On a chilly January day at Archbishop Spalding High School in Severn, students are dressed in their standard-issue winter uniforms: chino skirts, white shirts, and black vests for the girls; black sweaters, red ties, and chino pants for the boys. Many days, the students also wear a coveted accessory: rubber wristbands—in blue, orange, red, green—bearing the emergency number for Anne Arundel Crisis Response.

“I have a bunch at my house that sit with my jewelry,” says Spalding senior Alexandra Blunk. “Everyone always wears the bracelets—they’re a hit.”

While crisis wristbands might seem an odd hot accessory, the hotline bracelets are as much a necessity as a fashion statement.

Youth suicide was once rare, but among people ages 10 to 24, it’s on the rise—with an increase of 56 percent from 2007 to 2017 in the United States, according to a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“One thing that happened is the opioid crisis,” says Dr. Karen Swartz, director of clinical and educational programs at the Johns Hopkins Mood Disorders Center. Opioid use, explains Swartz, “unmasks or worsens mood symptoms in those with mood disorders”—and that can lead to suicide. “The other thing that happened is all of the social media stuff,” continues Swartz. “There’s growing evidence that cyberbullying is linked to suicide risk, so it’s very concerning.”

Nowhere is that concern more pressing than in Anne Arundel County, where several years ago, a string of suicides, known as a “cluster” in social-science parlance, gave the chilling nickname “Suicide High” to an area school just down the road from Spalding.

Nationally, suicide is the second most common cause of death for 10 to 24-year-olds, and between 2007 and 2017, the suicide rate nearly tripled for children aged 10 to 14, according to the CDC report.

These staggering statistics are mirrored in Arundel County, where according to a study by the Anne Arundel County Department of Health, there were 76 suicide attempts and 42 deaths among youth ages 10-24 in the Severna Park area between 2012 and 2016.

Marcie Gibbons is a counselor at Spalding, where, six years ago, the school adopted a suicide awareness and prevention program designed by Swartz and others at the Johns Hopkins Mood Disorders Center as a reaction to what was happening not only nationwide, but in the community.

“Our administration is all about the holistic needs of the child, especially in our health and fitness class,” says Gibbons, a former hospice social worker. “This is just as important as teaching a kid CPR. They need to know the symptoms of mental illness. Mental health awareness has to be at the forefront—it’s just too scary.”

Twenty years ago, after a spate of teen suicides in the Baltimore area, Swartz, along with a small team, developed ADAP, the Adolescent Depression Awareness Program, a forward-thinking high-school curriculum to address an issue that could no longer be ignored.

“In 1998, there were three suicides in the Baltimore area within a few months, which was obviously devastating for the Baltimore community and shook people into thinking that this was a real problem,” says Swartz, sitting in her Wolfe Street office in the heart of Hopkins’ medical campus. “Leaders in the community came to us and said, ‘What are you going to do about it?’”

When Swartz visited one of the impacted schools, she recalls, “I was so struck by their willingness to learn, but by how little they knew—and these were well-educated people who didn’t understand depression and were really confused about how suicide could ever happen. It really underscored for me that we had to improve education.”

Over several years, Swartz, ADAP’s founder and director, and her cohorts, including several other psychiatrists and psychiatric nurses, applied their expert clinical and research skills, visited area schools, and worked with high-school faculty and students to develop and refine the material.

In the high schools that offer ADAP (which includes training for teachers and is completely free of charge), the program—most often a component of health and wellness classes—is taught to students over the course of several days and encompasses an overview of mood disorders, informational videos, and group activities, and identifies resources within the students’ own school. It’s like a mini med-school class, scaled down for high-schoolers.

 

Youth suicide is on the rise among people ages 10-24.

 

“You can find this information, with slightly different content, in my lecture for third-year med students,” says Swartz, who herself traveled across the country to train some 3,000 high-school teachers and counselors on how to teach ADAP.

And while the grassroots program started in four area schools in its infancy, to date, ADAP has now reached more than 116,000 students across 20 states. Swartz is hoping to soon see those numbers grow.

Thanks to a new website, adapeducation.org, high school faculty members will be able to receive their training online, allowing the program to have an even wider reach.

At the outset of the program, clinical art therapist Sharon Strouse, along with her husband, Douglas, helped fund the program to honor their daughter Kristin Rita Strouse, who took her own life at the age of 17 in 2001. Strouse recalls that it was difficult to introduce the program into any schools, in part because of stigma.

“There was a lot of pushback when we wanted to go into the public schools,” recalls Strouse. “They said, ‘If you talk about suicide, it will happen.’ We even tried to offer it to MICA, they had three suicides that year, and they said, ‘No,’” she recalls.

This year, ADAP is set to be included as a component in all Baltimore county public schools, as well as many other area schools.

“I’m often asked what’s different about this program,” says Swartz. “Well, do you know any other high-school health program that’s developed by a doctor?” And the program is getting results: A study of ADAP’s effectiveness noted that, of those who participated in the program, 46 percent of teachers were later approached with concerns from students about themselves or others, an impressive figure when you consider that adolescents and young adults are notoriously private people, especially around adults.

“The way you can best prevent suicide is to recognize depression in young people and get them help, yet what people want you to do is explain how this happened,” says Swartz. “When I get questions about how this could happen to someone who was a good student, or this was someone with a wonderful family…that’s like saying someone who is a wonderful student or has a wonderful family can’t have asthma. Every one of those conversations has an underlying theme of, ‘Please tell me that my child will be protected.’ My message is that no one is immune from depression. And suicide is the most tragic outcome of mental illness that is either not treated—or not being successfully treated.”

Health class, where social media and cyberbullying issues are also discussed, is a far cry from the throwaway health-education classes of yesteryear, when a teacher, or often a coach, who drew the short straw showed the menstruation movie or reviewed the nutrition pyramid—and left it at that.

“I wrote a paper about birth order in my health class in Pittsburgh,” recalls Swartz, laughing. “It was a lot of nonsense.”

But at Spalding, on this gray January day, the Health and Fit Class is the most serious subject of the day. After pleasantries are exchanged and some 20 or so students settle into their seats, Gibbons gets down to business.

“Today, we’re going to talk about depression,” she says. “What you know, what to look for, and treatments. By tomorrow, you’ll know what to do if you’re concerned about yourself or a friend.”

