Showcasing BAKER Literary Finalists
1:00 pm – 2:00 pm
Lord Baltimore Hotel
Hanover Suite B – Mezzanine
PARKING
Download a map here.
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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. Awardees receive showcase and exhibition opportunities at major Baltimore institutions and a feature on Maryland Public Television’s Artworks. This year’s literary finalists convene for the first time with memoirist Jeannie Vanasco, the author of A Silent Treatment (forthcoming 2025), Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl, and The Glass Eye. Kate Reed Petty, author of True Story, a New York Times “Editor’s Choice” and a finalist for a Bram Stoker Award and a Shirley Jackson Award. Bry Reed, Baltimore-born and bred, a Rubys Artist Grant awardee, a board member for Writers in Baltimore Schools, and a Fellowship Advisor for New Generations Scholars Youth Archival Fellowship. Kathy Flann, author of two award-winning short story collections, a craft book, and a humor book, whose personal essays and humor pieces have appeared in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Huffington Post, Slate, McSweeney’s, and other publications. Lysley Tenorio is the author of Monstress and The Son of Good Fortune. Timmy Reed is a core-lord writer, surfer, teacher, and skateboarder from Baltimore City. Jen Grow, author of My Life As a Mermaid, was awarded the prestigious Mary Sawyers Baker Award in 2016 and earned three Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council for her fiction and nonfiction.
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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, will be published by Tin House in September 2025. Born and raised in Sandusky, Ohio, she lives in Baltimore and is an associate professor of English at Towson University.
www.jeannievanasco.com
Kate Reed Petty’s debut novel, True Story, was a New York Times Book Review “Editor’s Choice” and finalist for a Bram Stoker Award and a Shirley Jackson Award. Kate’s fiction and essays have been published by ZZYZZYVA, Electric Literature, and elsewhere, and her work has been supported by a Rubys Grant from the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and other grants and residencies. Kate is also the author of the middle-grade graphic novel, The Leak, illustrated by Andrea Bell and published by First Second Books, and her short films have appeared in Narrative magazine and at the 2019 Maryland Film Festival
pettykate.com
Instagram: @pettykate
Lysley Tenorio is the author of Monstress, named a book of the year by The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Son of Good Fortune, winner of the New American Voices Award from the Institute for Immigration Research. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Ploughshares, Zoetrope: All-Story, The New York Times, and NPR, and has been adapted for the stage in San Francisco and New York City. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and the Rome Prize from The American Academy of Arts and Letters and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bogliasco Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center.
Jen Grow’s debut collection, My Life as a Mermaid (Dzanc Books, 2015), was the winner of the Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Competition. She was awarded the prestigious Mary Sawyers Baker Award in 2016, a Rubys Artist Grant from the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation in 2015, and has received three Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council. Her fiction and nonfiction have been widely published in places like The Writer’s Chronicle, The Sun Magazine, Hunger Mountain, Hippocampus, and About Place Journal, among many others. She co-authored the book Seeking the Spirit (Morehouse Publishing, 2006) with Harry Brunett. She lives in Baltimore.
www.jengrow.com
Bluesky: @jen-grow.bsky.social
Instagram: @growjengrow
Kathy Flann is the author of two award-winning short story collections, a craft book, and a humor book entitled How to Survive a Human Attack: A Guide for Werewolves, Mummies, Cyborgs, Ghosts, Nuclear Mutants, and Other Movie Monsters. Her personal essays and humor pieces have appeared in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Huffington Post, Slate, McSweeney’s, and other publications. Honors include residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Sozopol Fiction Seminars in Bulgaria, and Le Moulin a Nef in France, as well as grants from the Maryland Arts Council and the Baker Artist Awards.
kathyflann.com
Bluesky: @keflann.bsky.social
Instagram: @keflann
Bry Reed is a Baltimore-born and bred artist passionate about cultivating her local artistic community. She’s a Rubys Artist Grant awardee, a board member for Writers in Baltimore Schools, and a Fellowship Advisor with New Generations Scholars Youth Archival Fellowship. Her work has appeared in The Baltimore Beat and The Washington Post, and she co-edited the essay collection Surviving The Future: Abolitionist Queer Strategies with Raven Hudson and Shuli Branson for PM Press. Additionally, she enjoys engaging with other artists, community members, and thinkers in public forums. She has been featured on panels in collaboration with CityLit Project, Greedy Reads, Red Emma’s, The Clifton House, and other local art organizations.
baltimorebeat.com/author/bry-reed
Timmy Reed is the author of the books Tell God I Don’t Exist, The Ghosts That Surrounded Them, Miraculous Fauna, Star Backwards, Kill Me Now, and IRL as well as a few chapbooks: Stray/Pest and Zeb And Bunny Build Russian Dolls, and POEM, A CHAPBOOK. His work has appeared in many places including Necessary Fiction, Atticus Review, Curbside Splendor, as well as featured in the Wigleaf Top 50 on multiple occasions. He has won multiple Baker Awards and been a finalist 5 times.
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CityLit Project in partnership with Lord Baltimore Hotel and Red Emma’s present CityLit Festival: Our Stories Give Light To Our Future. This celebration of the arts showcases a bevy of leading poets and writers on April 5, 2025. We’re talking fiction, nonfiction, poetry galore, and ways to up the ante on your craft.
Download the CityLit Festival: Our Stories Give Light To Our Future flyer.