The Weekly Reader Live!
10:00 am – 11:30 am
Lord Baltimore Hotel
Baltimore Theatre – Mezzanine Level
PARKING
Download a map here.
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A live version of WYPR’s Weekly Reader with national book critic and author Marion Winik, who interviews four authors with notable releases in this 90-minute session. She spotlights two novels, a short story collection, and a poetry collection. Lauren Francis-Sharma is the author of the critically acclaimed novels ‘Til the Well Runs Dry, Book of the Little Axe, and her latest, Casualties of Truth, inspired by her attendance at South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Amnesty Hearings. A Booklist starred review called it a “Thrillingly perceptive … a reminder that no matter how much time passes, we can’t escape actions of our own or our country’s past.” Mai Sennaar’s debut novel, They Dream in Gold, was a finalist for the 2024 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and was named a Best Debut Book of 2024 by Amazon, a Best Book of July by TIME magazine, and was a summer pick in the Washington Post. The New York Times deemed it “Extraordinary . . . a powerful and poignant exploration of the African diaspora and global Black identity . . . This book moves like the storm Sennaar begins it with.” Jacob Budenz is a multi-disciplinary performer and witch whose work focuses on the intersection of queer otherness and the otherworldly. The author of queer magic realist short story collection Tea Leaves and poetry chapbook Pastel Witcheries, Budenz’s prose is quick and sharp, full of charms that whisk us into the darkest forests of the human condition.” writes Baynard Woods, Inheritance: An Autobiography of Whiteness. Steven Leyva is the author of The Understudy’s Handbook and The Opposite of Cruelty, which poet Jericho Brown says, “reads like a series of odes and vignettes praising the very fact of daily Black life.” Steven teaches at the University of Baltimore in their Creative Writing & Publishing Arts MFA program and co-directs the Klein Family Center of Communications Design. Moderator Marion Winik is the host of the Weekly Reader on WYPR and a professor at the University of Baltimore. She reviews books for People, Oprah, and the Washington Post. Her books include First Comes Love and The Big Book of the Dead.
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Lauren Francis-Sharma is the author of Casualties of Truth, which was inspired by her attendance at South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Amnesty Hearings in 1996. She is also the author of Book of the Little Axe, a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Award in Fiction, and ‘Til the Well Runs Dry, winner of the Honor Fiction Prize by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Lauren is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan Law School, and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She serves as Chair of the Awards Committee for the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and is the Assistant Director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
www.laurenfrancissharma.com
Instagram: @laurenfsharma
Mai Sennaar is an NYU alum writer, filmmaker, and playwright. Called “extraordinary” by the New York Times and “glorious” by the Guardian, her debut novel, They Dream in Gold, was a finalist for the 2024 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Named a Best Debut Book of 2024 by Amazon and a Best Book of July by TIME magazine, it was a summer pick in the Washington Post. Her short film, Wax Lovers’ Playlist, was an official selection of the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival. Her plays have been performed at the Smithsonian Affiliate Museum of the African Diaspora, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Archive, and the Classical Theatre of Harlem, among other venues. She is the book writer for the 2023 Eugene O’Neill National Musical Theater Semifinalist Carry On! by Broadway composer Diana Wharton Sennaar. She lives in Baltimore and Dakar.
maiwrites.com
Instagram: @mai_writes
Jacob Budenz is a queer author, multi-disciplinary performer, and witch with an MFA from the University of New Orleans and a BA from Johns Hopkins whose work focuses on the intersection of queer otherness and the otherworldly. The author of queer magic realist short story collection Tea Leaves and poetry chapbook Pastel Witcheries, Jake has work in Slipstream, Wussy Mag, Taco Bell Quarterly, and more as well as anthologies by Mason Jar Press and Unbound Edition.
www.jakebeearts.com
Instagram: @dreambabyjake
Steven Leyva was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and raised in Houston, Texas. His poems have appeared in Smartish Pace, Scalawag, Nashville Review, jubilat, The Hopkins Review, Prairie Schooner, and Best American Poetry 2020. He is a Cave Canem fellow and author of the chapbook Low Parish and author of The Understudy’s Handbook, which won the Jean Feldman Poetry Prize from Washington Writers Publishing House. His most recent book, his second poetry collection, The Opposite of Cruelty, each poem “is careful to move that which is mundane to a position of praise from the right amount of salt necessary for making grits to worms who ‘perform their transubstantiation/through the fragile dark.’ Witty, ambitious, and formally inventive, The Opposite of Cruelty is a beautiful book,” writes poet Jericho Brown, The Tradition. Steven holds an MFA from the University of Baltimore, where he is an associate professor, co-directing the Klein Family Center of Communications Design.
X: @sdleyva
Instagram: @sdleyva
Marion Winik is the author of nine books, including The Big Book of the Dead, First Comes Love, and Highs in the Low Fifties. Her essays have been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and elsewhere; her column at BaltimoreFishbowl.com has been running since 2011. A professor at the University of Baltimore, she reviews books for The Washington Post, Oprah Daily, and People, among others, and hosts the NPR podcast The Weekly Reader. She was a commentator on All Things Considered for fifteen years.
marionwinik.com
X: @marionwinik
Instagram: @marionwinik
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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.