In a roomful of students who would be forgiven for fidgeting—or even for disaffected boredom, given their tender teenage years—everyone sits stock-still. “What comes to mind when you hear the word, ‘depression?’” Gibbons asks the class of 14- and 15-year-olds. Students respond with various words from “sad” to “suffering” to “hopeless.”

“We need to separate, ‘I’m having a crummy day, and then I have lunch with a friend and my day is better—that’s little ‘d’ depression—from ‘Big D’ depression, which is a medical illness with particular symptoms,” says Gibbons.

Gibbons goes on to discuss the symptoms of someone who visits the doctor’s office with a cough, eventually showing the students a chest X-ray of a patient with pneumonia. “Just like high blood pressure or diabetes, depression is an illness,” she says, making the connection for them. “It’s a treatable illness.”

A few minutes later, the students watch a 1999 video, “Day for Night: Recognizing Teenage Depression,” which stresses that depression is a medical disorder and shares testimonials from teens. “What’s the big message?” she asks, as the bell rings and students grab their backpacks. “If you’re concerned about yourself or one of your friends, reach out to one of us or your parents. Don’t go it alone.”

In between classes, Gibbons lets out a sigh. “It’s such a humbling topic,” she says. “I’d like to wrap them all up in bubble wrap.”

A few weeks later, in neighboring Baltimore County at the Park School of Baltimore, a group of some 24 ninth graders are covering the same curriculum with director of middle-and upper-school counseling and wellness Krista Dhruv. Dhruv was hired by Park in 2001 after the school realized that it needed to provide more support for an increasingly vulnerable young community.

At the start of class, Dhruv emphasizes the importance of taking the subject of depression seriously. “I want you to ask questions, take risks, and be curious about this topic,” she says, “but what I also want you to be is incredibly thoughtful. Anecdotally, we know that in this room someone is potentially affected by this condition in their own life. I ask you to be thoughtful, because you may not know who among us is struggling.”

Dhruv asks the students if they have questions. “What part of the brain does it affect?” asks one student before Dhruv throws out a question of her own. “Is depression treatable?” she asks them. A handful of the students raise their hands, though somewhat tentatively. “All of you should have your hands up,” says Dhruv, “because depression is treatable.” “Can depression be cured?” she continues.

 

“MY message is that no one is immune from depression.” —Dr. Karen Swartz, ADAP founder.

 

“I don’t think so,” responds a student. “But it can be reduced so it’s barely there, but it can’t be cured.”

Dhruv gives a reassuring smile and then tells them that they’re going to watch the “Day for Night” video. But before she pushes the play button, she underscores that, “the people in the video are not actors. And the information is up-to-date, though the styles are a little dated,” she says, anticipating some laughter from an audience that could get distracted by that sort of thing. “There’s a mom with big hair—let it go.”

The lights are lowered, and the video begins. The image of a young woman flashes on the screen. “Sometimes it feels like you’re in a box,” she says. “You can’t get out.” “It feels like you’re surrounded by darkness,” says a young man in the next frame. “It’s like an anvil constantly pressing on your head and putting a lot of pressure on you, and it’s very difficult to lift up,” says another young adult.

By the time the mom with big hair comes on camera, no one lets out so much as a snicker. As class ends, the lights go up, and Dhruv tells the students that they’ll finish the video the next time they meet as a class.

Later, several students who stream in for another class share what they learned when they took the class the prior month.

“I definitely learned a lot of ways to help people who are struggling,” says Cate Cochran, a freshman at Park. “Before this program, I had no idea of how to help someone. My friend went through some things last summer, and I’ve been reaching out to her a lot more and asking her to hang out…I’ve also learned how to identify when there’s an issue, like when someone stops turning in their homework or quits a sports team.”

Just north of Park School at Hereford High School, Ellen Fitzkee, department chair of counseling, only wishes the program had been in place back in 2016 when two students took their own lives within three months of each other.

“As the counseling chair, I felt a tremendous responsibility to bring awareness and education to what was happening,” says Fitzkee. “We needed to take some accountability as a school and look for some support in figuring out how to help the community.”

After doing some research, she discovered ADAP, and, by the following fall, the school adopted it as a regular part of their health class curriculum, co-taught by a health teacher and a counselor. “I was delighted to find that we had this tremendous resource in our own backyard,” she says. “Had we had a program like this in place back then, there’s a possibility those deaths could have been prevented.”

And that’s exactly what keeps Swartz going. The gifted scientist wears many hats at Hopkins—from teaching medical students in a renowned psychiatry program to running an inpatient unit and her own clinical practice. Even so, the information that gets delivered in many high-school health and wellness classes across the country is her passion project. “ADAP is 20 percent of my job,” she says, “but it’s where my heart is.”

Dozens of spirited fifth-graders file into Park School’s lower-school library at 8:45 in the morning. They fan out across padded benches along the back wall or plop down on a map-of-the-world rug covering the floor. Chatting in clusters of two and three, some discuss books they’ve brought along; Diary of a Wimpy Kid and The Baby-Sitters Club are particularly well represented. A girl leans across her friend to comment on the Splendors and Glooms book held by a boy sitting nearby: “I thought that book was amazing,” she says. “You’re going to love it.” His cheeks simultaneously dimple and redden.

All talk ceases when Laura Amy Schlitz appears, clasps her hands behind her back, and surveys the group. The silence is so abrupt and complete you might wonder what sort of power Schlitz wields over these children. She certainly doesn’t appear intimidating with her flowing purple dress, billowing scarf, and long, white hair pulled back from a moon-shaped face. She exudes a peculiar, fairy godmother-like benevolence and wouldn’t look out of place strolling through a Renaissance Fair. She’s been known to wear a tiara.

A Park librarian since 1991, Schlitz writes the phrases “trial by fire” and “trial by combat” on a white board that’s propped next to her and begins to talk about forms of medieval justice. The former, she says, involves handing the accused a red-hot piece of metal. If the burn heals cleanly, innocence is declared; an infected wound connotes guilt. Trial by combat, she explains, involves knights battling for the honor of the accused.

After that brief introduction, Schlitz launches into a fairy tale, Sir Hermit of the Forest, which revolves around trial by combat. “There was once a knight named Sir Berengar,” she begins. “He was courageous, courteous, and good to look at.”

