Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance presents 2024 BAKER ARTISTS – Literary Finalists at the CityLit Festival
10:00 am – 11:00 am
Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall
Auditorium
PARKING
https://www.bsomusic.org/visit-joseph-meyerhoff-hall/
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Working with the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund established the Baker Artist Awards in 2008 to support artists and promote Greater Baltimore as a strong creative community. The Baker Artists Awards confer $90,000 in prizes annually on six area artists across each artistic discipline– Visual Arts, Film/ Video, Interdisciplinary, Literary Arts, Performance, and Music. In addition, awardees receive showcase and exhibition opportunities at major Baltimore institutions and a feature on Maryland Public Television Artworks. The awards are adjudicated from artists on the Baker Artist Portfolios website. ELIZABETH EVITTS DICKINSON, the 2023 Mary Sawyer Imboden Prize winner, is the first literary artist to win the prestigious prize. Her work encompasses cultural criticism, narrative nonfiction, investigative journalism, short fiction, and memoir. She sets the tone for this session with a discussion about her prize-winning work and how the Baker recognition affected her professional life as a writer. She will introduce the following 2024 Literary Finalists who will read and discuss their work.
A recipient of Guggenheim, NEA, and Fulbright Fellowships, five Pushcart Prizes, as well as a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for her essays On Looking, LIA PURPURA, the author of All the Fierce Tethers, her work has been defined as “fiercely elegant yet filled to the brim with guilty pleasures.” (The Journal) MICHAEL DOWNS is the author of three books and has served as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar to Poland. PATRICK SMITHWICK new memoir War’s Over, Come Home, A Father’s Search for His Son, Two-Tour Marine Veteran of the Iraq War, is a call to action, vaulting the author onto the national stage, placing him on podcasts and radio shows across the country, as well as the front page of NGUYÊN KHÔI NGUYỄN is the cartoonist of the Ignatz nominated comic series, The Gulf, which includes original drawings, music, and animation. Writer and musician KRISTINA R. GADDY is the author of Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo’s Hidden History, at the crossroads of slavery, religion, and music. JEANNIE VANASCO’s third book, A Silent Treatment, is forthcoming in 2025. The author of two memoirs, Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl and The Glass Eye, which Poets & Writers called one of the five best literary nonfiction debuts of 2017.
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MICHAEL DOWNS called Baltimore home since 2007, living first in the city and for the last two years just across the border in Baltimore County. He’s the author of three books and has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland State Arts Council, the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, and the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, which granted him a Rubys Award. In 2021-22, he served as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar to Poland, based in Kraków and affiliated with Jagiellonian University.
michael-downs.net
Twitter: @MDownswriter
Instagram: @michaeldownswriter
KRISTINA GADDY, author of Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo’s Hidden History and Flowers in the Gutter: The True Story of the Edelweiss Pirates, Teenagers Who Resisted the Nazis (Dutton 2020), is a Baltimore-based writer and fiddler. She has received the Parsons Award from the Library of Congress, Logan Nonfiction Fellowship, and a Robert W. Deutsch Foundation Rubys Artist award. She holds an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from Goucher College and her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Baltimore magazine, Washington City Paper, Baltimore Sun, Bitch Magazine, Narratively, Proximity, Atlas Obscura, OZY, Shore Monthly, and other smaller history and music publications.
www.kristinagaddy.com
Instagram: @kgadz
LIA PURPURA is the author of ten collections of essays, poems, and translations. A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for On Looking (essays) her awards include Guggenheim, NEA, and Fulbright Fellowships, as well as five Pushcart Prizes, and her work appears in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Orion, The Paris Review, Emergence, and elsewhere.
