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Meet Neha Misra — Second Place Winner of the Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Contest
In 2021, Howard County Poetry and Literature Society launched the Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize in honor of its founding member, Ellen Conroy Kennedy. Now in its forth year, contest judges evaluated many submissions for mechanics and technique, clarity, style/music for our contemporary age, imagery/sensory power, and emotional resonance. Congratulations to this year’s second place winner, Neha Misra and the poem, “Vanishing Gardens Return”. The judges appreciated the skillful use of form; vivid and original imagery; compact storytelling; familial, social, and cultural resonance. Read on (below the video) to learn a little about our second place poet and to hear the poem recited.
Tell us about your poem “Vanishing Gardens Return”. How did it come about? What sparked or inspired it?
“Vanishing Gardens Return” is a poetic contemplation on the loss of metaphorical and physical gardens in the Anthropocene age of disconnection from Mother Earth, of which we human beings are a fractal part. We are living through a global climate emergency whose disproportionate impacts are all around us. 2024 was the hottest year in the entire recorded history of our planet. “Vanishing Gardens Return” is inspired by the personal, collective, planetary context of this reality. The poem ponders the inter-generational seduction of relentless industrialization that took me and so many farther and farther away from mother tree. The poem is a ritual of grief. By recognizing and honoring this grief, I plant the seeds of possibilities where vanishing gardens return and healing is possible.
What was an early experience where you learned that language had power?
I am a first-generation immigrant poet rooted in my Global Majority lineage as a multi-lingual Indian American woman. Embodying the power of language is an inheritance from my elders, culture, and migratory life experiences. My parents — an engineer and a doctor, are avid poetry lovers so my whole life has been soaked in poetry as an integral part of life. From my first waking memory, I remember being enveloped in songs, lullaby’s, poems that are a part of family’s fabric. From dinner tables to traffic jams to daily triumphs and aches, I have been lucky that have this inheritance of poetry in the most ordinary and extraordinary ways.
As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal?
I would not choose the word “spirit animal” out of a deep respect for what is very specific sacred cultural term for the Indigenous traditions of Turtle Island that is my adopted home.
As a writer rooted in the spiritually ecology traditions of my South Asian culture, I feel a multi-species kinship with flora and fauna across Asia, where I was born; Africa, where I spent a considerable time working on grassroots women-led climate solutions, and North America – my adopted immigrant home. Trees and birds are especially abundant across my poetics.
Tell us about a writer or a book that you return to over and over for inspiration.
Nikki Giovanni, who we lost last year, is one of my favorite poetry elders. I return to her book “A Good Cry” time and again. My much loved and annotated copy of her book feels like an old friend with whom I have cried and giggled through many time travels.
What are you working on next and where can we find you?
I am working on finding a values-aligned, community driven publisher for my debut poetry collection inspired by my migratory life and dreams. I curate, perform, share poetry and art in many forms across the Washington, metro region and online. The best way to find about these offerings is through my monthly newsletter “Color Portals”. Learn more at nehamisrastudio.com or follow me on Instagram @nehamisrastudio
Neha Misra नेहा मिश्रा (she/her) is an award-winning immigrant poet, contemporary eco-folk artist, and climate justice advocate. Her interdisciplinary practice builds bridges between private, collective, planetary healing and justice. Neha is a Public Voices Fellow on the Climate Crisis — an initiative of the OpEd Project and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication to change who writes history. She is the Global Ambassador of non-profit Remote Energy, making solar training more accessible for women of color. Learn more at nehamisrastudio.com
A mother of a show
With enough different perspectives, we can describe the indescribable.
On May 11, ten writers attempted a daring feat: Describing motherhood. From a copper-haired child of Holocaust survivors to a freshman at Marriotts Ridge, this group of storytellers told their truths to a sold-out crowd at the Carriage House in Columbia.
Listen to Your Mother Howard County, a local iteration of a national storytelling project, held its premiere on the night before Mother’s Day. A co-production of writers Faye McCray, Amanda Loudin and Susan Thornton Hobby, Listen to Your Mother Howard County offered ten radically different takes on motherhood.