Her telling is no simple recitation. From memory, Schlitz gives a nuanced performance that steadily builds momentum over the ensuing 20 minutes. After a theatrical pause, she signals a scene change by raising her voice, and her facial expressions and hand gestures underscore important plot points. When the knight pets a tamed deer, for instance, she glances away and smooths the air with her right hand.

Sharen Pula, a fifth-grade teacher at Park for 43 years and close friend of Schlitz’s, looks on, whispering: “Laura does this sort of thing every day. She exudes enthusiasm for learning, and we all benefit.”

The children are captivated. No one fidgets. With each passing minute, they lean into the story a little more. When it ends, they applaud. The librarian wields a simple power—the power of story.

Schlitz’s supreme storytelling skills are also put to the page at bookstores all over the country. The acclaimed author has racked up accolades and awards over the past 10 years. She has become a bit of a celebrity, albeit a reluctant one, at Park School, where posters of her book covers adorn the library walls, and articles about her are mounted around the entrance doors. An issue of School Library Journal features Schlitz on the cover; a newspaper headline declares, “Park School Librarian Wins 2nd Newbery Honor,” a reference to her Splendors and Glooms, which elicited the blush-inducing comment.

 

Schlitz’s Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! won the 2008 Newberry Medal.

 

Schlitz’s Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village won the 2008 Newbery Medal, an award honoring “the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.” It vaulted her into the company of fellow Newbery winners such as Madeleine L’Engle (A Wrinkle in Time), E.B. White (Charlotte’s Web), Louis Sachar (Holes), and Marguerite Henry (Misty of Chincoteague).

Schlitz calls the awards “glorious bolts from the blue.” Her books are mostly the product of “ingenuity and spit,” she says.

 

At Park School, Schlitz’s office is packed with objects both bookish and playful. A bookcase includes volumes on favorite travel destinations such as Venice and Greece, a few New Yorker cartoons are taped to the door, and figurines of William Shakespeare, James Joyce, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, and Charles Dickens stand along the window ledge that looks out over the library.

Schlitz—who lives in Loch Hill with her beloved cat, Susannah—is mostly a self-taught writer. She’s taken a few writing courses, but steers clear of “how to” books. “I learned to write by telling and reading stories,” she says, between bites of dark chocolate from a tin stashed in her desk.

Her upbringing, she believes, was ideal for nurturing a budding writer. She grew up in northern Baltimore County, when the Hunt Valley area was known mostly for its cornfields. Her mother stayed at home until Schlitz entered the fifth grade, at which point she got a job as a secretary and, for a time, as a stable hand. Her father practiced law and clerked at the U.S. District Court in Baltimore.

Schlitz and her older brother, Paul, bickered like many siblings, but sparked each other’s imaginations, too. “We played elaborate games,” she recalls. “We had a universe of stuffed animals, and we gave them all distinct personalities and interactions.”

Their parents frequently read to them and stocked the house with books. They visited the library so often, they received an award for being the family that checked out the most books. Schlitz was a particularly voracious reader, tearing through children’s classics such as the Little House series, The Black Stallion, and Beezus and Ramona.

Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess—in which a rich and pampered Victorian girl loses all her money and gets treated like a servant—touched her deeply. Desperately hungry, the character finds some money to buy food but gives most of it to a beggar child, “because she still thinks of herself as a princess,” says Schlitz. “That book managed to scare me, move my heart, and thrill me, all at the same time.”

 

Schlitz’s family visited the library so often, they won an award for checking out the most books.

 

By the time she graduated from Hereford High School, she had discovered theater and wanted to be “the world’s greatest actress,” or at least her generation’s version of Oscar Wilde. “Hereford High was kind of anti-intellectual, so it was not a good fit,” she recalls. “I was a pretentious young person, and most people there considered my vocabulary loathsome.”

Schlitz went on to Goucher College, which proved to be a better fit. She created her own major, aesthetics, because it allowed her to take classes in her favorite subjects: literature, art history, philosophy, and music.

After graduation in 1977, the dream of an acting career didn’t pan out, and Schlitz started working at the Fells Point branch of the Enoch Pratt Library. All Pratt children’s librarians, at that time, were expected to tell children’s stories. Schlitz took to it quickly and amassed an impressive repertoire.

When a friend asked her to write an adaptation of Beauty and the Beast for the Children’s Theater Association, Schlitz leapt at the opportunity. She finished the script in a whirlwind 10 days and even appeared in the production. “I thought everyone would finally notice what a great actress I was,” she recalls. “Instead, they told me, ‘You know, that was a really good script.’ It made me realize I wasn’t really an actress; I was a writer.”

 

Her first foray into fiction was a romance novel. Written under the pseudonym Chloe Cheshire, A Gypsy at Almack’s was published by St. Martin’s Press in 1993. Publishers Weekly called the book a “sprightly, amusing tale of manners and romance” and praised its “well-rounded characters, witty dialogue, and vivid descriptions.” It sold relatively well.

Schlitz then spent four years writing a historical novel set in Venice. St. Martin’s kept it under consideration for 13 months but, ultimately, decided against publishing it. Schlitz was heartbroken.

By that time, she was working at Park and had begun writing monologues for students studying The Middle Ages. Each piece was meticulously researched and written from the perspective of a child living in that era; they included a plowboy, shepherdess, a falconer’s son, a glassblower’s daughter, and a beggar. “I wrote them for the kids to inhabit the characters and better understand the history,” says Schlitz.

“It’s a different way of approaching literacy, becoming those people,” says Sharen Pula. “To do that, the students need to really understand the words Laura has put together. The language is sophisticated and sometimes archaic, but her monologues are so well constructed. The writing is so pure.”

Friends, including Pula, encouraged her to submit them for publication, but Schlitz, still smarting from the rejection of her Venetian novel, was skeptical. “Nobody goes into a store and requests a book of monologues about the Middle Ages written from the point of view of children,” she points out. “They’d rather have a dinosaur book.”

 

“She tackles big topics with books that have literary merit, but always makes it fun.”

 

Despite such doubts, she put together a manuscript and tried again. Candlewick Press, a prominent publisher of books for kids, snapped it up, and Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! established Schlitz as a new, and welcome, presence in children’s literature. The New York Times dubbed her “a master” of the genre, and Kirkus gushed: “Schlitz takes the breath away with unabashed excellence in every direction.”

