The CityLit Project is expanding its presence at the Baltimore Book Festival this weekend with the brand new School of Lit stage, a showcase of work from 11 area colleges and universities.
“All the great writing created on these campuses can sometimes be overlooked,” said Gregg Wilhelm, CityLit Project’s executive director. “We’ve been looking for an opportunity to get this literary art off the campus and into the community, and the School of Lit stage seemed like the perfect chance.”
The 13th annual Baltimore Book Festival highlights more than 200 celebrity and local authors within all fields of writing.
The School of Lit schedule is divided up into hour-long slots each for Coppin State University, Loyola College, Morgan State University, Johns Hopkins University, Towson University, MICA, Stevenson University, University of Baltimore, Goucher College, University of Maryland Baltimore County and Community College of Baltimore County – Catonsville.
“Since campuses tend to be so insular, when you are there, you don’t really know what’s going on in the writing community, and the community doesn’t really know of all the fantastic works being written in the campuses,” said Elissa Weissman, a member of the CityLit Board of Directors who coordinated the stage. “We want to bridge some of those gaps between universities, and between the campus and the community. We’re also hoping that a lot of students will come to the festival to check out Baltimore’s literary culture.”
Local author Jessica Anya Blau, an MFA graduate of the Johns Hopkins’ Writing Seminars, will read from her debut novel, “Summer of Naked Swim Parties,” tonight at 6:30.
“I think graduate programs are a great way to expand your world. If you have no ambition to publish, it’s still such a great atmosphere for creativity,” she said. “For me, the [Johns Hopkins] program was the thing that helped define what I was doing,” said Blau.
The community of writers on Johns Hopkins’ campus was surprising to Blau. “It kind of blew my mind open in a way. Here I was, with all these amazing writers, reading unpublished work that was just amazing. It was sort of like, wow, look what’s possible. It was incredibly motivating and inspiring for me.”
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If you go
Baltimore Book Festival
Where: Mount Vernon Place, 600 block of North Charles Street, Baltimore
When: 5 to 9 p.m. Friday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
Tickets: Free
Info: www.baltimorebookfestival.com
