge about the Chesapeake Bay, collected from his more than two decades of reporting on this ecological, cultural, and historical treasure (you may also know him from his show Environment in Focus on WYPR). His book is part history of the bay’s watershed region, part political history of its preservation, and, to a lesser extent, part personal history, as Pelton draws gorgeous imagery of scenes he’s experienced as an avid kayaker on the bay’s waters and tributaries. In total, he paints a compelling portrait of what it is he wants to preserve. Divided into four sections (The Waters, The People, The Wildlife, and The Policies), the book covers a lot of ground, from Baltimore’s sewage issues to the over-harvesting of wild oysters. The highlight, perhaps, comes toward the end, when Pelton proposes 10 realistic steps for bay restoration. We should listen to him.

Our kids are now 3 and 1, which means one of them has a slight idea about what’s happening on Christmas morning and the other will just be excited to watch her brother rip at wrapping paper and wonder why we’re all so busy so early. The holidays are only starting to be a big deal at our house (especially after years of not having kids or any sense of Christmas spirit), so I’m trying to get a head start on preparation.

I’m also committing to only buying gifts locally this year (and no, Amazon’s Dundalk fulfillment center doesn’t count), so each of the suggestions below are here in Baltimore. So go! Shop! Be festive! And do your best to spend your money right here in town.

Amuse Toys

My love affair with this store began immediately after our son was born and has only grown over the years. The toys are beautiful and require imagination, and the shopping experience is fun and well-informed. And, because kids love nothing more than playing with toys they’re 100-percent sure you didn’t spend money on, the Amuse Toys Quarry Lake location offers open play a few mornings a week. Grab a coffee, let them go nuts, and take a slight break from the holiday madness.

The Book Thing of Baltimore

My kids develop deep, emotional obsessions with books and just when they’ve broken my spirit and I’ve consigned myself to a life of reading nothing but Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day, they lose total interest and find something else. Capitalize on this irrational behavior by clearing out your shelves while simultaneously choosing new-to-them, free books to give to your family.

Baltimore Chef Shop

Edie and Lou are still in the stage of life where food is optional at best and, when properly mashed, table art at worst. But if you’ve survived the early childhood years (good for you!) then perhaps an afternoon spent at the Baltimore Chef Shop would make a lovely gift for your kid who loves The Great British Baking Show. (And if your kid loves that show, again, good for you!) BCS is a beautiful kitchen in Hampden offering classes for 8-17 year olds and their parents on making donuts, dim sum, pasta, cookies, and other important food groups. There are also summer camps available if you’re the kind of long-term planning gift giver tweens love so much.

SIDESHOW at AVAM

Is there a more incredible gift shop in the world? Every inch of the shop is filled with fascinating, beautiful, useless, important, and affordable stuff. On a recent trip, I found cool rings and laser-cut wood earrings for $2; beautiful art coffee table books for under $20; a tiny drawer filled with plastic babies for 50 cents a pop; and a t-shirt offering an apology for the president in 14 languages. I highly suggest taking an hour (sans kids, if you can swing it) to wander through. You’ll check off most people on your list and walk out with the ultimate stocking stuffers.

Worthy Threads

Over the last few years, locally owned Worthy Threads has been popping up in Baltimore’s social media and retail worlds. Our friends gave us a sushi-printed pinafore dress (Sushi! On a dress! For an infant!) for Edie when she was born and it was so wonderful that I eventually cut the elastic in the waistband to eke out a few more weeks of wear. These clothes aren’t cheap, but they’re the kind that you treasure and begrudgingly-but-lovingly hand down to your favorite friend’s little one.

Shananigan’s Toy Shop

Similarly to the SIDESHOW gift shop, this is a store that will put your head on a swivel. It’s filled floor to ceiling with toys and games for all ages just as you start to get overwhelmed by decision fatigue, their knowledgeable staff swoops in and leads you right where you need to be.

You’ve likely seen them around the city—the little wooden boxes that look like mailboxes or birdhouses but are, in fact, mini libraries. Maybe you’ve even borrowed a binding from this free “take a book, share a book” exchange, no library card or late fees required.

The project, aptly titled the Little Free Library, was started in Wisconsin in 2009 and arrived in Baltimore four years later with the help of the Village Learning Place, which launched the local version with 10 miniature libraries dedicated to spreading literacy and building community in what was once dubbed The City That Reads.

To date, there are more than 50 outposts throughout the Baltimore region, from Locust Point to Druid Hill Park to Mt. Washington, plus a smattering of unofficial spots, like in the Waverly Brewing taproom in Hampden and at the Whitelock Community Farm in Reservoir Hill. (Of course, there are big free libraries, too, such as The Book Thing, The Maryland Book Bank, and the mighty Enoch Pratt Free Library.)

Here are some favorite titles we recently found at area repositories.

All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot
H.P. Rawlings Conservatory, 3100 Swann Dr.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Hampden, 839 Wellington St.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
The Star-Spangled Banner Flag House & Museum, 844 E. Pratt St.

Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
Patterson Park, 200 S. Linwood Ave.

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
Remington, 301 W. 29th St.

In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume
Enoch Pratt Free Library Canton Branch, 1030 S. Ellwood Ave.

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Charles Village, 310 E. 32nd St.

As a fiction writer, director of CityLit Project, and chair of the Maryland State Arts Council’s Diversity Outreach Committee, Columbia’s Carla Du Pree is a tour de force—and she’s also a staff of one for the annual CityLit Festival, which celebrates its 15th year this month. The free, all-day event will bring in dozens of new and established writers to the University of Baltimore for readings, workshops, and one-on-one sessions with guest editors. We sat down with Du Pree at Motor House in Station North to discuss her role in the region’s literary arts scene and her goal of making it more inclusive and accessible to all communities.

You became executive director of CityLit Project in 2016. What’s your mission, in your own words, for the organization?
When I first got this position in Baltimore, it seemed like the literary community was divided. Everyone was kind of doing their own little thing. You’d find the same people attending the same kind of readings. And I kept thinking that’s wrong—that’s not how literature works. It works when you surprise yourself by attending a reading you never thought you’d resonate with, and you discover something there.

I love it when people discover new writers, because I remember the joy of finding someone’s work that resonated with me. It was like a gift that I needed to share—you can’t keep it all to yourself. The game-changer of writing is [its ability to] open doors to what’s possible and to take risks. We hear a lot about Baltimore being a place where people stand up for themselves and right wrongs, and we [at the CityLit Project] said, we’re not going to be afraid of that. We’re not going to be afraid of those hard conversations. Because people are living those truths, and that’s what writing should be about: our truths, whatever they look like.

As an arts ambassador for the Maryland State Arts Council, I’ve learned to show up in unexpected places to experience art. I recently showed up at a Friday night reading during an LGBT community event. I saw several poets you might never see on another stage, and my question is, why is that?

Have you seen that changing at all?
We had a Writers Resist event shortly after the 2016 election because we wanted to see how different communities felt about it and how it affected them personally. We pulled about 16 poets into one room on a Sunday afternoon, and [EMP Collective] was packed for three hours. For three hours. It was standing room only—people were sitting on the floor, in the hall where they couldn’t even see the poets, but they were completely engaged. The poets onstage were ones that you wouldn’t normally see share a space.

So a big part of what you want to do through CityLit is mix it up and bring unity.
Exactly. We want to put page poets on the same stage with spoken word artists and see the synergy that takes place. On our CityLit Stage [at Baltimore Book Festival], we had Guggenheim fellow Deborah Rudacille on the same stage as an award-winning author from West Baltimore, Devin Allen, and it was live! We want to get the young involved and to represent all voices. I can’t begin to tell you how much we lean in to recognize whose voice isn’t in the room. People are hungry to see themselves and their cultures reflected. And if people are hungry, you feed them! We realize that bridging the literary and the academic communities could have an even greater impact, but that’s just the start.

Do you think the literary arts are underrepresented in the larger arts scene?
Across the country, people wholly value the performing and visual arts. When it comes to literary arts, it’s as if we’re speaking another language to get appropriate funding. And yet everyone is moved by the power of story. Reading and writing serve you for life. When you place a pen in someone’s hand and teach them the art of writing, you are giving them a voice and a reason. These last 14 years, CityLit has done its best to share talent from our region and from the larger literary community. I’m talking Claudia Rankine, George Saunders, Junot Diaz, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. We always talk about the fine arts, and I’m like, people, do you know how literary arts can transform you?