She has since written four other books, all published by Candlewick. They are a diverse bunch, from Dickensian thriller (Splendors and Glooms) and historical fiction (The Hired Girl) to biography (The Hero Schliemann) and a picture book for young children (Princess Cora and the Crocodile). “Laura’s oeuvre continually expands because her interests are so wide,” says Elizabeth Bicknell, Candlewick’s executive editorial director. “She tackles big topics with books that have literary merit, but always makes it fun and enjoyable. She understands what children will like.”

That understanding is rooted in Schlitz’s work at Park, where she can see, firsthand, what children enjoy. In fact, she sometimes reads works in progress to her young audience to gauge what sort of reactions they get. “It gives me an edge,” says Schlitz, who admits to extensive revisions. “I can see how the plot and certain elements work, because it’s right there on the children’s faces. If they’re squirming, I know I’ve written too much on that page. They’re basically telling me, ‘Come on, let’s move things along.’”

Despite all her success, Schlitz has no plans to retire. She enjoys the routine of going to work and returning home to write. The writing, these days, takes more disciplined effort, and she has less time for old hobbies such as playing folk harp, making marionettes, and quilting. She has a new book, written in verse, in the pipeline at Candlewick, which will likely come out next year.

Schlitz pulls a blue leather notebook from a handbag and turns to a random page covered with her nearly indecipherable script. It’s a brand-new story that could become her next book project. “This is just the beginning of my first draft,” she says, before glancing at the clock.

It’s nearly 11:15 in the morning, time for recess duty. The story will have to wait, and Schlitz returns the notebook to her bag. She slips into a long overcoat and heads to the playground to join the children.

As R. Eric Thomas, a senior staff writer at Elle.com and author of the daily humor column, “Eric Reads the News,” breezes into the To Bean or Not to Bean coffee bar at Baltimore Center Stage, it feels like all pop culture and political gossip should grind to a halt, at least for the two hours he sits here. After all, if something schadenfreude-worthy happens and Thomas isn’t there to report it, did it really even occur? It’s safe to say that Thomas’ reputation—hilarious, quick-witted, dialed in—precedes him. In person, however, he’s chill, polite, and so unindulgent he takes his coffee black.

He apologizes for being a few minutes late, he was on deadline. But then again, he’s always on deadline. One day he’s waxing poetic about the hotness of Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, and another day it’s “George Kent’s Gigantic Impeachment Nalgene Has Me Quid Pro Quenched.” He’s weighed in on The Crown, White House holiday décor, and whether or not Maxine Waters is reclaiming her time. The universe seems to be handing him lots of material these days—and opportunities. His play for Single Carrot Theatre—Safe Space—is being staged at Clifton Mansion, and his book of essays, Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America, just hit bookstores.

Not bad for a kid from Baltimore who, after dropping out of college, bemoaned he’d never make it as a writer and thought opportunity existed only beyond Charm City.

Thomas grew up in Upton, in the western part of the city. If you’ve seen The Wire, you’ll recognize that they filmed Omar’s grandmother’s house right across the street from his childhood home. (That meant extras sitting on his stoop killing time and free bagels from craft services.) But that was just another part of his complicated identity: black, gay, and Christian. “I’ve thought about that a lot,” says Thomas, and it’s something he delves into in his book. Despite communal pressure, he’s always seen his identity more as an intersection than a collision. “People would say, ‘You have to choose,’” he says. But he never saw it that way: “I don’t feel internal conflicts between identities because I’ve never known what it was like not to be all these things.”

That included his school life. Every morning, Thomas would wake up in his blighted neighborhood but spend his days at Park School—a nine-mile jaunt, and a world away. The progressive day school sits on a 100-acre campus, and, as Eric and his mother made that drive from fourth grade until he graduated high school, the landscape would transform from abandoned houses and trash to fields, horses, streams, and woods. The backdrop wasn’t the only thing changing. With so many of his fellow students being Jewish, Thomas started spending weekends attending religious coming-of-age celebrations.

He told his parents, “I would like a Bar Mitzvah, please.” He had his party theme picked out (films) and even knew what the favors would say. (“I Had a Reel Good Time at Eric’s Bar Mitzvah.”) “That’s not a possibility for you,” his parents patiently told him. But all these experiences were shaping him. Thomas was always observing, storing, and note taking. “I don’t think I have the most advanced level of thinking about different societal issues,” he says modestly. “But I have read a lot of people who are very, very smart about those things. I have always believed through storytelling and through the way my parents raised me, you’re allowed to have a perspective, and you are allowed to have an opinion.”

And while that might seem like a direct path to exactly what he is now doing, it wasn’t. During one of Thomas’ darkest times he had dropped out of college, moved back home, and was waiting tables at The Hard Rock Café. He felt despondent.

“I absolutely thought nothing in my life was ever going to go well,” he admits. But even in that dark period, Thomas still noticed points of light: interactions with customers, the flair on his uniform, the walk to and from work. The Hippodrome Theatre had just been built, and there were high hopes of a bustling theater district that would follow. Thomas still views the city as one of unfulfilled promise. “This is a city full of bubbles. I don’t think the bubbles are necessarily a bad thing,” he says. “There is so much magic and activity right at the skin of the bubble where it meets another bubble.” The problem is that the friction between the tension and the magic never seems to create anything, he says. “There are huge separations.” He escaped to Philadelphia, promising himself he would never come back to Baltimore. “Not even to be buried,” he jokes.

“You’re allowed to have a perspective, and you’re allowed to have an opinion.”

It was there that he met his husband, David Johnston Norse, who had received a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and was working as a pastor at Broad Street Ministry through AmeriCorps. They met when Thomas was hosting The Moth, a live storytelling event. Norse thought Thomas was “too famous” for him, and what’s more, he was pretty sure that Thomas didn’t know “how to hit on a pastor,” he cracks. Finally, months later, they went on their first date—closing down a restaurant and then walking around Rittenhouse Square, where Norse mentioned several times what a great time he had and that they should “definitely do it again” just to get the point across that he wanted to see Thomas again.

The two married in October of 2016, and Norse began job hunting using what Thomas describes as a Tinder-esque website where pastors and churches are matched. “He was coming up with matches from Ohio and a Dakota,” says Thomas. “I’m all about an adventure but had never thought about what I looked like in another space. I didn’t want to be a unicorn. I didn’t want to be the only gay people on our block. I didn’t want to be the only interracial couple we knew.”

