Happy New Year! As we enter 2026, HoCoPoLitSo invites all to the January edition of the Wilde Reading Series, proudly continuing its ongoing tenth season of highlighting local authors in Howard County. This month’s reading features Steven Leyva and Julia Tagliere, hosted by Ann Bracken. Please join us at independent bookstore Queen Takes Book on Tuesday, January 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 purchase.

Our warm and welcoming open mic follows the featured authors and we hope you will let us hear from your stories, poems, or other piece. Please prepare no more than five minutes of performance time (about two poems) and sign up when you arrive.

Below, get to know Steven and Julia!

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

Steven: Probably my brother or father.

Julia: My late mother.

Where is your favorite place to write?

Steven: My office at the University of Baltimore, through coffee shops used to be where I wrote most often.

Julia: Anywhere I can scrape together a few sustained hours to focus.

Do you have any consistent pre-writing rituals?

Steven: Hmm … not really. At least not in the way folks imagine a causal link from ritual to practice. Certainly watching animation is a part of it but I’d do that anyway. Reading poetry is part of it but again, I’d do that even if I wasn’t going to write. Perhaps the only pre-writing ritual is remembering presently that one is alive.

Julia: I always leave notes to myself when I stop a given day’s work (“Start with this scene next” or “Flesh out this interaction” or even just “This sucks—why?”). Music also helps me sort of cross over that bridge, can put me in the mood of whatever piece or section I’m working on that day.

Who always gets a first read?

Steven: Often it’s a colleague at work, Marion Winik, or my close friend Zakia Henderson-Brown.

Julia: I have a few trusted friends blessed with marvelous literary instincts I count on to provide for thoughtful, candid feedback.

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

Steven: The Fellowship of the Ring.

Julia: East of Eden by John Steinbeck.

What is the most memorable reading you have attended?

Steven: A reading with Derek Walcott at 92Y in NYC.

Julia: The first I ever attended, hosted by The Inner Loop in D.C. Hearing the passion, courage, wit, and grace of those writers sharing their works, exactly as they themselves had conceived, completely electrified me. I was hooked.

• 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 second book of poems, The Opposite of Cruelty, was published by Blair Publishing in Spring 2025. Steven holds an MFA from the University of Baltimore, where he is an associate professor, and co-director of the Klein Family Center of Communications Design.

Steven can be found online on Instagram as @sdleyva and at stevenleyva.wordpress.com.

• Julia Tagliere‘s work has appeared in Gargoyle Magazine, The Writer Magazine, and elsewhere. An alumna of the Johns Hopkins University M.A. in Writing program, Julia founded and hosts the bi-monthly MoCo Underground Writers Showcase, serves as an editor with Baltimore Review, is a 2022 Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artist and a 2025 Virginia Center for the Creative Arts fellow, and just returned from her first Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

Julia’s website is justscribbling.com; she dumped all her other social media accounts last year and is now just on Bluesky: @mocounderground.bsky.social.