HoCoPoLitSo and Wilde Lake Community Association present Of Stars and Hurricanes: Two Columbia Novelists Return. Former Columbia residents Carrie Brown and John Gregory Brown will read from their work at a celebration of literature’s history in this planned city. HoCoPoLitSo will also honor two of Columbia’s own forces of nature, Padraic and Ellen Kennedy, for their work creating a literary life in Howard County during this special event on June 4, 2017. A reception will follow.

Of Stars and Hurricanes will be held on June 4, 2017, beginning at 4 p.m.at Slayton House Theatre, 10400 Cross Fox Lane, Columbia, MD 21044. Admission tickets are $20 each available on-line at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2725249 or by sending a self-addressed envelope and check payable to HoCoPoLitSo, 10901 Little Patuxent Parkway, Horowitz Center 200, Columbia, MD 21044.

Ellen Conroy Kennedy, a National Book Award finalist and the founder and director emeritus of HoCoPoLitSo, and Padraic Kennedy, the “unofficial mayor” of Columbia for 25 years, as the Columbia Association president from 1972 to1997, are long term Wilde Lake residents. Their support for the literary arts as Columbia developed through the years will be honored during this special celebration.

The Browns met while working for the Columbia Flier, married at Oakland Manor and lived in Wilde Lake for more than ten years. Both Browns live in Virginia and teach at Sweet Briar College. John, the author of four novels, has honors including a Lyndhurst Prize, the Lillian Smith Award, the John Steinbeck Award, and the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Book of the Year Award. Carrie, the author of seven novels, has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Barnes & Noble Discover Award, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Great Lakes Book Award, and, twice, the Library of Virginia Award.

Carrie Brown’s most recent novel is The Stargazer’s Sister, historical fiction about the nineteenth-century astronomer Caroline Herschel, sister of the more famous astronomer William Herschel. The Washington Post listed The Stargazer’s Sister as one of the best 50 books of 2016. Carolyn Leavitt of the Boston Globe noted, “Brown’s writing is as luminous as the skies her characters contemplate.”

John Gregory Brown’s newest novel, A Thousand Miles from Nowhere, follows the path of a Hurricane Katrina survivor seeking redemption. The New York Times Book Review noted it was “ … a deeply humane look at the vulnerability of black lives, the changing contours of the New South and the restorative potential of literature in the aftermath of catastrophe.”

For more than 40 years, HoCoPoLitSo has nurtured a love and respect for the diversity of contemporary literary arts in Howard County. The society sponsors literary readings and writers-in-residence outreach programs, produces The Writing Life (a writer-to-writer talk show), and collaborates with other cultural arts organizations to support the arts in Howard County, Maryland. For more information, visit www.hocopolitso.org.

HoCoPoLitSo receives funding from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the state of Maryland and the National Endowment for the Arts; Howard County Arts Council through a grant from Howard County government; The Columbia Film Society; Community Foundation of Howard County; the Jim and Patty Rouse Charitable Foundation; and individual contributors.