Then Norse matched with the Maryland Presbyterian Church in Towson. And Thomas was going home. He was skeptical, but he also knew they had to do it. Even he had to admit the timing was uncanny. His part-time writing gig for Elle.com—born out of a Facebook post during the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia that went viral—was becoming more frequent. They wanted him on staff full-time—so he wouldn’t have to look for a new job. He could write from anywhere, and New York was still a quick train ride away.

Thomas and Norse moved back to Baltimore in September of 2018. By November, Thomas had landed his book deal. He still can’t believe where life has taken him. “The column was this beautiful, happy surprise for me—because, all of a sudden, people were not only saying, ‘I can see you and I can hear you,’” says Thomas. “But they were saying, ‘The things that you think, I also think.’” It was a level of acceptance that had been missing from his existence.

And even though he sees the voice of his writing as a heightened version of himself (he compares it to a late-night television monologue), “I see the column as a step toward authentic relationships with strangers who don’t want to feel alone.”

And while self-worth certainly shouldn’t be weighed in “likes” and shares, his words and style caught on. Strangers would approach him on the Amtrak train as he made his way to New York to check in with his editor. “We have a group chat where we talk about your columns,” someone gushed once, pulling out his phone to show him (and, of course, ask for a selfie). At opening night of Center Stage’s Miss You Like Hell, a fellow theatergoer approached him, “You’re Eric from the internet, right?” It’s remarkable to Thomas. “I sit in our house”—they now live in Remington—“alone most of the time, so my lived experience is sort of isolated.”

To go places and have people know you is a “strange experience,” he admits. It’s one he loves but has grappled with. “Particularly after the election, I had a dim view of people who tried to capitalize on ‘resistance culture.’ I don’t ever want to be somebody who is profiting off this idea that we have to participate civically,” he bemoans. “But I do think there is a space for writing humor in this time. There’s always been a space for writing humor about the news even in the worst times.” The difference now, he says, is that “there’s also a space for making a community.”

That’s also the idea behind his book: relatable, honest, funny essays with a tinge of sadness (he speaks honestly about having had suicidal thoughts in a chapter that also touches on Kanye West and a car barreling through his parents’ house like the Kool-Aid man) but with a happy ending because that is Thomas’ life right now. The teen who swore he’d never return to Baltimore is now living his best life here: married and working as a full-time writer.

“What’s so beautiful about this book is a reclamation of what it means to be ‘other.’”

While his family—parents, siblings—read advance manuscripts of Here for It, Norse waited until the galley was out, until it felt like a real book. “He just kept laughing,” says Thomas, who had to force himself to stop asking, “What part are you on?” over and over again. Says Norse, “I know he’s hilarious and I know his depth, and in his column there are so many references to literature and pop culture and music and theater and television—but there’s also these other depths of a more serious or more intellectual Eric that folks are going to experience through the book.” His book editor, Sara Weiss, agrees, anointing him “David Sedaris-esque.”

This book, says Weiss, is a new side of him. “He’s just as funny and just as joyful, but he’s showing himself off in a vulnerable and richer way than what his Elle columns allowed,” she says. Thomas dives deep into “otherness and redefining what otherness is,” says Weiss. “Eric has always been in a space where he has felt ‘other.’” But he always makes a choice to choose hope and find joy. “What’s so beautiful about this book,” says Weiss, “is a reclamation of what it means to be ‘other.’”

And while there is no crystal ball for what the future holds for politics and all the voices that have benefited—Randy Rainbow, Andy Borowitz, and, yes, Thomas—it seems that his influence has longevity. (From Project Runway recaps to Peloton ad shaming to the Kardashians, whatever you’re hearing about, Thomas has already dissected with expert precision and the perfect meme to have you cackling in your office.)

And that staying power will continue as long as he continues to keep it real. After he turned in an early draft of his book, Weiss returned it with a simple note: “You are writing toward a specific reader who doesn’t understand you. You don’t have to do that.” Says Thomas, “That was stunning to me.” There were places where he was holding back or overexplaining himself. With that burden gone, he was able to just be himself. “I am really glad to not have to explain myself anymore,” he says, “I spent a lot of life explaining myself. Why I was real. Why I exist.” He’s over that. Now he’s able to take all those tidbits—big and little—from 37 years of being an observer and use them for good.

All of those lifelong intersections mean he’s relatable to a wide swath of humans. But his face is gentle, and his hands are steady when he smiles and says, “I don’t have to represent everything. I just have to represent myself.”

On an April weekday morning near the end of his senior year of high school, Daniel Stern stood behind a podium in a crowded, wood-paneled Annapolis courtroom, wearing a gray suit and a purple shirt-and-tie combination as he emphatically pleaded his case. The skinny, super-articulate, high-achieving kid from suburban Baltimore wasn’t in trouble; far from it. Representing a fictional state prosecuting team from the private Park School in Pikesville, the then-18-year-old was delivering the closing argument in the championship of the 2012 Maryland state mock trial competition.

The case: State of Maryland vs. Drew Hunter, an imagined coach of a girls’ high school soccer team who, Stern argued to a panel of three adult judges, caused three players to suffer heat exhaustion during a hot, late morning practice in August. “One of them is still in the hospital!” he said, making the situation sound as real as possible. This coach, Stern said with the flair of a seasoned trial lawyer twice his age, should be found guilty of reckless endangerment and child abuse.

“This is a case about a coach who made bad decision, after bad decision, after bad decision,” Stern told the court, while laying out the facts of the case: Players were instructed to run in sprints in 104 degree heat, in a practice that lasted more than two hours, and the coach was slow to react when players collapsed. “We’ve proven it beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The performance was convincing, room-owning, and vintage Daniel. He’d been the closer since freshman year. “He’s a very intense guy and he’s very passionate about whatever it is he’s doing,” says Tony Asdourian, one of Stern’s former teachers at the Park School and an assistant coach on that mock trial team. “That was true very much that day.” (The 13-member team won its second straight state title.)

Stern couldn’t have known it then, as a high school whiz kid a few months from graduation and bound for Yale University, where he’d lead two national championship mock trial teams, but the words he spoke—bad decision, after bad decision—are almost comically fitting given what Stern is doing nearly eight years later. He’s not a lawyer, but he is paid to use his analytical and lawyerly abilities, in sports. And in his hometown no less—in a job ensuring that Ravens coach John Harbaugh has all the information necessary to make good decisions during football games.