On that note, this year’s CityLit Festival lineup is huge. What are some of the highlights for you this year?
We’re bringing back the one-on-one editorial sessions. They started last year and filled up quickly. We’re trying to grow writers as well as readers. We will also offer a 90-minute master class. We realized there are a lot of amazing learning institutions here in Baltimore, but they’re so costly, people simply can’t attend, and we wanted to make learning the craft accessible.  

When choosing the festival’s speakers, what are some of the things that you take into consideration?
Part of my job at CityLit and my work [for the MSAC] is to point out that we need to change whose narratives we showcase, so we don’t leave people out of the conversation. To me, this year’s theme is  “We are still here”—meaning you can’t afford to ignore who’s in your community. That knowledge brings gifts. We know for a fact that Maryland is going to be an emerging majority state by 2020—that’s two years from now. If you know that’s happening, if you know that you have 63 percent African Americans in Baltimore, you have to change the way you do business.

It feels like an important time for CityLit Project.
We’re really working overtime to build our capacity and our partnerships. Right now, we’re small with big dreams. We envision a lot of things, but we need more funding and a larger staff. We’ve just become a grantee of the [Robert W.] Deutsch Foundation; they’ll help us cover operating costs, to keep us thriving. We now have an office—well, a desk—here at the Motor House on the second floor. My gosh—Amy Sherald’s on our floor. Amy Sherald! . . . To me, we can’t afford to be quiet anymore about what we need and who we serve. We have to be very loud, or we go away. And we’re not trying to go away these days. More and more communities need a voice, and we hope to represent.

Waverly regulars might have noticed a colorful new addition to the neighborhood. Turn a corner and you’re faced with a long blue wall, where a mural features deep purple paint dripping down as wax from a candle atop a lavender Planet Earth, which doubles as a Magic 8 Ball. This is the new Normal’s.

Ahead of its 28th birthday on E. 31st St., this beloved home of books, records, zines, and one very friendly dog named Max got an early present—a facelift. In 2017, the building’s landlord contacted Emilie Drasher of Waverly Main Street about available funds for local businesses. One year, a few months, some design changes, and a lot of hard work later, the storefront now has a new look and the structural integrity to last.

“They stripped it all the way down to the core,” says Rupert Wondolowski, who co-owns Normal’s with John Berndt and Walt Novash. “I don’t think anyone knew what was awaiting them beneath the stucco.” 

Local artist Greg Gannon of Signs of Intelligent Life merged past and present by enlarging the store emblem created in 1990 by Peter Pan (yes, you read that right), one of the store’s original nine owners, so that it could fit between the two front windows. The store’s name would also get added prominence thanks to a new font created by friend-of-the-shop Tim Hill. Once the plan was settled, Gannon teamed up with Spectrum Mural Studio to paint the whole building in less than two days, giving this beacon the update it needed to shine for the future explorers of its many wonders.

But, as they say, it’s what’s on the inside that counts. Normal’s began as an attempt at a “normal” 9-to-5 gig for some artsy kids in the early ’90s, and at one time stocked clothing and bikes (they sold one to John Waters) alongside the current inventory of books and music. It has attracted burgeoning musicians, aging artists, and autodidacts looking to expand their understanding of the metaphysical, all brought together by the shop’s vast collections.

Beyond the fresh signage, you’ll find the same winding haven of bound pages and vinyl that locals have come to know and love. Kitsch still covers the walls, and something good always spins on the turntable. For those uninitiated, expect to wander for a while between the record bins, stacked shelves, and various nooks and crannies full of new and used finds ranging from the mainstream to the avant-garde.

“The investment of the community in our space feels like a bright new phase is ahead,” says Wondolowski. “Speaking as someone who’s not normally an optimist, I feel like there’s a movement back to appreciating simplicity and beauty, time machines without wires.”

The Elephant with a Knot in His Trunk is a picture book with talking animals, true, but all ages can glean some wisdom from its pages, as it’s charged with truths about how we overcome what we perceive as our shortcomings, and ultimately how that shapes our identity. The story is elegantly told and illustrated with a lushness of loose, textured graphite lines and rich watercolor that emotes the wildness of the jungle.

Stuart Sheer, an orthodontist practicing in Mount Airy and Finksburg, was inspired to write a story after numerous trips overseas helping children with cleft palates (an orthodontist is needed to make a diagnosis and treatment plan). He witnesses firsthand how these kids are bullied and in some respects separated from the rest of society because of their inability to speak clearly. In working with surgeons to repair cleft palates, he understands how dramatically those changes affect children’s confidence—and he thought a book might help in the healing process as well.

He first wrote about a girl with a cleft palate and had planned to publish it and give it to clients, but the story took another shape when he began collaborating three years ago with Pikesville children’s book author and illustrator Nancy Patz to develop the book, which they self-published and released in November.

“It’s easier to show emotions through animals sometimes,” Patz says (though she still uses herself as a model in the mirror).

Kofi is an elephant born with a knot in his trunk, as the title suggests. This not only limits what he can do (even drinking proves challenging), but makes him a target for bullying. He goes to great lengths—indeed, risking his life—to undo this knot. Eventually, a doctor (a monkey) operates on him and is able to untie the trunk, leaving behind a kink but allowing Kofi to do eat, drink, and trumpet-call like the others. Meanwhile, he faces an agonizing decision when he spots his biggest nemesis drowning in a whirlpool and has to quickly decide whether to try to save him. Kofi lends his trunk, pulls Big Ebo to shore, and realizes his value in a way he hadn’t previously.

“The book applies to people without disabilities, too,” Dr. Sheer says. “All of us feel somewhat not whole. . . . People say it’s timely, but bullying has been going on forever.”

“Who has not been outside the circle?” Patz echoes. “Your hair’s too straight, your hair’s too curly, you’re too smart, you’re too dumb. . . . But this book is also for the people who are picking on others, to show what it feels like. What Stuart contributed, in large measure, was his complete empathy with his patients. He wanted a book to ease their emotional distress.”

In one scene, Kofi’s anxious parents watch from the edge of the jungle as a nervous Kofi talks with the doctor who is about to operate on him. Dr. Sheer has watched the human version of this scenario play out again and again. 

As nurses lead a child away from the parents for the procedure, both children and parents are apprehensive. They all have to trust, quite often through a language barrier, that the surgery will help. Sometimes families travel for weeks from remote locations to have the surgery performed.

Dr. Sheer and Patz chose to keep a curl in Kofi’s trunk after his operation to reflect the imperfections that occur in real-life surgeries.

Anti-bullying groups and others are interested in using the book for educational purposes, Dr. Sheer says, which came as a pleasant surprise, as he has done little to promote it.

But perhaps the most rewarding feedback came by way of a class of first-graders who was recently given the assignment to make a drawing about the book and tell what lesson they had learned from it. The teacher showed Dr. Sheer the students’ images, with taglines like “Be a buddy, not a bully” and “Treat people the way you want to be treated.”

“We’re responsible for each other,” Patz says. “That’s really what Kofi proves.”

When architects Megan Elcrat and Phillip Jones opened Co_Lab co-working space in the spring of 2016, they envisioned the front portion of the building would one day become a bookstore with a focus on architecture and design.

That time has come.

Co_Lab Books opened in Old Goucher with a soft launch this month and will hold its grand opening in January.

It’s obvious that it was created by people who have made careers out of having a good eye. The look is clean and minimalistic, modern with wooden shelves, paintings by local artists on the walls, and a large, well-lit wooden table at its center, ideal for browsing some of the large art books. Subject matter runs the gamut: architecture theory and criticism, how-to guides, typography, crafts and DIY, city living and urban planning, and a Baltimore section that will expand in 2018.

“We were hungry for a design bookstore in Baltimore. We just thought there was a hole there,” Elcrat says, speaking for herself and on behalf of her husband, Jones. “We’re trying to be more holistically about design,” she adds, leafing through the book Hybrid Modernism and eyeing its large, gorgeous photographs of movie theaters in South India—one of many titles chosen for its showcase of architectural styles.

Behind the bookstore is the workspace of several freelancers (writers, app developers, a lawyer), people who work remotely for larger companies, and nonprofit groups, such as Bikemore, Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition, and Child Justice. Though not all the tenants work in art and design fields, many do, and several of them recommended books to add to the store inventory. With two small children of her own, Elcrat stocked several picture books, too, with artwork as beautiful as their messages.

To engage more with the community, Elcrat, who also teaches architecture at Maryland Institute College of Art, plans to hold author talks and other events in 2018.

“Having a storefront presence is kind of an excuse to hang out with people,” she says.