But the thread – of reckless, ineffable love for children – carried through all ten tales.
Eleven, actually, since Nette Stokes, director of JustLiving Advocacy, spoke in an introduction about her life as a teen mother and the daughter of a strong mother. Listen to Your Mother Howard County raised more than $2,400 for JustLiving Advocacy, a nonprofit that aids local single parents.
“The event was a masterful curation of diverse stories and storytellers, directed by the talented local playwright and director Aladrian Wetzel,” said co-producer Faye McCray. “The audience was captivated, hanging on every word, moved to both tears and laughter. It reaffirmed a beautiful truth: stories unite us.”
Amanda Loudin, who attended a Listen to Your Mother show in Colorado and decided to launch the project here with her co-producers, said, “There are so many words to describe the evening: poignant, raw, funny, uplifting, inspiring … . I could go on. But I guess the word that best describes it is powerful. It was powerful to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with these storytellers as they courageously shared their truths. Mother, daughter, other–everyone could find something relatable from these stories. I’m so proud of what this group put together and hope that this year’s show is the first of many to come.”
For more information, email ltymhoco@gmail.com
To watch the full show, visit the Listen to Your Mother Howard County YouTube playlist:
Individual storytellers’ videos are here:
Introduction and Nette Stokes of JustLiving Advocacy
Margarete Levy, “Mama’s Advice”
Ashleigh Owens, “I’m Not Enjoying this Season of Motherhood”
Amanda Loudin, “Role Reversal”
Jillianne Trotter, “Mother F”
Susanna Sung, “Don’t Forget Who You Are”
Ashley Rappa, “Field of Artichokes”
Faye McCray, “Unfinished”
Kim Flyr, “The Pillow”
Iris Hai, “I Love You”
Susan Thornton Hobby, “To Do”
– Susan Thornton Hobby,
HoCoPoLitSo recording secretary
Meet Larraine Denakpo — 2023 Second Place Winner of the Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Contest
1n 2021, Howard County Poetry and Literature Society launched the Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize in honor of its founding member, Ellen Conroy Kennedy. Now in its third year, contest judges evaluated many submissions for mechanics and technique, clarity, style/music for our contemporary age, imagery/sensory power, and emotional resonance. Here, judges noted this poem’s “restrained composition” and “universal resonance.” One said, “This neatly packed, tiny poem is so enjoyable to read.” Congratulations on the second place win.
Tell us about your poem “Lullaby for Daughters”. How did it come about? What sparked or inspired it?
The poem was written around 1988-89 when our small family was living overseas in Bujumbura, Burundi. I had written some poems in a journal with no date and left them to mull for many years. The sentiment was inspired once as I watched our two young daughters sleeping. I am white, my husband black, and I was struck by how little the girls looked like me.
What was an early experience where you learned that language had power?
The written word has always been my friend; I was an early reader and devoured books constantly, escaping boredom and looking for answers. Later the poetry of lyrics in the 60s and 70s—from Bob Dylan to Joni Mitchell to Leonard Cohen – helped me cope with the world. But I first felt the power of poetry moving me to new ways of thinking in the works of women (Nikki Giovanni, Lucille Clifton and others) when I was in college. I attended Seton Hill College in Greensburg, PA and I credit several of the faculty there (the late Sister Lois Sculco and Dr. Lynn Conroy) for encouraging me to explore and practice poetry. I was lucky to attend poetry readings in Pittsburgh when I was in college and experienced readings by powerful poets like Derek Walcott and Adrienne Rich. I even put together a collection of poems as a senior in college (1975) and won an award, but then life happened and I only wrote poems when I found some calm in the daily bustle.
As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal?
I feel a stronger connection to all things green than to any animal. One of my earliest poems evokes a 10-year old me sitting in a maple tree and dreaming; no longer a tree climber I get inspiration from woods and gardens and memories of the green hills of tea and bananas that I found in Burundi.