At age 25, the Baltimore kid in his fourth year working for the team of his youth. He joined the Ravens immediately after he graduated from Yale in 2016 with a degree in cognitive science, a major that can essentially prepare you for many professions. Today, Stern’s official title is football analyst, and he’s part of a handful of staffers in the Ravens’ analytics department led by director of football research Scott Cohen. (The Orioles aren’t the only number-friendly pro sports team in town.)

Stern’s title leaves room for interpretation, but in the context of this spectacular Ravens season—after beating the Steelers yesterday, they’re now 14-2 and remain the odds-on favorite to win the Super Bowl as the playoffs begin—the scope of his largely unheralded contributions has emerged more visibly.

During every game, the boy wonder sits in a chair right next to Ravens offensive coordinator Greg Roman in the weather-proof coaches’ level of the stadium. And like a play caller, Stern wears team-issued apparel and one of those big black Bose headsets with a direct line of communication down to the field to Harbaugh. The head coach always makes the final decisions, but Stern notably has Harbaugh’s ear, quickly and clearly relaying “the numbers”— the so-called win probabilities and risk-reward ratios of certain situations.

For years, Harbaugh has had a staffer in the booth in this role. At first, it was Matt Weiss, who is now the team’s running backs’ coach. Stern took over the job this season, and what he does informs some of Harbaugh’s key game-management decisions—including whether to go for it on fourth down, which has become one of the calling cards of this Lamar Jackson-led, “Big Truss”-infused team.

A fourth-down try, for instance, if it fails, gives the opposing team great field position of their own, and NFL coaches have traditionally hesitated to take the risk or make it simply on gut feel. But with careful, deliberate planning done throughout the week, very specific data provided by Stern on-the-fly on game day, and players like Jackson making things easier and also giving their own input, (As in, “Hell yeah, coach! Let’s go for it,” before a fourth-and-2 earlier this year against the Seattle Seahawks), the Ravens have noticeably bucked the conservative nature of their competition.

They’ve converted 17 of 24 fourth-down chances this season, a league-high 70-percent rate. (This shouldn’t exactly come as a surprise. In the summer, the team hired a quantitative analyst, 2017 Skidmore College graduate Derrick Yam, after he wrote a paper of the benefits of going for it on fourth down.) That means more time on offense with a chance to score points, and more “truss” in the locker room.

Given the paranoid nature of pro football coaching staffs who don’t want to give away any trade secrets, Stern isn’t being made available for interviews now to talk more about his job, or how he’s ascended the Ravens coaches’ pecking order. But the kid who for 13 years attended the tiny kindergarten-through-12th grade Park School—just a short drive from the Ravens practice facility in Owings Mills—did speak enough about the nitty-gritty, calculus-style of his work responsibilities for an article earlier this year by Sheil Kapadia of the subscription sports website, The Athletic.

The story essentially blew Stern’s cover. Here’s an excerpt:

The Ravens, like other teams, have built their own analytical model for fourth-down decision-making that accounts for a number of factors—factors that they prefer not to share publicly. There are two numbers to weigh with every decision. One is win probability—a percentage that reflects the team’s chances of winning based on the various options at any given time in the game. The other number is a break-even success probability. The model comes up with an estimate of how likely the team is to convert the fourth down. Part of the decision then comes down to how high that number has to be to justify going for it.

“It might be that there’s a decision that because we’re up by 14 points already, the decision that we make doesn’t change our win probability very much because we’re really likely to win the game no matter what,” explains Stern. “But in that moment we know that we would only need like a 15-percent chance of getting it to justify going for it. It doesn’t change our win probability that much in the game. It’s just the risk/reward calculus. So there’s situations like that, too.

“Or maybe there’s one where the win probability is really big, but it’s only because it’s a tight decision in a critical moment in the game. Like late fourth quarter, we could have a really tight decision where on average we’re gonna get it 55-percent of the time, we think, and to justify going for it we need to get it at least 50-percent of the time. So that’s a really tight difference. We would need to be very confident in our estimate of how likely we are to get it in order for that decision to be the correct decision. So it’s a really tight decision compared to one where the break-even is 20 percent and the probability of getting it is 50 percent”

Like we said, whiz kid. Here’s a little more:

What makes it easier, according to Stern, is that Harbaugh is familiar with concepts like win probability and expected points added (EPA). He wants to know the actual numbers in his headset during the game as he’s making decisions.

“We talk about all the different scenarios, and he basically gives me a percentage,” says Harbaugh. “So what’s the added win percentage of going for it? He’ll give it to me like one, two, three, four, five, six, up to whatever. Then you just decide if you want to do it. It’s not strictly based (on the numbers). I listen to it. If he starts telling me 3 and 4 percent, I get really interested. If it’s 1 or 2 percent, I’m still interested—especially if it’s short, if I think we can get it.”

Says Stern, “I just remind him during the game that this is what we were planning to do. If something’s changed, then he’ll argue back. You’ve just gotta be ready for him to push back, like, ‘You really think we should?’ Or ‘I don’t want to do that.’ I don’t take offense to that during a game at all. He’s the head coach so he’s gonna make the decision that he thinks is best.”

None of this shocks those that have known Stern since he was a kid. According to one Baltimore magazine staffer whose child was friends with Stern, he used to send his own text messages to set up playdates—in second grade—and once administered an I.Q. test to the child during one of them.

Asdourian, who, more recently, taught Stern calculus and is Park School’s math department co-chair, says, “He’s really just an extraordinary person. It’s impressive to see his mind at work. In class, he could pick up the subtleties of the chain rule or the fundamental theorem of calculus very quickly. In mock trial, he had this amazing ability to summarize everything that has happened in the case and give us a five-minute summary that would end up often being highly persuasive to the judges. He was always incredibly verbally facile and intelligent, and had wonderful instincts.”

The kid in Harbaugh’s headset graduated magna cum laude (with distinction for us lay people) from Yale, where in addition to co-captaining the university’s mock trial team to the top spot in the country, he worked as a student assistant for the Yale football team, as a sports broadcaster and producer for the school’s athletics department, and wrote for the student newspaper.

