HoCoPoLitSo welcomes all to the May edition of the Wilde Reading Series, with Carla Du Pree and Derrick Weston Brown, hosted by Linda Joy Burke. Please join us at independent bookstore Queen Takes Book on Tuesday, May 13th at 7 p.m., at 6955 Oakland Mills Rd, Suite E, Columbia MD, 21045. Please spread the word— bring your friends, family and students! Light refreshments will be served and books by the readers available for sale.

An open mic follows the featured authors and we encourage you to participate. Please prepare no more than five minutes of performance time, about two poems. Sign up when you arrive, or in advance via this online form.

Below, get to know Carla and Derrick!

Who is the person in your life (past or present) that shows up most often in your writing?

Carla: For this particular book, it has always been two people – my parents, Wash and Mary Adams, and how they navigated a harsh South, having been born and raised in Lowndes County, Alabama. The history of that place, sometimes called the bedrock of the Civil Rights Movement, and referred to as “Bloody Lowndes” was unknown to me until I was grown with a larger understanding of how they lived and what they survived as a young, military couple traveling the back roads of the South. It is no wonder their untold story captured my imagination, allowing me to see them as two people who believed family was everything, and there was no such thing as “I can’t … but more so, I will.” Brave and unrelenting in their faith to do for others and to stand on the right side of history, I know there are many stories much like theirs but they remain the center of my work of the novel I’ve recently completed.

Derrick: Good question. Probably my father. My poetic narrative involving him will be ongoing because of the distance between us for many years. We reconciled but the time apart left some unanswered questions.

Where is your favorite place to write?

Carla: While I am most productive in unimaginable ways at a residency – when I write at home, it’s usually at a farm-sized kitchen table with a window view of trees on each side of me.

Derrick: My kitchen table. Though I wouldn’t call it my favorite, just my most convenient.

Do you have any consistent pre-writing rituals?

Carla: To enter my creative space, it’s early morning with the sun peeking through the trees. Most times it requires tea (black or homemade chai) in a favorite mug – no doubt made by a local ceramicist. I light a candle with essential oil and/or light incense, (jasmine, frankincense, palo santo, coconut) with access to old family photos and music of the 60’s (Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Re Re, and Ray Charles, among others). Yes, quirky but it gets me where I need to be.

Derrick: Not really. I just need something to write on or with.

Who always gets a first read?

Carla: My daughter, Danielle and my sister, Deseria. Dani’s funny and writes plays so she ‘hears’ my characters in a way that is very enlightening. Des is my ‘Irish twin’ and also a creative. She sews stunning quilts. She usually reads nonfiction but is drawn to my fiction work very loosely based on our family.

Derrick: It is a tie between my Mother and the poet Alan King, who is also my best friend.

What is a book you’ve read more than twice (and would read again)?

Carla: Real talk, and I’m cheating here because you said one book, and that’s just not fair! Ha! I rarely reread books since I have so many I’d like to get through, but my go-to’s – books that are heavily marked up with notes, highlighted, and feasted over and serve as reminders of WHY I love to write – include The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, Ruby by Cynthia Bond, Mother of Pearl by Melinda Haynes, Beloved by Toni Morrison, Cane by Jean Toomer, and always, ALWAYS poetry by Lucille Clifton, Patricia Smith, Eavan Boland, and so many more.

Derrick: The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty. A fellow poet friend in college told me about his poetry but I couldn’t find his books. However, I got his fiction debut and it blew my mind as far as satire goes. I return to Morrison’s Beloved yearly because it informs my ongoing Sweet Home Men poetry series I’ve been writing for the last 20 years.

What is the most memorable reading you have attended?

Carla: I invited poet Dominique Christina to present on our CityLit Stage in 2019, and asked her to return for our 22nd CityLit Festival this year. To hear her read poems from Anarcha Speaks or the poem Karma – as a young poet in an expression of anger turned to rage, and her poem about Emmett Till, is perhaps one of my most profound encounters with poetry. She will have you carrying the weight of loss in your bones. What she gives us is more than a moment with poetry; it remains unmatched and unnamed. Poetry can do that to you. In a few words, it can slay you.

Derrick: Split This Rock 2014. When Tim Seibles read his long form poem “One Turn Around The Sun” in its entirety. It was an amazing reading! Riveting and I didn’t know 24 minutes had passed.

• Carla Du Pree is a fiction writer, a state and national arts advocate, a literary consultant, and the executive director of the literary nonprofit, CityLit Project which holds an annual award-winning CityLit Festival, a CityLit Studio, and CityLit Stage, in Baltimore. She co-founded Scribente Maternum, (a fancy way of saying Writing Mamas) which holds an annual, transformative Write Like A Mother Retreat. Her fiction appears in two anthologies, and literary journals, Callaloo, The Pierian Literary Journal, and the Ilanot Review, among others, and has been a finalist in several competitions. She is the recipient of fiction fellowships from Hedgebrook, Baldwin for the Arts, the Peter Bullough Foundation, Rhode Island Writers Colony for Writers of Color (Jason Reynolds), and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (2x), for her fiction. She is a Rubys Artist Awardee, a Maryland State Arts Council grantee, and was awarded the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies inaugural Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Individual Award and the Maryland State Department of Education’s Arts Leader for April 2020. She serves on executive committees of several local, state, and national boards serving the arts. She speaks at national conferences and major events, all related to the literary arts to magnify diversity and inclusion work in meaningful ways. She holds a Master’s from Johns Hopkins University’s Writing Seminars, has three adult children, one grandson, and a husband she’s been with for 46 years.

Carla can be found online by name on Facebook, on Instagram as @darkndifferent, or through her organizations: CityLit Project (@citylitproject & citylitproject.org) OR Scribente Maternum – Writing Mamas (@scribentematernum & scribentematernum.com) OR Wintergreen Women Writer’s Collective (@wintergreenwomen & wintergreenwomenwriterscollective.com).

• Derrick Weston Brown holds an MFA in creative writing, from American University. He has studied poetry under Dr. Tony Medina at Howard University and Cornelius Eady at American University. He is a graduate of the Cave Canem and VONA Voices summer workshops. His work has appeared in such literary journals as The Little Patuxent Review, Colorlines, The This Mag, and Vinyl online. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2012. He worked as a bookseller and book buyer for a bookstore which is operated by the nonprofit Teaching for Change. He was the founder of The Nine on the Ninth, a critically acclaimed monthly poetry series that ran from 2005-2015 at the 14th & V street location of Busboys and Poets. He was the 2012-2013 Writer-In-Residence of the Howard County Poetry & Literary Society, of Maryland. He is also a participating DC area author for the PEN/Faulkner Foundation’s Writers-in-Schools program.

Derrick’s home page is derrickwestonbrown.com, and he can also be found on Instagram, @theoriginalderrickwestonbrown.