1. Pacific Connections tissue box cover ($105) at Antique Exchange. 2. Fire red tea kettle ($48) at Su Casa. 3. Mongolian lamb stool ($399) at West Elm. 4. Orange storage container ($8.75) at Trohv. 5. Middle Kingdom small vase ($12) at Antique Exchange. 6. Lime toothbrush holder ($18) at Su Casa. 7. Tufted pedestal swivel chair ($899) at West Elm. 8. Amanda Adams felt cactus ($56) at Trohv. 9. Leaves of Grass ($16.99) and Meehan’s Bartender Manual ($40) at Trohv. 10. Surya Coast table lamp ($160) at Su Casa. 11. Blue mosaic picture frame ($42) at Trohv. 12. Middle Kingdom Lotus Root vase ($38) at Antique Exchange.

In many ways, Terry Virts is just your average native Marylander. He loves the Orioles and fondly recalls growing up in Columbia during the 1970s and ’80s. How is he not like the average Marylander? Well, as a retired astronaut and one-time commander of the International Space Station, he has spent 213 days in space, which he documented extensively in thousands upon thousands of hi-def videos and still photos. Since retiring from NASA in August 2016, he has spent his time organizing his images and career recollections into a book, the newly released View From Above: An Astronaut Photographs the World. While in town on his book tour last week, he stopped by Baltimore’s offices (where he geeked out about our Orioles-themed décor) and answered our questions about growing up in Columbia, working with the Russians, and thinking he might die in space.

*This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity. 

The book just came out last week and is the result of your 16-year career with NASA, including your stint on the International Space Station, during which you took the most photos anyone has ever taken from space. That’s what they told me, yeah. When I landed, they were like, ‘Ugh. Finally, you’re back on Earth.’ Because they told me I took 319,000-plus pictures. 

Were they ever like, ‘Maybe hold off taking pictures for a day or two?’ Oh, totally. And it wasn’t just fun pictures. Like sometimes, if you’re doing an experiment, they want three different views. If you’re filming experiments, that payload stuff would kill all the downlink so there’s no time to get your fun stuff down. We had RED, this Hollywood-quality camera. Jim Cameron told me he used it to film Avatar. The RED camera was the worst. My last week I was like, ‘You know what, I took enough stills.’ So I got the RED out, and they had always warned us to be real judicious with it because it uses so many gigabytes. But I just filmed away, and they were like, ‘Oh my God!’ But you know what, a week later they had it all down, and they made the most popular UHD highlight reel. It was a couple years ago when UHD was new. It’s amazing. And they’ll have that forever. Yeah, it was like, ‘Sorry. You’ve got to download it.’

So tell us something about space that the average person doesn’t know. So it’s nothing like Star Wars. The Wookiees are not that loud in real space. The Storm Troopers are actually nice guys. [Laughs]

Well, tell us about floating. In space, you move with your hands and you carry things with your feet.

Why? Because you have to grab onto handrails to push yourself around. The way we’re designed: Hands are fine motion and feet are [mimes pounding his feet]. You can do that [mimes jumping], but you’re going to shoot up to the ceiling.

What are the annoying parts about being in space? Well, floating is super annoying. Like, anybody can move over there and get to the door, but to end up at the door [facing it with your hand near the handle], you have to push and rotate at the correct number of degrees per second and your brain has to figure out that it’s going to take five seconds to get there and I need to rotate 10 degrees.

How long does that learning curve take? The first couple of days, it is pretty steep. After a week, I was still not there. After two weeks, I was good but I wasn’t [at my peak]. It probably took me a month before I was good, and I got really good. 

What about sleeping in space? Yeah, you get sunrise and sunset every hour and a half, unless you’re in high beta [orbit]. I went through a week with no sunsets. 

It’s like living in Scandinavia in the summer or something? Right or Antarctica in the winter. It’s just constant sunlight. So you close the windows and you don’t know what the sun is doing and you set your alarm to GMT [Greenwich Mean Time]. 

Why GMT? Because it’s the International Space Station and the bus and the subway system [in Russia] does not run in the middle of the night. So we had to pick a time that was close to their normal work hours for their mission control people. Going GMT is close, it’s a couple hours difference. We didn’t just cave and use Moscow time. So it kind of saves face for us. [We can say] ‘Okay, GMT, that’s official.’ But the real reason is the Moscow subway schedule—so I’ve been told. I was still in the Air Force when the [ISS was launched]. 

Speaking of the Russians, you were up on the ISS with how many others? Five others. There were three Russians, two Americans, and an Italian.

This was in 2015, which, even then, was a tense time in U.S.-Russian relations. How did that affect your working relationships? It was great. It was the highlight of my mission having my Russian crewmates there. It was a lot of fun to hang out with them. We all knew that these things were happening on Earth and we would just consciously, actively say, ‘We’re going to ignore the politics and focus on staying alive.’ Because on the other side of the window is vacuum and death. In a universe of a lot of bad stuff happening, the space station was a good example of how people can work together. 

Can you give an example of something political that threatened to divide you? Well, [the U.S.] put sanctions on Russia. And when that happened, the ruble got devalued in half. So my cosmonaut friends were calling home asking their wives, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ And I’m the guy that did it, and I’m commander, so that could have been very divisive. So I made a very active decision to spend time with them, have dinner with them, to talk. And actually, the cosmonauts are paid in dollars—that’s just the way their contract is—so in the long run, their salaries doubled.

And then [the U.S.] had an orbital rocket that blew up here in Virginia, a Russian Progress rocket blew up, and a Space X rocket blew up. Three rockets in eight months. When the Progress blew up, it was the Soyuz [Russian spacecraft] rocket after [the one that delivered me to the ISS], so they wanted to do an investigation before they launched the next crew to replace us. So we didn’t know how long we were going to be stuck in space. And we were very flexible. Every day I would say, ‘Okay, guys, tell us your rumors,’ because I didn’t want rumors. I was like, ‘Let’s get ’em out. What is everybody hearing?’ And the Russians had the best because it was their rocket. I would talk to the station program manager [at NASA] and he was great. He was just like, ‘Here’s what we know. The reality is, it’s their rocket and they’re going to decide.’ I was like, ‘Okay, I can deal with that.’ There have been other examples when crews got delayed—or they didn’t even get delayed; they had threats of delays—and they were like, ‘Arggghh!’ But we were very positive. And our international partners get paid by the day. When they get extended, they get paid even more. The folks were not that upset about having to stay longer. 

You were born in Baltimore, grew up in Columbia, graduated from Oakland Mills High School. What are your memories of growing up in Columbia? I lived in Lanham and Gambrills first. I didn’t move to Columbia until fourth grade. My fourth grade teacher just found me on Facebook. He remembered stuff. He was like, ‘There was this trip to D.C. and you bought a prism, and you spent 15 minutes explaining how a prism works.’ I remember that but it’s crazy that he remembers that.

So obviously you had an aptitude for science. Yeah, math and science were my strong suits. 

What was your experience going through Columbia’s public schools? It was amazing. The public school system then, that I went through, was rated one of the, I think, top 10 in the country. First of all, it was a multi-racial place. It was kind of weird because I didn’t really think about when I was growing up because I had friends of all [backgrounds]—a Korean guy, an Indian guy. We had everything, and it just wasn’t a big deal. And academically, it was amazing. I got to take Calc 3 in high school and had French every year, seventh through twelfth grade. I became a French minor. I became an astronaut because of my French experience. Madame Micka, I talk about her in my book. She was my French teacher in high school. 

What do you mean you became an astronaut because of your French experience? There are 100 test pilots who are great, but I was the guy who had done an exchange at the French air force academy, and I had international foreign language [experience]. For something like being an astronaut that’s so competitive, you want to have something that makes you stand out, and that made me stand out. No one ever tells you why they picked you, but I just know in my heart that it wasn’t only math and science, it was also the language side of things that got me in. 

You really did want to be a pilot from a young age. There’s a cute picture of you in the book standing on the wing of a plane. Where do you think this love of flying came from? The first book I ever read was about Apollo. It was one of those picture books for kids and I was in Lanham, and I can remember it. It just stuck. My mom was a secretary at Goddard [Flight Center in Greenbelt] and my dad and my stepdad both worked at Goddard. But they weren’t pilots. It was satellites, not human space flight. 

But you were around the culture. Yeah, they would bring home pictures. I remember when Viking landed on Mars I got pictures from Mars. They would get, probably, posters from books they could bring home. They would just bring stuff like that home and my room was just covered with airplanes and stuff. And every summer I’d get Astronomy magazine and, the day it showed up, I would sit there and read the whole thing. 