“He’s one of those people who talks about something like it’s pie-in-the-sky, but at the same time, it isn’t,” Asdourian says. “He would say, ‘I think one day I’d really like to work for a football team, like the Ravens.’ Some kids would say that and you’d go, ‘Well, I hope that works out.’ And when he would say it, he was intense enough and smart enough that you sort of go, ‘Huh, I wonder if he’ll actually pull that off?’”

We now have the verdict.

It was near 2 p.m. on a hot Sunday afternoon, only about four hours until the official opening of the NBA’s free agency signing period—when players not under contract can decide which team they want to head to next. And Rudy Gay, the Baltimore native and 13-year pro basketball veteran due for a new contract, sat on a red plastic chair in an air-conditioned classroom on the tony campus of Park School, the century-old private pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade establishment in the suburban Pikesville hills just north of the city line.

With legs outstretched as one with a six-foot-nine body is inclined to prefer, he was here for one thing. In a gym across the hall, 16 teenage boys were about to play in the championship game of his brainchild, a high school-aged basketball tournament organized through his charitable foundation. But he was distracted, too. The iPhone Gay cradled in his right hand illuminated with text-messages.

“Attached at the hip with my agent,” he said, taking yet another look at the device, “seeing what’s going on.”

By nightfall, he’d agree to a new two-year deal to stay with the San Antonio Spurs, worth $32 million, a life-changing amount for most of us, but just another contract for an established name like himself. He’s made more than $130 million and is considered a locker-room leader in the wild world of pro sports, even to guys who aren’t his teammates, like his friend Kevin Durant. (Gay’s been giving him been there, done that advice on how to recover from a torn Achilles’ tendon.)

“It’s proof that if you do the right things, great things can happen,” Gay said, and that message is really at the heart of why he’s back home today, about to head to the bleachers to watch two teams—one, the Baltimore-based Orange Life club, led by Frederick Douglass High coach Tyree Bizzelle, and the other from Philadelphia— play for a trophy with his name on it.

Now 32 years old, Gay is almost two decades removed from his own high school days when he donned a uniform representing Essex’s Eastern Tech and, after a somewhat controversial transfer, Archbishop Spalding in Severn. From there, he notably starred at the University of Connecticut, where he was a national player of the year finalist as a sophomore and left school early to become the eighth overall pick in the 2006 NBA Draft.

He’s played for four different pro teams averaging 17 points per game, and made the playoffs three times including—after tearing his Achilles’ tendon in January 2017—the last two seasons with the Spurs, regarded as one of the league’s premier franchises. He has a wife and two kids, a house in typically sunny Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and has seen most major U.S. cities and other far-flung parts of the world in his NBA travels. In fact, just recently, he was in Paris for fashion week (maybe that’s why on Sunday he wore a Dior travel bag over his shoulder in addition to his Flight 22 High School Showcase gray t-shirt).

But Gay hasn’t forgotten his roots. “If you’re in a position to give back to Baltimore, you should,” he says. And so he is.

The son of Rae, a longtime director of a Head Start program in the city, and father Rudy Sr., a landscaper, Gay is behind a series of public and not-so-public charitable initiatives that reflect his modest personality, as well as his own story.

There’s things like this three-day summertime tournament, designed to provide exposure for high school athletes in front of college scouts. (Semi-pro tip: take note of Orange Life’s Onias Outlaw and Wayne Blanchard, a pair of rising juniors.) The event brought together teams representing Gay’s alma mater, Archbishop Spalding, his old AAU club team, Cecil Kirk, as well as other groups from Baltimore, Philadelphia, Connecticut, and North Carolina for hours upon hours of games. Philly’s “Danny Rumph” squad won the title game, 52-47, and Tyrone Williams was the tournament’s MVP.

“The biggest thing is giving kids the opportunity to be seen that might not necessarily be seen, or might not have the best avenues to do so,” Gay says. “It’s tough being a prep athlete. You got to be in the right place at the right time. I’m just trying to create the right place here in Baltimore.”

That desire is rooted in his own path, including the type of mentorship his former AAU coach, Anthony Lewis, provided him during what’s only a more confounding recruiting process today, and Gay’s fruitful decision to head to Spalding after two years playing varsity basketball at Eastern as a freshman and sophomore.

“That was huge for me,” Gay said. “It got me out of me out of my comfort zone, and put me in the right place, in front of the right people. If not, I’d be some 6-9 kid who could play basketball a little bit, who’s from Baltimore, but nobody knows about.”

Now a bonafide star, for several years, Gay has done other behind-the-scenes work through his independent nonprofit foundation, named the Flight 22 Foundation, with a nod to Gay’s jersey number, 22. It’s mission statement is “to provide disadvantaged youth with proper access to resources and opportunities that will increase their self-confidence and leadership skills in order to successfully compete in the 21st-century workforce.”

He speaks about this part of his life with the wisdom of someone with perspective. He mentions the insane nature of the NBA road, often getting into hotels at 2 a.m. and getting up at 10 a.m. and “doing it all over again,” as much the glitz and glamour the lifestyle affords. “An idle mind is the devil’s playground,” he says. “You just want to keep kids in something as much as you can. That’s what it’s all about.”

His family largely runs the day-to-day operations of the foundation. Most of the volunteers on hand Sunday were related, like his mom, sister and cousins, who put the finishing touches on giveaway bags for the participating teams as Gay sat for an interview, or they were close friends.

The charity has donated to youth development programs in city schools for things like entrepreneurship classes, where money raised from this year’s high school showcase will go toward. It’s also funded the renovations of several city playgrounds. And dating back to his time playing for the Memphis Grizzles, Gay gave $22,222 in each of his last three seasons to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Sometime later this year, Gay also plans to open an indoor basketball facility in Towson in conjunction with California-based fitness company PickUp USA. “Just another chance for kids to get off the streets,” he says. “That’s the biggest thing with the inner-city and Baltimore, we have to get people together and get kids together, doing something positive.”

He says all this while surrounded by the detritus of a typical youth summertime sporting event. There’s empty water bottles, candy wrappers, tournament results scribbled on a whiteboard in the hallway. Gay stands up and, man, he is tall. His phone’s buzzing.

“I am busy, I am tired, but it’s all good,” he says, then plays with his young kids for a few minutes, bopping them on the head with National Basketball Players Association-branded inflatable thundersticks, before heading off to Park School’s gym, the walls dotted by IAAM and MIAA championship banners, the type of stuff he wants everyone here to strive for.

