Featuring:

“THE STORIES THAT ONE MUST TELL: Identifying the memoir you’re destined to write.” with Ada Calhoun (author of Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me)

James Salter wrote, “There are stories that one must tell and years that one must tell them.” In this studio, writers will determine the stories they need to tell now, and they will explore how to tell them. We will discuss characters, narrative arcs, research, and style; and we will talk practically about the editorial and proposal process. Telling the stories you are here to tell is a potential gift for you and for the world. Joy Harjo says, “I believe that if you do not answer the noise and urgency of your gifts, they will turn on you, or drag you down with their immense sadness at being abandoned.” A memoir done well is the best kind of service journalism—it helps other people think about their own lives, and to reflect on how they want to be a human being in the world.

"WHAT WE'RE COMING TO: Cultivation, Artful Tending, Regeneration, and Sustainability" with Remica Bingham-Risher (author of Soul Culture: Black Poets, Books and Questions That Grew Me Up)

As we share the space of Lucille Clifton, one of the greatest American poets writing in the last century, we’ll defer to her wisdom and seek to answer: How do you become “care/full” for and with yourself and your art? How do you keep moving? What strategies are there for cultivating a writing life that does not stall and suffer in the wake of all your other living? In this session, we’ll focus on sustaining a creative life with generative reading and writing activities, techniques for crafting poetry or prose, holding on to community in the absence of community, and finding ways to move your work into the wider world of publishing.

This FREE event will take place at:

The Clifton House

2605 Talbot Road, Baltimore MD 21216

https://thecliftonhouse.co

All attendees must pre-register. Seats are limited.

Bookseller Partner: Greedy Reads

With support from the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts, CityLit Studio is designed to center writers by engaging in a two-hour, craft intensive with these award-winning authors. 

The signature event exemplifies CityLit’s ongoing commitment to attract premier literary talent, offer free events, elevate inclusive voices, provide access to superior instruction on craft while bridging a community of emerging and established literary talent. The writer-to-writer exchange includes a reading, key aspects of craft instruction to improve writing, an open Q & A session with handouts available to attendees, and the importance of finding artistic communities.

Past Studio artists include: Leslie Pietrzyk, Cherie Jones, Sheri Booker, Jen Grow, Derrick Weston Brown, Jocquelyn Downs, Danielle Evans, Donna Hemans, Eugenia Kim, Maurice Carlos Ruffin David Yezzi, and 2019 National Book Award finalist Carmen Giminez Smith, who learned she was a finalist days before the event.