Do you think a human is going to go to Mars? I’m sure, eventually. I hope sooner rather than later, and I hope America leads it. If we don’t, other countries will. The thing about humanity is that nothing is static. Just ask the Portuguese, ask the Brits, or ask the Chinese. They decided to build a wall, and for 1,000 years they just wallowed in themselves and they didn’t grow. The whole world did this [mimes expanding] and China was behind the wall. So America had the 20th century, right? That was our century. But that doesn’t mean the 21st century is going to be our century unless we decide to make it so.

 What is the most dangerous situation you’ve ever encountered in spaceflight? There’s a whole chapter in the book about it called “Emergencies in Space.” There was an ammonia leak. We’re sitting there, minding our own business, and the alarm goes off, and we pop our heads out. Samantha, my Italian crewmate, we’re looking at the panel. I see ‘ATM.’ There are three kinds of emergencies: There’s fire. There’s an air leak. And there’s toxic atmosphere, which is ammonia inside the atmosphere. Ammonia is the coolant. So cars have radiator fluid, the station uses ammonia. That’s how it stays cool—on the American side. The Russian side uses sugar water. It’s not as efficient. It’s not as good a coolant, like ammonia, but it’s sugar water. Ammonia kills you dead.

So I go, ‘ATM?’ It was such a big deal that I just couldn’t process it. So we put on oxygen masks, run down to the Russian segment, and close the hatch because the Russian segment is safe. And then you’re supposed to take all of your clothes off because if there’s ammonia in your clothes, its poisonous, and then you go through another hatch. But we didn’t take our clothes off. No one smelled anything. We were like, ‘We’re probably fine.’ And the ground was kind of mad at us about that. Thirty minutes [later], the ground goes, ‘Hey, just kidding, it was a false alarm.’ So we’re just like, ‘Ugh.’ It just kills the day’s schedule. So we get back and we’re putting things away because we had just dropped everything and the CAPCOM [the Capsule Communicator] calls up and says, ‘Execute ammonia response now. This is a real thing. This isn’t a drill.’ It was this super intense voice. We were like, ‘Crap!’ We put the masks on, we go down, we close the hatch, we don’t take our clothes off. We do the whole thing. We get a sampler out. Okay, the air is good. Twenty or thirty minutes later we take our masks off and we’re like, ‘huh.’

What I knew had happened was the computer [activated] the alarm automatically. I knew there would be a crowd of engineers looking at every little bit of data. What I assumed had happened was, after the first alarm, they went, ‘Nah, that’s not really a leak. Tell them it’s not.’ And then they [continued] to watch the data and it [looked] like it was still leaking and they said, ‘Yeah, that’s a leak. It’s a small one, but it’s a real leak.’ And then they called us back. Since I’ve worked in mission control for years, I knew what was going on; they didn’t tell us this. And then we sat around for hours on the Russian side and the Russian deputy prime minister called up in the middle of sanctions and all these bad things and says, ‘Hey Americans, you can stay as long as you want. We’re going to work together.’ This was the same guy that had said we could take a trampoline to the space station after the U.S. had put sanctions on Russia. The same guy who was having a Twitter battle with, I guess, Obama at the time called up and said, ‘Hey we’re going to work together and get through this.’ So it was a great, great, great example international cooperation in space when things were really bad down here.

So we spent the day like, ‘So, there’s a small leak on the station.’ What’s going to happen if it continues to leak is the station pops. It just gets over-pressurized and the metal explodes—unless they vent it. They could vent it and then there’s no air and ammonia stuck to the walls. So we’re like, the station’s dead, and we’re going to stay on the Russian segment for a few weeks—with the one pair of underwear because all my clothes are over there—and then go back to Earth and the station will go into the Pacific. And then I went and took a nap. I was like, ‘I don’t have anything else to do. I’m going to take a nap.’ And then they called up and said, ‘Just kidding, it was a false alarm.’ [Laughs]

But then when we went back to the American segment they said, ‘But just keep your masks on just in case.’ So my crewmate and I, we put our masks on and we had these samplers and we were floating around and it was like this surreal alien movie. There were things floating around—we just abandoned stuff and left—so it was like being the first person on this ghost ship in space. And then everything was fine. That’s a story that no one knows and it’s an amazing story.

So, essentially, you got told it was a false alarm twice? Yes. And there have always been false fire alarms, and there have been a few false air leak alarms, but there’s never been a false ammonia alarm.

Ever? That’s the one and only ammonia alarm. The ammonia alarm is a big deal. That’s the one you don’t want to get. They sent a text to my family at four in the morning. The text is in the book. My wife got it and she gave it to me for the book. In general, space flight sucks for families. It’s just hard. Everyone’s always like, ‘Oh you’re so lucky your dad’s an astronaut!’ My kids are like, [rolls eyes]. We were watching the NBA five or six years ago and my daughter, she was probably like 10 at the time, and we were watching the Heat and they were in the finals and she just looks at me and says, ‘Dad, why can’t you be more like LeBron James?’   

September in Baltimore means one thing for bibliophiles—The Baltimore Book Festival. For three days, the Inner Harbor becomes a book store, reading room, and literary salon all rolled into one, with stages featuring a host of local, national, and international authors to gather inspiration from. To make navigating this weekend’s schedule a little easier, we’ve highlighted 10 writers and events that are not to be missed—and broken them down by your genre of choice.

Literature Lovers

Maryland Humanities presents Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
2 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 24, Literary Salon  This Johns Hopkins grad who grew up in Nigeria has taken the literary world by storm. Her latest novel Americanah, was published around the world in 2013, and has received numerous accolades, including winning the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and The Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Fiction, and it was named one of The New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year. Her 2003 novel Purple Hibiscus was the One Maryland One Book selection this year and her TED talk about feminism is a must-see.

Alice McDermott
3:30 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 24, Literary Salon  McDermott, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, is the author of seven novels, including Someone, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award, and Charming Billy, which won the National Book Award. She’s also been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize twice, and her articles, reviews, and stories have appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post, USA Today, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New Yorker. She’ll be promoting her new book The Ninth Hour at the festival.

True Crime Enthusiasts

It’s amazing that a few years after the Serial podcast became such a huge hit that we are still pondering the future of Adnan Syed, who was convicted in the murder of Hae Min Lee. Two women with special connections to Syed are appearing at the festival. First is Asia McClain Chapman, who will tell her story of how she became the key alibi witness for Syed in Serial, and now in her book, Confessions of a Serial Alibi. (3 p.m. Saturday, Inner Harbor Stage.) And an hour later, catch Rabia Chaudry, Syed’s public advocate and author of the New York Times bestselling book Adnan’s Story. (4 p.m. Saturday, Inner Harbor Stage.) 

Local Scenesters

A Touch of Literati 
6 p.m. Friday, CityLit Stage Baltimore’s own CityLit Press celebrates the launch of author Rafael Alvarez’s new collection of fiction, Basilio Boullosa Stars in the Fountain of Highlandtown. The book commemorates the 20th anniversary of Alvarez’s fiction debut, The Fountain of Highlandtown. The celebration includes two prize-winners: 2017 Gordon Parks Foundation Fellow Devin Allen, who will speak about the Time magazine photo that changed his life and the youth educational program he founded, and Deborah Rudacille, a 2017 Guggenheim Fellow, and science writer who tells stories about the ways in which science influences culture and culture informs science, the links between science and social justice movements. This session is moderated by WYPR’s Aaron Henkin. 

Foodies

The intersection of food and literature is always a welcome discussion, and the book fest has plenty of cooking demos and cookbook signings at its Food for Thought Stage. But there’s also Lunch at the Homesick Restaurant (1 p.m. Friday, Food for Thought Stage), where national best-selling mystery author Laura Lippman joins author Ann Hood and author and home cook Michael Ruhlman to discuss the way fiction informs food and food informs fiction, both in their own work and the works of others. Audience members who know their fictional food will have a chance to win some distinctly Baltimore treats.

Kids or Kids at Heart

Pets on Wheels
(11 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday, Top of the World Observation Level) What could be better than cute pets and books? Children will be partnered with a therapy dog (or cat!) from Pets on Wheels. After selecting a favorite book, the child is invited to sit and read to their furry friend. And we maintain this event shouldn’t just be for kids—adults like to read books aloud, too. 

The Conservation Conscious

McKay Jenkins (11:30 a.m. Saturday, Food For Thought Stage) has been writing about people and the natural world for 30 years, and continues this work in his new book, Food Fight: GMOs and the Future of the American Diet. He is also the author of ContamiNation, which chronicles his investigation into the myriad synthetic chemicals we encounter in our daily lives, and the growing body of evidence about the harm these chemicals do to our bodies and the environment. He teaches at The University of Delaware and lives in Baltimore.

