Denice Frohman headlines the Blackbird Poetry Festival to be held on April 24th, 2025, at Howard Community College (HCC). Now in its 17th consecutive year, the festival is a day devoted to verse, presented in partnership between HoCoPoLitSo and HCC’s Departments of Student Life and Humanities/World Languages, including a student workshop, multiple poetry readings, HCC’s poetry patrol, a recording session of HoCoPoLitSo’s writer-to-writer talk show The Writing Life, a reading from the Howard County Poet Laureate Truth Thomas, and much more.

The event starts moving at the 11 a.m. Morning Songs Writing Workshop in the Kittleman Room of Duncan Hall (DH-100), hosted by HoCoPoLitSo’s current Bauder Writer-in-Residence, Tope Folarin. The 2 p.m. Sunbird Reading features a reading by guest artist Denice Frohman, followed by a poetry open mic for local authors of all ages. Attendance is free and open to the public, while seating lasts; current HCC students may find college registration links on the college event page.

Finally, the festival culminates its daylong celebration of poetry with the Nightbird Reading, in the Rouse Company Foundation Student Services Hall top floor suite (RCF-400): seating starts at 6:30 p.m. for the 7 p.m. performance. Nightbird will feature Denice Frohman; Tope Folarin; and Truth Thomas, with a reception, book sale and signing to follow the reading. Nightbird this year is offered free to the public, but we ask that guests planning to attend RSVP in advance to ensure adequate seating is available.

Free general admission seating can be reserved at https://blackbird2025.eventbrite.com. If you require additional accommodations, or for questions or comment, please reach us at info@hocopolitso.org or by phone call to (443) 518-4568.

• Denice Frohman (@DeniceFrohman) is a poet and performer from New York City. She has received support from The Pew Center for the Arts, Baldwin for the Arts, CantoMundo, Headlands Center for the Arts, the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Poem-A-Day (The Academic of American Poets), The BreakBeat Poets: LatiNext, Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color and elsewhere. A former Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion, she has featured on hundreds of stages from The Apollo to the White House. Currently, she is developing her one-woman show, Esto No Tiene Nombre, which centers the oral histories of Latina lesbian elders.

• Tope Folarin is a Nigerian-American writer based in Washington, D.C., now serving as HoCoPoLitSo’s 2024–2025 academic year Bauder Writer-in-Residence. He also serves as Director of the Institute for Policy Studies and the Lannan Visiting Lecturer in Creative Writing at Georgetown University. He is the recipient of the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Whiting Award for Fiction, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, among other awards. Tope was educated at Morehouse College and the University of Oxford, where he earned two Masters’ degrees as a Rhodes Scholar.

His reviews, essays, and cultural criticism have been featured in The Atlantic, The Baffler, BBC News, The Drift, High Country News, Lithub, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, Vulture, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. His debut novel, A Particular Kind of Black Man, was published by Simon & Schuster.

The Howard County Poetry & Literature Society— HoCoPoLitSo— this year celebrates 50 joyous years of nurturing love for the diversity of contemporary literary arts in Howard County. The society sponsors numerous literary readings throughout the year; administers the Bauder Writer-in-Residence program providing for a current working author to visit Howard County students in their classrooms; produces The Writing Life talk show, now seen by more than a million viewers; and partners with many other cultural arts organizations to support the arts in Howard County, Maryland, and beyond. More information is available here at hocopolitso.org, and the tax-deductible gifts of individual donors are always welcomed, and crucial to sustaining another 50 years to come.

HoCoPoLitSo is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and receives funding from Howard County Government; Howard County and Maryland State Arts Councils; Community Foundation of Howard County; Maryland Humanities; Alpha Foundation of Howard County; Dr. Lillian Bauder; and generous friends of HoCoPoLitSo. The Howard County Poet Laureate and Youth Poet Laureate programs are administered in partnership between HoCoPoLitSo, Howard County Arts Council, and the Office of the Howard County Executive. Proceeds support live and recorded literary programs produced by HoCoPoLitSo for student and general audiences.