www.liapurpura.com
Twitter: @LiaPurpura
Instagram: @theworldistoomuchwithus
Nguyên Khôi Nguyễn is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator. He is the author of the Ignatz nominated comic series, The Gulf, and his cartoons have been featured in The New Yorker. Nguyên’s “In Our Own Time,” is a six-part webcomic for McSweeney’s that charts the ups and downs of his and his wife’s fertility journey. He is the vocalist/pianist of the jazz trio, Superior Cling and the creator of the multimedia cooking website, Mom’s Viet Kitchen. Nguyên is currently an assistant teaching professor in digital media at Loyola University Maryland. He is the recipient of a Rubys Artist Grant and an Independent Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council. Nguyên lives in Baltimore, Maryland with his wife and son.
nknguyen.com
Instagram: @thegulfcomic
PATRICK SMITHWICK is the author of the award-winning Racing Trilogy, Racing My Father, Flying Change, and Racing Time. His new memoir War’s Over, Come Home, A Father’s Search for His Son, Two-Tour Marine Veteran of the Iraq War, is a call to action, vaulting the author onto the national stage, placing him on podcasts and radio shows across the country, as well as the front page of The Baltimore Sun, and earning him an executive citation from Baltimore County for his “Outstanding Dedication and Service in Support of Veterans’ Issues.” Patrick has won awards for the writing of newspaper features, short stories, and magazine pieces while working as a steeplechase jockey and Chesapeake Bay waterman. He teaches English at Oldfields School in Glencoe, Maryland.
patricksmithwick.com
Instagram: @patricksmithwick_author
JEANNIE VANASCO is the author of the memoirs Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl—which was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a best book of 2019 by TIME, Esquire, Kirkus, among others—and The Glass Eye, which Poets & Writers called one of the five best literary nonfiction debuts of 2017. Her third book, A Silent Treatment, is forthcoming in 2025. Born and raised in Sandusky, Ohio, she lives in Baltimore and is an associate professor of English at Towson University. www.jeannievanasco.com
ELIZABETH EVITTS DICKINSON is an award-winning writer whose work encompasses cultural criticism, narrative nonfiction, investigative journalism, short fiction, and memoir. Elizabeth is known for her astute research coupled with incisive, literary prose and her work has been widely published in places like The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Southern Review, and The Washington Post Magazine. In 2023, Elizabeth became the first literary artist to win the prestigious Mary Sawyers Imboden Prize from the Baker Artist Awards. She is currently writing a book about Claire McCardell, the trailblazing mid-century designer who revolutionized American fashion and helped women live independent lives. The book is forthcoming in 2025 from Simon & Schuster.
http://eedickinson.com/
Instagram: @elizabethevittsdickinson
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The Baker Artist Portfolios are open to artists who live and work in Baltimore City and its five surrounding counties. The portfolios expose artists’ work to regional, national, and international audiences. The site has been viewed by hundreds of thousands of art lovers, critics, gallery owners, academics, and leaders in creative business in nearly every country around the globe.
The Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance (GBCA) creates equity and opportunity In, Through, and For arts and culture in Greater Baltimore. GBCA is a membership and service organization for arts, culture, history, heritage organizations, and attractions, as well as universities and colleges, and individual artists. With a focus on innovative marketing, targeted educational resources, and strategic financial support, GBCA serves as a catalyst for elevating arts and culture. Through groundbreaking initiatives, GBCA not only amplifies the voices of artists and cultural organizations but also champions equity and inclusion across the cultural sector and the broader community.
The William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund commits its resources to enhancing the region’s economy and quality of life by making investments in arts and culture. Its grants support artistic and cultural organizations and their partners through initiatives that enhance an individual’s sense of self and pleasure and make Baltimore a more attractive place to live and work.
www.bakerartist.org
Instagram: @baltimoreculture
Facebook: facebook.com/BmoreCulture
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CityLit Project and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in partnership with Chesapeake Shakespeare Company present CityLit Festival: Dismantling the Culture of Silence. This celebration of the arts showcases a bevy of leading poets and writers on April 20, 2024. We’re talking fiction, nonfiction, poetry galore, and ways to up the ante on your craft.
Download the CityLit Festival: Dismantling the Culture of Silence flyer.