Poetry Aficionados

Poets Speak: Raw Wounds, Wise Blood, Speak Water
(2 p.m. Sunday, CityLit Stage) You might know the name Kondwani Fidel from his recent viral essay that analyzed the human toll of Baltimore’s violence in his personal experiences. The writer, speaker, and spoken word poet has also authored a book, Raw Wounds, has been featured in Business Insider and CNN, and was a 2016 recipient of the Ford: Men of Courage Award. He joins Robert Earl Price the author of four books of poetry, including Wise Blood and Truth Thomas, a singer-songwriter and poet who was the winner of the 2013 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry. Ron Kipling Williams, author of Black Freak Mosh Heaven, will moderate.

Be Free Live! hosted by Love the Poet (Michelle Antoinette Nelson)
(4 p.m. Sunday, Inner Harbor Stage) Baltimore’s longest running monthly open mic will take place live at the book festival. Hosted by Michelle Antoinette Nelson aka LOVE the poet an artist, innovator, and Founder of Brown and Healthy a non-profit and global health and wellness initiative for people of color. She’s dedicated over a decade to her life’s work to authoring books, plays, writing arts + education curricula, and providing platforms for artists to explore and discover the true nature of their art. Featuring Almight Ra, Antoine Hayes, Najh Bayyan, and others.

This is a story about loving something so much you dedicate your life to it—about doing something not for the acclaim, but because it’s the right thing to do. Like all of life, it’s also a story about growth and loss, success and pain, and, perhaps most importantly, it’s about how, even when everything you’ve strived for goes up in flames, if you’ve done good work, you might find a community of people there to raise it up again. 

This is the story of The Book Thing, a place that is a little difficult to describe. It’s not a bookstore, because you can’t buy the thousands of titles it offers, and it’s not an exchange, because you don’t have to give books away to take them. It’s a place where, mind-bogglingly, you can take donated books for free, as many as you like, with no catch. And like many ventures in Baltimore that run largely on commitment and heart, it seems like it should have run out of steam—but miraculously, it hasn’t. Not even when a fire reduced it to a smoldering heap in March 2016. 

The Book Thing has been nurturing readers since 1999, when Russell Wattenberg, who arrived in Baltimore somewhat by accident, turned his hobby of collecting books and giving them away into a full-time thing—“Russell’s book thing,” as the patrons at the former Mt. Vernon mainstay Dougherty’s, where he used to tend bar, called it. The name stuck. The old warehouse near Waverly that Wattenberg used as The Book Thing headquarters—where books lined the walls, stacked along bookshelves that turned the rooms into a veritable literary maze—became a haven for bibliophiles who carried their finds by the armful. And Wattenberg could always count on more books, handed over in shopping bags, milk crates, or cardboard boxes tinged green with mold from years in dark, dank basements. 

His mission won national acclaim—The New York Times ran a story in 2002 called “Where Even the Dime Novel Doesn’t Cost a Cent,” declaring The Book Thing “one of this city’s grand treasure troves.” People magazine ran a feature. C-SPAN came to do a segment.

“I like when I can give a book to a person and tell them, ‘I think you’ll enjoy this.ʼ”

But it all came to a grinding halt in the early morning of March 2, 2016, when Wattenberg was roused from sleep by a pounding at his door. A neighbor told him that The Book Thing was on fire, and by the time Wattenberg threw on clothes and ran a few blocks over to Vineyard Lane, all that was left was smoke-stained shelves full of charred, soggy books. 

“I was just totally numb. That whole day was such a blur,” says Wattenberg. “It was amazing the number of people who were crying, men and women. It’s like you don’t realize how good something is until it’s gone, how important it was to these folks. There were a lot of people there who, before the fire, I saw every weekend or one or two days a week for 15 years. I have no idea what their names are, if they’re homeless or rich. That’s the beauty of The Book Thing.”

But The Book Thing wasn’t really gone—in fact, the very people who surrounded Wattenberg that day were there to resurrect it. 

To fully understand The Book Thing, you have to understand Russell Wattenberg. This burly, teddy bear of an unlikely hero prefers, for the most part, to stay out of the spotlight. But if you do catch him, say at the row of Formstone buildings on Vineyard Lane that has become The Book Thing’s temporary sorting headquarters, or at the neighboring brewery Peabody Heights, where he hangs out on Friday evenings, it’s clear how much he loves what he does.

“I like when I can give a book to a person and tell them, ‘I think you’ll really enjoy this,’ and they’ll come back later and say that they did,” Wattenberg says. “And then there are times, like when someone once brought in a class of fifth graders and one of them refused to look through the kids’ books and was off in a corner and ended up grabbing an oceanography college textbook off the shelf. He probably couldn’t read three-quarters of it, but he wanted that book. And he sat there and looked at it and flipped the pages for an hour. That made me feel good, you know what I mean?”

The Book Thing’s creation came about through equal parts chance and instinct, and Wattenberg shares the story as if what transpired still surprises him. “I never actually got the idea—it just kind of happened,” he says. “If I’d had the idea, I wouldn’t have done it. I really never even thought I’d be in Baltimore.”

Some 20 years ago, he was straight out of college, all of his belongings loaded into his van, on his way to visit his mother in Florida, when he stopped in Baltimore to get gas. To ease his travel-induced weariness, he phoned a friend and asked to stay at her place for the night. In exchange, he would help her boyfriend with some work at a house he was renovating. One thing led to another, and Wattenberg ended up staying long term and working at Dougherty’s. That’s when his hobby really took off. 

Wattenberg had always collected books, but not in the way you might think. He wasn’t in it for rare books or first editions—instead, he’d grab a dog-eared copy of To Kill a Mockingbird at a garage sale for 25 cents, or keep his eyes peeled at sidewalk sales for his childhood favorites like Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. When he heard some patrons, who happened to be teachers, complaining about needing books, “I said, ‘Just go out to the van and grab whatever you want.’ So the word spread, and people started bringing me books they didn’t want anymore and leaving them at the bar. And it just kind of grew and grew and grew.”

In 1999, those same teachers put together the paperwork for The Book Thing to become a nonprofit, and Wattenberg quit his job (“Give books away; sell alcohol to drunks—it was a real moral dilemma there,” he says with a wink) and moved the operation to the 950-square-foot basement of a commercial Charles Village rowhome. It moved to a bigger home in 2005, when Wattenberg bought a former warehouse and darkroom near Waverly. 

He raised $60,000 in 60 days for the down payment and closing costs—“no bank would touch me for a mortgage, surprise, surprise,” he says. Someone also loaned him a good chunk of their retirement savings, and Wattenberg worked to pay off the benefactor in seven years, mostly through the sale of rare books, which is still the main way that The Book Thing funds itself. “I always say I can sell a first-edition Hemingway, which enables us to give away hundreds of Hemingways,” he says.

The Book Thing attracted readers by the thousands, as well as a corps of volunteers who kept the place running. Wattenberg isn’t good on exact numbers, but he can safely say “hundreds of thousands” of books have been given out and “hundreds” of people have volunteered their time, many on a weekly basis. For Diane Schaefer, who is retired from the health care field and has shelved books for the past three years, “the enthusiasm of the people who visit is why I volunteer. You absolutely never know who will show up or what books will show up, and I love being able to help people find what they are looking for.”

And it became everything to Wattenberg. His future wife was a volunteer, and the pair pined for one another for years before finally sharing their first kiss at The Book Thing over an old National Geographic issue on sequoias. One year later, they tied the knot at the annual anniversary party. “April 1 is our anniversary, and April 2 is our annikissery. We’re cheesy,” he says, grinning.

“You absolutely never know who . . . or what books will show up.”

So it makes sense that he was crushed to see his life reduced to a pile of smoldering embers. It still makes him emotional thinking about it. “I’ve been doing The Book Thing seven days a week, 80 to 100 hours every week for so long, and then just to see it all . . .” his voice trails off. “Shocked isn’t the right word. It’s almost as if I was seeing my own funeral.”

Immediately, on March 2, the day of the fire, people flocked to the scene. There were volunteers like Schaefer, who was supposed to work a shift sorting books and instead arrived to the smell of ash in the air. “It was devastating to see just the charred remains,” she says. “But there was also a lot of hope, which was wonderful. The volunteers immediately started to clean up, moving the remaining bookcases, taking out anything that was left.