Tell us about a writer or a book that you return to over and over for inspiration.
While I was working full-time and raising a family, I didn’t find much time for poetry or books. Now I am enjoying exploring much loved poets and discovering new ones. I do go back to both the poet A.R Ammons and the writer Annie Dilliard for the way they communicate about nature.
What are you working on next and where can we find you?
I am mostly retired after working for years on education projects in Africa. I have been focusing on quilting–combining African fabrics with the calico cottons of my childhood. I also explore my new hometown, Columbia, as well and just recently learned about HoCoPoLitSo. This contest took me by surprise and I entered a few old poems on a whim. Maybe I will work on putting together a collection in the years ahead. I have a LinkedIn profile if anyone wants to connect there.
Here, Larraine Denakpo reads “Lullaby for Daughters:
Bio:
I grew up in Carlisle, PA and left after high school in 1971, rarely returning during the next fifty years. After college (BA in English), I joined the Peace Corps and taught English in a small town in Benin. There I met my husband and together we spent time in the US with me getting an MA in Linguistics from the University of Pittsburgh. Then we raised a family while working on education and health development programs in Burundi, Egypt, and Senegal. Our daughters went off to college and we continued working, often separately, for shorter assignments including stints for me in Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. I still work part-time at FHI 360 as an education specialist but more and more of my time is spent enjoying my grown children and grandchildren and catching up on my own creative aspirations like quilting and learning to draw. I also enjoy living in Columbia and spend time most days pondering nature on one of its pathways.
Meet Steph Sundermann-Zinger — 2023 First Place Winner of the Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Contest
1n 2021, Howard County Poetry and Literature Society launched the Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize in honor of its founding member, Ellen Conroy Kennedy. Now in its third year, contest judges evaluated many submissions for mechanics and technique, clarity, style/music for our contemporary age, imagery/sensory power, and emotional resonance. Here, judges noted the poem’s “gorgeous language” and “strong imagery, alliteration, and meter.” One said, “This poem has the strongest voice of all,” and another called it: “a mature poem that is a moment in time.” Congratulations to this year’s winner, Steph Sundermann-Zinger and the wonderful “A Dream of Solitude”.
Tell us about your poem “A Dream of Solitude” How did it come about? What sparked or inspired it?
Sometime last fall, I woke up to find the word “beekeeper” written in my bedside journal. The details of the dream that prompted my midnight scribbling were hazy even then, but I couldn’t get the word out of my mind, so I decided to dig deeper. It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon – my children were in the backyard, giggling, sword-fighting with sticks, and part of me wanted to join them. The rest of me realized that sitting down to write was remarkably like putting on a bee suit – I was choosing solitude, making room to nurture something small and new. I didn’t know anything at all about beekeeping, so I spent the next hour or so watching YouTube videos about various mid-Atlantic hives. That’s one of the things I enjoy about writing poetry – you never know where the development of a piece might take you.
What was an early experience where you learned that language had power?
I learned to talk very early; by the age of two, when my parents decided to have me baptized, I was speaking in complete sentences. I knew the priest very well, as he dined at our house regularly, so I went willingly into his arms – when he began to pour cold water from a dainty silver seashell onto the crown of my head, though, I decided enough was enough. I sat bolt upright in his arms and screamed, “Get that water off my head, Wally!” That was the first time I embarrassed my parents with my blunt, poorly-timed honesty – it was by no means the last.
As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal?
My study has a big window that looks out onto our backyard, and I’m lucky enough to be visited by a lot of animals while I’m writing. Families of deer, a fox or two, a stumpy-legged groundhog, and a surprising variety of birds – goldfinches, woodpeckers, red-winged blackbirds, cardinals, crows, we even have a Cooper’s hawk nesting on the back hill. They show up in my poetry regularly – so I guess I’d say regional wildlife.
Tell us about a writer or a book that you return to over and over for inspiration.
Oh, goodness. Ada Limon, Ross Gay, Mary Oliver, Ellen Bass, Louise Gluck, Lucille Clifton, Victoria Chang, Brenda Shaughnessy – I could go on. There are so many poets whose work inspires me to push the boundaries of my own, but these are the ones who come immediately to mind.