At one point, Outlaw, from Owings Mills and probably the top player on Orange Life, drove inside the free-throw line, sneakers squeaking on the glossy hardwood, and soared to the basket for a dunk. The kid looked over into the stands to see if maybe Gay was watching. He was. “Oooooh!” the old pro had said in response to the play, impressed, inspired, and content. That’s what it’s all about.

Jessie Lamworth is the first to admit that she plays with her food. It all started after she had her wisdom teeth removed in her junior year of high school. “After coming home from having surgery, I was on some kind of loopy drug, and I just wanted to eat,” she recalls. “My mom made me cinnamon rolls, because they were an easy-to-chew snack. And in my loopy state, I dumped out some cinnamon and started playing with it using a paring knife. My mom looked over and I had made a portrait of Einstein in cinnamon.” (She dubbed it “Cinnameinstein,” at the time.) “I took pictures of it,” she says, “and brushed it away and cleaned it up.”

Though the image was fleeting, the idea of playing with her food stuck. From that point on, the Park School graduate and freelance artist, who divides her time between her parent’s Monkton home and New York City, where she works as a brand analyst at a consulting firm, has created edible multi-media sculptures.

From a “Nutella Fitzgerald” portrait created from the chocolate spread to an “Egg Sheeran” masterpiece made of whites and yolks straight in the skillet, it’s the puns that drive the art. “It’s fun to play with words,” she says. “I come up with the puns first.”

As for the ephemeral nature of her art, Lamworth remains philosophical. “After I’ve shown people the finished piece, I love to see that moment of delight when they see materials they know made into something else they recognize,” she says. “That’s why I do it.”

And starting from scratch each and every time only inspires her. “When I wipe it away, I know I can work on another blank slate,” says Lamworth, “and I can keep moving forward and improving. It makes it special because I know it only existed once.”

Try This at Home

Want to make your own creation? Lamworth recommends a non-sticky material. “Use something that’s finer in density—bigger proportioned pieces like nuts or coffee beans are harder,” she says. “Think of the material as pixels on an image. Spices are easier to work with. You can start by sitting at a restaurant table, and while waiting for your food, shake out salt and move it around—you’re already doing it.”

Have you ever wondered about the strategy behind Beyonce’s pregnancy photoshoot or
why you really shouldn’t mess with journalist April Ryan? R. Eric Thomas is here to help. His humor column at Elle.com, and contributions to sites like Man Repeller and StyleCaster, have been going viral and lightening up your Facebook feed since last July. We talked to Eric about growing up in Baltimore and how he got internet famous.

What was growing up in Baltimore like for you?
I grew up in the Upton area of downtown Baltimore. My father is the executive director of the Baltimore Public Market Corporation and before that he was the assistant general manager of Lexington Market. What I love about Baltimore is how each neighborhood is like a different cultural experience.

How was your experience at The Park School?
I loved that I got to experience a completely different world. I grew up downtown in the city and went to church at Pimlico, but then when I went to school I was out in 90 acres of woods and we got to ride horses and walk along streams and it was an extraordinary educational experience for me as well as an extraordinary cultural experience. It really made me who I am. After Park, I went to Columbia in New York and then transferred to UMBC to study playwriting.

How did you get involved with Elle.com?
Last June, I posted a picture of Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau and the president of Mexico on Facebook and wrote a little riff about it because it looked like a movie poster. They looked like the all male cast of Sex In The City. It got shared about 70,000 times on Facebook and it happened to come across my editor’s desk and she asked me if I would want to do this every day and I said yes. My editor at Elle.com, Leah Chernikoff, says that she wants the site to be like the best brunch conversations—politics and fashion and pop culture and more all rolled into one. I think that my voice is able to add a little intersectional comedy to the conversation.

 Did you always think you would be writing a humor column?
I went to college thinking I was going to be the next Toni Morrison. I just wanted to rewrite Beloved for the rest of my life, but apparently that position has been filled. Playwriting is my first love. My first play was produced in Baltimore. And then, when I moved to Philadelphia, I got into storytelling and got involved with an organization very similar to Stoop Storytelling, which you have in Baltimore. That is really where I developed a stronger comedic voice, which led to posting weird things on the internet, which led to writing funny things about the news every day.

How have you cultivated your sense of humor?
I’m the least funny member of my family so, of course, I am the one who gets paid to make jokes. I come from a line of super intelligent, very witty people and I learned how to be funny by sitting around our dinner table. It was competitive in that way that dressing rooms at comedy clubs are competitive—there’s no punishment or mockery for not being funny, but it’s so rewarding to make other funny people laugh. At my wedding, my brothers and parents gave the most hilarious, heartwarming speeches and now everyone is obsessed with them. All my producer friends are trying to book my family for shows. This is terrible.

What do you believe your column’s purpose is?
I think it provides a respite for people who are exhausted by the news, but still want to remain aware. My column doesn’t ignore the world that we live in but does provide the opportunity to laugh. I think that’s important. I know I’m not curing cancer, but I know firsthand how draining it can be to constantly be pushing back against oppression or injustice. I see the column as sort of like the meal you go to after the march, that space where you can relax for a minute with people who also want to see a better world, and tell stories and jokes—sometimes. Sometimes the column is just me finding reasons to post videos of Idris Elba working out. That’s important, too. 

How do you think celebrity has changed in recent years?
As with the news cycle, many aspects of celebrity have become 24-hour affairs. It’s possible to never be off as a celebrity. And there’s a deeper expectation of access. Celebs are supposed to Snap and Insta and Tweet and also put out new work and show up to talk shows. It’s a lot. I mean, they get paid a lot so I’m not super sad about it, but it’s also just so much. Sometimes you want to take a week where everyone gets a vacation from being in the present. We can all sit on the beach and read a book and not worry about what our favorite stars are doing and, in return, they can sit around and be boring and maybe not post a Snapchat about their breakfast. That’s my dream: to not know what celebrities are eating for breakfast.

Why does popular culture resonate with people so much right now?
I think pop culture has always been aspirational and there are so many barriers being set up in our culture right now that, for a lot of people, aspiration is all they have. I don’t know if we should be seeing pop culture as a model for living, but it is something that reaches across divisions and connects us. That’s significant. I think pop culture helps us to know that we’re not alone in the way we feel, the things we think, what we want, and what makes us laugh.