Edward O’Keefe, the event coordinator at Peabody Heights Brewery, walked over with some beer and introduced himself to Wattenberg. Instantly, a friendship formed. “Russell is 100-percent genuine. He’s one of the few people in this world who has no ulterior motives,” O’Keefe says. He quickly knew he had to help however he could. 

Soon, the fundraisers started. Peabody Heights hosted a trivia night that people lined Greenmount Avenue for blocks to get in, with all 600 of them packing the brewery and raising thousands for the recovery. Peabody Heights also became The Book Thing’s satellite location, a tradition that will likely continue, O’Keefe says. “People sometimes look at us strangely that there’s a bookcase in a brewery,” he says. “And when we tell them to take [the books], some people ask, ‘Is there a catch? Do we have to buy a bunch of beer?’” Baltimore independent rock label Friends Records put on an epic concert with more than a dozen acts, including rapper Eze Jackson and up-and-coming rockers Sun Club, that pulled in $8,000. Hip Remington taqueria Clavel donated a portion of its sales one night. So did brewery institution The Brewer’s Art, as did Whole Foods. Even Baltimore Ghost Tours pitched in.

Others honored the loss in other ways. “The heart of this city thrums with a faintly anarchic spirit. We don’t do too well with authority, preferring to conduct our transactions unmediated by regulation and restraint,” writer Patricia Schultheis editorialized in The Sun a week after the fire. “Mr. Wattenberg understood Baltimoreans well enough to know they’d respond to his notion of free books by endlessly replenishing his supply.” 

Finally, this fall, all 7,000 boxes of books will move across the street.

All of this caught Wattenberg off guard. “People were raising money that we didn’t even know about. It got to be so much that I started telling people to give it to homeless shelters or someone who really needed it.” 

Before long, book donations started coming again, so Wattenberg rented temporary space across the street from The Book Thing’s shell. Wattenberg knew he wanted to rebuild on the same spot near Waverly, and aimed to be back up and running within a year. But then he was hit with construction, permit, and design delays that pushed back the re-opening. Still, he persevered, forging through dealings with the insurance company, firing and hiring architects and construction firms, never giving up. Now, finally, this fall, all 7,000 boxes of books, plus Eleanor, a tabby cat who is the nonprofit’s unofficial mascot, will move across the street, and The Book Thing will be home again once more.

One morning in July, Wattenberg leads a tour of the renovations, showing off the freshly painted walls, new offices, and yet-to-be-installed windows like a proud papa. “This is what’s going to be here for the next 20, 30 years,” he says, as buzz saws whir in the background.  

Wattenberg asked the construction company to save him a piece of one of the burnt joists. “I had them cut out a section, and I’m going to throw some shellac on it and hang it up here,” he says. “It’s not so much sentimental—it’s a reminder of what we’ve been through. And now we’re stronger.”

Jen Michalski has been a force in the Baltimore writing scene for years, providing support and community for writers by hosting a well-known reading series. She joined us to talk about her new novel, The Summer She Was Under Water.

This is such an interesting book in that it seems relatively simple on the surface, but then dives into extreme emotional depths. How did you come up with the idea?
It wasn’t the book I started out to write. It was probably in 2006 that I started writing it, and initially it was about a family vacation by the lake and initially, [the main character] Sam and her friend Eve were going to get together. But it just felt like a really standard coming out novel, and I didn’t feel anything good or bad about it. So I put it aside and thought, ‘Maybe this isn’t the novel I want to write, maybe it’s just one of those aborted novels.’

In between, I wrote some short stories, had some other ideas, and wrote a novella called Water Moon about a man who’d been pregnant. I’m not sure how that came about, but I really liked the voice, and that he had this secret he had to carry to term. I wrote it, but didn’t really do anything with it—what can you do with a surrealistic novel about a pregnant man?—but I kept thinking about it, and there was just something about that novella that was trying to tell me something about the novel that I’d stopped writing. Maybe it wasn’t that Sam was a lesbian, maybe there was something else that was causing her so much distress. So I spliced the two texts together a bit, and it became clear to me what the real story was.

Not to give too much away, but incest plays a role. What was the response to that?
There was a lot of, ‘You’re a good writer, but I can’t really sell this.’ And that was fine. I researched, and there are novels out there with incest in them. Some of them are memoirs and obviously those are more justifiable, having the cathartic experience of writing about incest. Nabakov wrote a novel with incest in it, Iac McKeown wrote one, so there have been other authors who have dealt with it, I’m not the first one. I don’t judge things, I just write about things that I don’t understand and put myself in the shoes of someone I don’t understand, and I try to understand them by channeling myself through that person.

There was one criticism that the characters were too cynical. I realized that I put the worst of myself in Sam. A lot of us are this way, and I was this way too for a long time, that when something bad happens, we feel like we are owed an apology, and we’re bitter about it. Sam feels very violated and wants someone to apologize, like she can’t move on. And I think it’s once she realizes that it’s how she chooses to live, that’s where the healing begins, not while waiting around for her abuser to tell her he’s sorry. It’s how we learn to keep living, and I think in the end Sam starts to learn that we can still be mad at each other, and we may never have a relationship with one another, but we can at least try to find a way to be in each other’s lives. I think a lot of people and families everywhere deal with these kinds of issues that there aren’t easy answers for, and you just have to make the best of the situation.

You have a day job, which is writing related, but I’m still wondering how you find time for your own work.
I usually write in bed at night or on the weekends. I don’t really have a set schedule, and I’m not the type of person who has to get up every day and force myself to write something. A lot of the work is in my head, it percolates there until it’s ready, and then I’ll sit down and it has to come out right then. A lot of it happens when I’m dreaming. There’s a lot of emotional energy in dreams, and I’ll wake up after a really strange dream that has affected me so profoundly, and I’ll want to find a way to bring that energy to the page. I feel like I’m cheating, but I take a lot from my dreams to.

How do you come up with your characters?
It’s interesting, sometimes what you want from the character isn’t how they evolve. When I started writing this book, I had this picture of Eve as this girl I saw at the Club Charles one night drinking whiskey and a beer and reading. And it didn’t seem like she was waiting for anyone, and it was late and she was by herself. I thought, ‘I wonder what kind of person finds solace in a dimly lit bar,’ and I thought it was kind of ballsy. And then this girl who became Sam came in at started talking to her, and I suddenly became more interested in why this introverted, tightly-wound person would come in during the middle of the week and talk to this other person. And then all of a sudden, the book became about Sam.

I always say that the characters thwart you on every level when you try do something. It’s not even a voice, but something will say, ‘this is what’s going to happen,’ and you’re like, ‘Oh.’ And maybe you’re half way through the novel and everything has changed.

What is your ideal creative environment?
One of my big fantasies, and it’s terrible, is that I always wanted to have a book that was successful enough that I could go and be a hermit and write what I want. I guess all musicians just want to go in the studio and be like Kate Bush and do anything they want.

What do you try to get out of writing?
It’s hard to say. Writing is not like a goal, it’s how I analyze the world. I can’t articulate what’s going on to you in words, I need to write it down so I can make sense of it. It’s really the only way that I know how to interpret the world. If I stopped writing, I would feel really confused.

Even if I was never published again, I’d still be writing stories for myself. I don’t know how to stop. I have all these other people in my head who aren’t real, but they feel real to me. Sometimes I’ll wake up in the night and I’ll follow along with the soap operas in my head. It gets crowded in there, so it’s good to write them out.

Wil Haygood’s book Showdown, which tells the story of Baltimore native Thurgood Marshall’s road to Supreme Court justice, has been lauded by major publications including The Atlantic, and made many critics’ lists for best books of 2015. The Washington, D.C.–based author—who has written biographies on subjects including Sammy Davis Jr. and who penned the article that was the basis for the 2013 film The Butler—joined us to talk about why he picked Marshall as a subject, the difficulty of writing about racism in America, and the stunning surprises he found during his research.

How did you decide to write the book in the first place?
I was very eager to find a way into Thurgood Marshall’s life, but I didn’t want to write a traditional biography. When I looked at his 1967 Supreme Court confirmation hearings and looked at the other nominees who came before him, it struck me as stunning that all the other hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee lasted four hours or less. Thurgood Marshall’s hearings lasted five days, and they were stretched across 11 days. There was great drama right there. When you look at some of the most seminal cases that Marshall took in front of the Supreme Court and won. They’re all set in the Deep South, and the four major figures on the Senate Judiciary Committee were all southerners. The very men who are going to lead the assault against Marshall he’d already defeated across the South with seminal civil rights cases. You had this titanic faceoff in the summer of 1967, when the country was on fire with protests over the Vietnam War and lack of equality for blacks. I just thought everything that took place in room 2228, where the hearings were held, told this great story about this nation—how we got from there to here—and about the life of Thurgood Marshall.

