Join Maryland Humanities, co-hosts, Enoch Pratt Free Library & The Ivy Bookshop, and CityLit Project for an evening virtual event with Ross Gay, author of The Book of Delights: Essays. Gay will be in conversation with poet/essayist Lia Purpura and will read from his book — the 2021 One Maryland One Book selection — and answer questions. Registration is required.
Ross Gay is the author of The Book of Delights, a genre-defying book of essays, and four books of poetry, including his most recent, Be Holding, a love song to legendary basketball player Julius Erving—known as Dr. J—who dominated courts in the 1970s and ’80s as a small forward for the Philadelphia ’76ers. Gay is a founding editor, with Karissa Chen and Patrick Rosal, of the online sports magazine “Some Call It Ballin’.” A founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project, Gay has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He teaches at Indiana University.
Lia Purpura is the author of nine 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 the AWP Award in Nonfiction. Her work appears in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Orion, The Paris Review, Emergence, and elsewhere. She lives in Baltimore, MD, where she is the Writer in Residence at The University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her latest collections are It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful (poems, Penguin) and All the Fierce Tethers (essays, Sarabande Books).
This year’s One Maryland One Book is a collection of genre-defying lyric essays. They are recordings of delights the author wrote over one year. They serve as a reminder to us all to take time to find more delights and hope in our lives. Those inspired to write their own delights after reading Ross’s book should consider submitting their essayettes to the Maryland Humanities.
For more information, click here.
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Special Announcement from Maryland Humanities:
Daily Delights – Those inspired to write their own delights after reading Ross’s book should consider submitting their essayettes to the Maryland Humanities. For more details, visit this link.