HoCoPoLitSo welcomes all to the April edition of the Wilde Reading Series, proudly continuing its ongoing tenth season of highlighting local authors in Howard County. This month’s reading features Jennifer Sutherland and Jo Tyler, hosted by Linda Joy Burke. Please join us at independent bookstore Queen Takes Book on Tuesday, April 14th at 7 p.m., at 6955 Oakland Mills Rd, Suite E, Columbia MD, 21045. Please spread the word— bring your friends, family, and students!

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. Books by the featured authors will be available for purchase.

Below, get to know Jennifer and Jo!

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

Jennifer: Probably my mother. How cliche. But I will always be trying to work out where I begin and my mother ends.

Jo: It’s the dead ones who keep coming back: My Nana, my partner Louise, my Mom and Dad. They all have poems of their own, and they keep making cameos in other poems where they’re important or interesting, but not necessarily central. I like to think they appreciate having this poetic venue in which to revisit this place. And it makes me wonder what they’ll do when I’m no longer here to create the space for them.

Where is your favorite place to write?

Jennifer: At a table in a gorgeous little seaside cafe in Mykonos, Greece. I hope someday I get to write there. For now I have a desk in my bedroom. Rockvale Writers Colony in Tennessee is also lovely and the barn cats make excellent writing companions. The last couple of summers I have generously been allowed the use of a house in Bar Harbor for a week, and I have gotten a lot of writing done there.

Jo: I write lots of places, and I’ve always got a field notebook with me. But I have a cozy home office, and I like to write there, with my little dog Moxie curled up under the desk.

Do you have any consistent pre-writing rituals?

Jennifer: Bird song, either naturally or electronically supplied. I find it really helpful to put on old school headphones. They remind me that it is alright to wall myself off for a bit.

Jo: For the past year or so I’ve been lighting a candle, and asking Ganesha for help in clearing obstacles to creativity before I get into it.

Who always gets a first read?

Jennifer: My husband, Steve, who is a drummer. He never paid attention to the lyrics when he was in a band years ago, but he pays attention to mine.

Jo: My wife, Gail Rosen.

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

Jennifer: Louise Gluck’s Faithful and Virtuous Night. Anne Carson’s Glass, Irony and God. Maggie Nelson’s Bluets. And Plath’s Ariel, I will always return to Ariel.

Jo: There are several, but in this moment Mary Oliver’s House of Light is the one that comes to mind. It’s probably that notion that has me in its grip these days of how hard it is to love the world in the face of so many challenges. Mary Oliver can help with that.

What is the most memorable reading you have attended?

Jennifer: I recently got to read at an event with Patricia Smith, Kim Addonizio, Joy Priest, Annie Finch, Alexis Sears. There was so much feminine poetic power in the room, the air was thick with it. And joy. Kim told a couple of dirty riddles. Joy Priest read “Looking for the Beautiful Things.” I have maybe never been so grateful to be in a room in my life.

Jo: For me, the answer is always the most recent one I’ve been to, so right now that’s Moira Egan and Jennifer Sutherland at Enoch Pratt this past Wednesday night! And I’m a big fan of the monthly readings/open mics at The Hot L in Baltimore and Manor Mill in Monkton. Both venues bring in excellent, thoughtful and highly varied writers, and I look forward to them every month.

• Jennifer A. Sutherland is is the author of Bullet Points: A Lyric, a finalist for Foreword Indies Poetry Book of the Year, and of her most recent collection, House of Myth and Necessity, released in February 2026. Her work has appeared or will soon appear in Plume, Arcturus (Chicago Review of Books), Chicago Quarterly, Birmingham Poetry Review, EPOCH, Hopkins Review, Best New Poets, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA at Hollins University and she lives and works in Baltimore.

Jennifer can be found online at jenniferasutherland.com, and on Instagram as @jennifer_sutherland_writes.

• Jo Tyler is is a queer poet and an elder. A retired Penn State professor and Fortune 500 Vice President, she returned to poetry after decades of writing prose in academic and business. Her work has been published in Yellow Arrow Journal, Maryland Literary Review, and MacQueen’s Quinterly. She is an MFA candidate at Spalding University, and she writes and thrives in Baltimore, Maryland, where she lives with her wife Gail and her dog Moxie.

Jo’s website is jotylerpoet.com, and she says: “Please do visit! You’ll find some of my poems there alongside their audio recordings, as well as a tab with some of my mosaic art.”