You came up with a unique way to structure Marshall’s story by honing in on the process of him becoming a Supreme Court justice.
When you think of Marshall, his appointment was so historic. He goes onto be on the [Supreme Court] for 20-plus years, and I think most of the writers have felt, ‘I’ve got to tell that story. That’s the history. Why look at those damn hearings?’ And nobody had ever looked at the hearings, ever. When I told my editor, ‘I want to do a book about Thurgood Marshall,’ he said, ‘I’m not really interested . . . Why do you want to do that?’ and I said, ‘I really want to focus on these five days of hearings, these southern senators he clashed with, and the fact that riots happened, that two of the senators on the committee’s fathers had committed murder.’ And my editor stopped me and said, ‘Now that’s a book that I would very much want to publish.’

What was your research process like?
I did a lot of research in archives, and I traveled across the country finding people who had worked with Marshall, who knew Marshall. Arkansas Senator John McClellan had said that he didn’t want his archives opened until 50 years after his death. It was about 50 years and a few weeks after his death that I started this book, so I flew to Arkansas and spent a week going through his archives. I found amazing things.

There was this letter from a lady named Barbara Ross, who wrote to the senator on the second day of the hearings, which she’d been listening to on the radio. And she told him how hurt she was that she knew that the senator was going to vote against Marshall, and she said he was letting his racial views stymie his fair judgment toward Marshall. And her last sentence was, ‘Someday, senator, there will be a Negro president.’ It was stunning. When I came across that letter I was almost moved to tears. Then something magical happened. My sister told me I should look up Barbara Ross’s family up when I’m on my book tour . . . The city clerk in Texarkana, AR, gave me a number and I dialed it. A frail voice answered . . . and [after I had explained who I was] said, ‘In 1967, I was 18 years old and I was in college and I was listening to the hearings. And my daddy had bought me a manual typewriter, and I went out on my back porch and typed that letter. My goodness, where did you get that letter?’

Have you been able to visit her?
I’m going out there in February. I’m giving a talk at the Houston Public Library, and then I’m going to get in the car and take her a book.

Did she remember that she’d correctly predicted the future?
When I told her, she said, ‘Praise the Lord, it all came true.’ But I don’t think she quite caught the weight, the majesty of what she’d written.

You chose to write this book when there are people who are still alive that were involved in his cases and worked with him.
As I went through the months and the years of writing the book, time became very apparent to me. I would go interview some retired federal judge, who knew Thurgood Marshall, and then I would look in the newspaper three months later and that federal judge would have passed away. I was constantly saying to myself, ‘If I hadn’t flown to see him, I would never have heard that genuine voice.’ There was a gentleman here in Washington . . . I had several wonderful meetings with him because he’d worked with Marshall on the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund in the 1950s. And I opened the paper one day, about six months after I had first met him, and he had passed away. It was very poignant on so many levels.

Some events you detail in the book, including lynchings and murder, must have been difficult to discover and detail. How did you deal with writing them?
As a writer, your emotion is involved in your selection—that you choose to tell, or your book subject matter. That’s your heart and soul right there. Then your training as a narrative writer takes over, and you know how to tell a story, and you know how to step back from time to time and let the facts speak for themselves. And other times, you really have to go to the bone of literary writing, and you have to tell your story with every bit of literary drive that you have. There were several times when I would write a certain chapter and it would be so brutal that I would have to take a walk in the open sunshine.

Did your mission in telling Marshall’s story evolve?
The more I think about it, emotion has played a role in me telling the story. In 1954, an African-American woman born in Alabama, who’s now living in Columbus, OH, is rushed to the hospital. She’s pregnant with twins, and she gives birth. She gives birth into a new era, where she could look at her children and say, ‘The law of the land now fosters integration.’ She had a boy and a girl, and I’m the boy. I think of my mother, and knowing that, when I was an infant, she was reading all these stories in the paper about this nation having to change, or being forced to change. That’s pretty powerful. In many ways, the book is a tribute to Thurgood Marshall and to my mother.

What led to you tackling a book-length history of the anthem?
The idea flashed into my head in 1996 during a graduate history seminar at Stony Brook University. I love music and knew the song dated to 1814, so it had a significant heritage. Aware that its 200th anniversary would arrive in the not-too-distant future, I was pleasantly stunned to learn that very few books had been written about the most controversial song in American history.

Did you set out to write a biography of a song?


Indeed, it is a living, evolving entity that will never die. As I researched the song’s history that semester, I knew I was on to something big. The political uses of the song, the malleability of its meaning and the quirks of its trajectory intrigued me. Americans revere the song, but they don’t necessarily like it. I wanted to know how this composition became the official anthem, why it took 117 years to make it so and what made Congress act in 1931.

What is the greatest misconception about “The Star-Spangled Banner”?


In addition to the belief that the song is hard to sing, the notion that it glorifies war. Like a journalist, Francis Scott Key merely described what he saw on the night that England’s Navy bombarded Fort McHenry. Compared with The Marseillaise, the French anthem, which calls for patriots to water their fields with the enemy’s blood, Key’s verses are pretty tame. In the fourth verse, he also justified war (“then conquer we must”) only “when our cause it is just.”

I assume you visited Baltimore while researching the book. What did you think of the city and Baltimoreans’ relationship to the song?


Thanks to a Smithsonian Institution fellowship, I conducted considerable research at Fort McHenry, the Pratt Library and the Maryland Historical Society, where I discovered pivotal documents that enhanced the narrative. Baltimore is a main character in the book and local patriots helped make “The Star-Spangled Banner” the official national anthem. Most Americans dismiss the War of 1812, but the Battle of Baltimore represents a major David-vs.-Goliath victory.

What’s your favorite rendition? Why?


I am partial to Jose Feliciano’s singular, yet controversial version, performed almost a year before Jimi Hendrix’s incendiary rendition at Woodstock. Feliciano took heartfelt, creative liberties with the melody to forge one of the most distinctive performances in the song’s history. Honorable mention also goes to Marvin Gaye for originality and Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver’s a capella take for spine-tingling beauty.

There have, over the years, been rumblings about changing the anthem. Do you believe that will ever happen?
Never. Such talk is folly. Due in part to the inspiring circumstances of its creation and its focus on the flag, “The Star-Spangled Banner” became the de facto national anthem soon after it spread after the Battle of Baltimore. The major challengers over the years—including “Yankee Doodle”; “Hail, Columbia”; “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean”; “America the Beautiful” and “God Bless America”—are flawed. None of them have the same historical gravitas, or the edgy melody, of Key’s creation.

The Girl Who Came Back

Meg Eden (Red Bird Chapbooks)

The Enchanted Forest has piqued Baltimoreans’ imaginations for decades. Even after the park closed in the late 1980s, it turned up in John Waters’s Cry-Baby, an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street, two Laura Lippman books, and the Zippy the Pinhead comic. Here, Eden’s series of narrative poems uses the park’s glory days and weed-choked demise to explore the creep of time and how the past colors the present. Eden filters memory through magical realism, which proves to be a perfect match for her muse.

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The White Rail

Clarinda Harriss (Half Moon Editions)

Harriss, the celebrated writer (CityLit’s Harriss Poetry Prize was named in her honor) and former Towson University professor, brings to mind Lucinda Williams with these half-dozen short stories. Like the singer-songwriter, Harriss excels at creating memorable characters within settings that accentuate their authenticity. Lovable psychopath Crazy Angel, for instance, makes “Vinyl Recliner” more creepy than comfy by flaunting his badass tendencies in well-heeled company, with lingering effects. 

Do you recall the moment when you got the idea for Carsick?

When I thought up the idea, I was afraid to tell my agent, because I knew he’d go for it and call the publisher. At that point, I didn’t want them to say, “Yes,” because I didn’t know if I had the nerve to actually go through with it. He said he wouldn’t tell the publisher, but he did and called back the next saying they would do it—so that made it even scarier. Then, I got half the advance, which I put into an account and didn’t touch one penny of it, because I didn’t know what would happen on the trip.

But I’d hitchhiked when I was young. My mother dropped Pat Moran and I off at the Beltway so we could hitchhike to Provincetown. Back then, hitchhiking wasn’t thought of as bad. In private schools, all the kids hitchhiked home with their lacrosse sticks after school. And I’ve hitchhiked in Provincetown a lot over the past 10 years, because I hitchhike to the beach—although that’s different, because people recognize me. It was like hailing a limousine, to be honest. I’ve hitchhiked in Baltimore a few times in a blizzard when I couldn’t get anywhere, and I’ve hitchhiked home from Penn Station when there were no cabs. So I’d gotten my training wheels.

You know, I believe in the goodness of people, and everything I believed in came true. And thank god I wrote the part imagining all the good that could happen before I left, because I could have never thought that up if I had already done it.

You wrote those sections, imagining the best and worst that could happen, before you left?

Yes. I finished writing about my death two days before I left. I just barely got it finished. You know, it was easy to say abstractly that I was going to do this, but the day I walked out of here… [shakes his head] I never felt more like a moron than when I was standing in the rain at the end of my street trying to get that first ride. There were no cars! I just stood there in the rain for two hours.

My assistants, Susan and Trish, did a huge amount of research on this book before I went. We identified what would be the most moderate week, in terms of temperature, along Route 70. And, yes, the temperatures were moderate, but we forgot that it rains all the time. So for the first two days, I was standing out there in the kind of weather where they issue flood warnings. I couldn’t believe it.

How many days were you on the road?

Nine. It would have been longer, except for the Corvette Kid [who gave rides at the beginning and end of the trip]. As I got further west, it was easier to get rides. You don’t want to go near a city, because congested areas are the worst—people just aren’t driving very far. I had to learn all that. The best places to get rides were places that didn’t have fast food restaurants, just a little park area, bathrooms, and vending machines. At those kind of places, people tended to be driving longer distances, so they’d stop and linger, maybe walk their dog. They even exited at a slower speed, so it was easier for them to spot me. The only problem with those places is if you get there at the end of the day, and it’s dark and scary.

Did you ever feel threatened?

Never. But, at one point, I thought it was going to take a year. I had given myself two weeks, and I had a flight booked from San Francisco to New York, so I could accept a fashion award for Johnny Depp and Rei Kawakuba onstage at Lincoln Center. So I had to get back from hitchhiking to do that! Early in the trip, I was scared I wouldn’t make it, because getting rides was harder than I thought it would be. But who would ever think a cop would pick me up? And so many things happened that were really nice.

What sort of people gave you rides?

The people who pick up hitchhikers tend to be people who have survived something, who don’t play by the rules and are ballsy. But nobody hitchhikes today. I saw one other hitchhiker the entire time. And I was riding with the Corvette Kid and said, “Don’t pick him up.” I know, but I didn’t feel like riding with him, because he didn’t look like he’d be fun.

Did people recognize you?

Sometimes. But saying I was John Waters didn’t work a lot of the time. Some people certainly weren’t impressed, though they were nice about it. Overall, it didn’t really help me. You gotta take the rides you get, and you’ll get into anything. You are so down when you’re just standing there that it’s exhilarating when somebody stops. You’re just so glad to be covering ground.

I was struck that even on the road you were singing for your supper, sort of like your standup show.

I felt like a phone sex worker. Many people took me further than where they were going, because I was telling them stories. They also took me further to get me to a better drop-off area or to help me. People want to talk. They don’t pick up a hitchhiker to be silent.

Did you get a sense of attitudes in Middle America?

The people who picked me up were hopeful. The men all said how much they loved their wives. They all talked about how great their wives are, how smart they are, and how much they love them. So I tell all these women who say they can’t find straight men, “Go to Route 70!” No gay people that I know of picked me up. A few women driving alone picked me up, but it was mostly men. I think a lot of them figured I was gay, though I didn’t say I was. It seemed like they had all suffered some in their lives. They had beat something, and they were on the road feeling good and adventuresome.

Is that why they’re compelled to stop? They could relate to a guy by the side of the road?

I think they felt bad for me. People thought I was an old man down on his luck, and they were kind. They were just kind people that wanted to help. The 80-year old hay farmer who picked me up was so sweet, and I learned from him about spontaneous combustion in barns and that if you give pigs M&Ms they’ll follow you around. And I know he did not believe me for one minute when I told him I made movies. And he tried to give me money. In fact, a lot people tried to give me money. I was so touched by that.

I was struck by your willingness to make friends and your disappointment when it wasn’t reciprocated—like, in restaurants, if someone simply ignored you.

I can make friends. I like people, and I like hearing their stories. But those [motel] breakfast rooms were the worst. People wouldn’t even make eye contact. Eating dinner by myself at Applebee’s was the worst. And I looked, for me, fairly normal. I looked like an old person. I’d clean up when I went out to eat, but after being out on the road for 10 hours, I’d look in the mirror and think, “My god, no wonder nobody picks me up.” I was weather-beaten and had hitchhiking face, beyond the call of moisturizer. I looked like someone in a Walker Evans photograph.

Have you kept in touch with any of the people you met?

The Corvette Kid and his girlfriend came to my Christmas party. The band Here We Go Magic had dinner at my house in San Francisco. The young couple that I said look like Manson kids—she just had a baby and named it after me. The Kansas couple told me they were going to hitchhike to Baltimore for the [June 12^th] book signing at Atomic Books. I don’t know if they were kidding or not. We’ll see.

You must have been amazed when the Corvette Kid drove across the country to give you a ride.

But he’s 20 years old! I did so much crazy shit when I was 20. What did he have to lose? When he first spotted me on Route 70, he was on his way to get his lunch at Subway. He did it for the adventure: good for him. He’d never been to California. But we realized that the two of us travelling together looked weird. His friends were like, “Way to go. You’re with a gay man in a motel in Las Vegas. Great.” And you can imagine what his parents thought. If you Google me, it’s not good. People thought that part of the trip was so bizarre, but why wouldn’t he do it? There wasn’t anything hidden. He was just a fun kid, and it was like we were in some reality show.

This book would make an excellent movie.

Here’s how I think it could be a movie. What really happened is the movie, and while I’m waiting for rides, I imagine the good and bad rides while I’m standing there. I never imagined how horribly long I’d have to wait for a ride. Even in the bad chapters, where I’m imagining the worst, I never wrote about having to wait for 10 hours!

Ultimately, what do you think of hitchhiking now?

I encourage people to hitchhike. It forces you to give up control, and it’s a liberating experience. Now, my life is so scheduled that I practically know what I’m doing every day for the next year. It was scary to give that up, but it was an adventure.

I’m never going to hitchhike across America again, but I know I could do it.

It made me want to drive across the country with some friends. It’s an incredible trip. I did all five [cross-country] routes when I was young, during the hippie years. It’s so beautiful. Kansas is amazing and so is going across the Rockies. It’s amazing to actually see it all.

Forgotten Sundays

Gerry Sandusky (Running Press)

This tenderhearted memoir transcends sports to hit on universal themes relating to family. Sandusky, a local sports anchor and Ravens announcer, grew up around pro football—his father John Sandusky spent 13 seasons as a Colts assistant coach. For Sandusky the younger, being vilified by people mistaking him for Jerry Sandusky, the Penn State coach convicted of child molestation in 2012, led to a deeper appreciation of family, and, ultimately, this book.

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Plug Ugly Ball: A Mobtown Tale of Bullies & Baseball 

John Thomas Everett (Baltimore Bookworks)

This debut novel is less about baseball and more about Baltimore’s rough-and-tumble streets during the mid-1800s. At that time, the Plug Uglies gang pretty much ruled the city, and Everett, who teaches at Loyola University, does an excellent job capturing the era’s turbulence and tumult. The story sometimes knots too tightly around political minutiae, but the violent struggles give it an epic feel. In Everett’s book, the city definitely lives up to its “Mobtown” nickname.

Brooks

Doug Wilson (St. Martin’s Press)

This thoroughly researched biography of one of Baltimore’s most beloved sports figures features a chorus of voices testifying to the fact that Brooks Robinson was the best fielding third baseman in history and one of the nicest guys to ever put on a uniform. As such, it isn’t the most compelling read, but it does occasionally inspire interest that, unfortunately, goes unsatisfied, because Robinson’s voice is largely absent. He chose not to cooperate with Wilson.

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Gilbert Byron: A Life Worth Examining

Jacques T. Baker Jr. (The Talbot County Library Foundation)

This homespun biography of Gilbert Byron, a Thoreau-like writer from the Eastern Shore (and author of the 1957 classic The Lord’s Oysters), includes enough fascinatingly archaic info to make it a satisfying paean to our fading native customs. It also makes abundantly clear that Byron, who passed away in 1991, had the Chesapeake in his blood, thanks to his seafaring father and a philosophizing grandfather, who lived on a “little ark” anchored on the Chester River.