What are you working on next and where can we find you?
I’m currently completing my thesis year in the University of Baltimore’s MFA program. We’ll be holding our graduation reading and bookfair on Sunday, May 19, and copies of my thesis project will be available; you’ll also have the chance to hear my very talented classmates read their work, so I’d definitely recommend marking your calendar! You can also find me at stephwritespoems.com and on instagram @steph_writes_poems.
Here is poet Steph Sundermann-Zinger reading “A Dream of Solitude”:
Bio: Steph Sundermann-Zinger (she/they) is a queer poet living and writing in the Baltimore area. Her work explores themes of identity, relationship, and connection with the natural world, and has appeared or is forthcoming in Blue Unicorn, Lines + Stars, The Little Patuxent Review, Literary Mama, Every Day Fiction, Litbreak, and other journals.
You will find this winning poem published in the January 2024 issue of Little Patuxent Review. Thanks to LPR for their partnership in presenting the winning poem of the Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Contest each year.
A Newark Childhood
Saturday September 30th at 2 p.m., please join HoCoPoLitSo Board Member David Hugo Barrett at the Miller Branch of the Howard County Library for a reading from his book “A Newark Childhood” and for a conversation between father and son about the memoir and the insights born of growing up in the fifties and sixties in Newark, New Jersey. Find a synopsis and excerpt at www.davidhugobarrett.com.
Meet Chrissy Stegman — 2022 Second Place Winner of the Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Contest
In 2021, Howard County Poetry and Literature Society launched the Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize in honor of its founding member, Ellen Conroy Kennedy. Now in its second year, contest judges evaluated many submissions from poets in ten states and three countries for mechanics and technique, clarity, style/music for our contemporary age, imagery/sensory power, and emotional resonance. They noted in “Blue Irises” the creative use of form, the original approach to this poignant subject, the resonant voice of the speaker, and the powerful tension of the poem’s arc.
Tell us about your poem “Blue Irises” How did it come about? What sparked or inspired it?
I received my annual postcard in the mail from GBMC hospital, asking for donations to the NICU. It reminded me.
My youngest son was born early and via emergency c-section. When he arrived, he was whisked away to the NICU.
The poem came from this experience and from the despair I felt at being in the NICU to nurse him or see him whenever they allowed me but also, the other babies sometimes didn’t survive. It was a devastating juxtaposition, living in that space of life and death. It stayed with me.
What was an early experience where you learned that language had power?
That’s a difficult question for me to answer. I suppose it would be the hours I spent in various libraries as a child. Reading saved me so many times, supported me, gave me strength. The power was evident. Language can do that — it reminds me of a passage from The Bow and the Lyre (Octavio Paz): Man is a being who has created himself in creating a language. By means of the word, man is a metaphor of himself.
As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal?
My mascot would be pure crystalline silence. I have four school-aged kids in the home (one adult child out in the world) and it’s challenging to find the space and quiet to write and work things out. If not silence, then all of Rocky Mount and Ferrum, VA and the blackberry brambles there, the train tracks, and the cemetery. The Blue Ridge mountains? Take me home. Country roads.
Tell us about a writer or a book that you return to over and over for inspiration.
It’s always Elizabeth Bishop, Rilke, Harryette Mullen, Camus, Anne Carson, Theodore Roethke, Mark Strand, Larkin … I mean, it’s impossible to pick only one writer or book. The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli is gorgeous.
What are you working on next and where can we find you?
Currently, I’m taking an advanced masterclass at the 92NY Unterberg Poetry Center, New York. I’m also working on a book of poems that offers an interactive quality for the reader and finishing up my first chapbook. I have two poems coming out in March (Gone Lawn) and May (Blue Heron Review) so 2023 is off to a great start.
I can be found on IG: thegoosefaerie and Twitter: @pimpledrose
Hear poet Chrissy Stegman read “Blue Irises”
Poetries of Belonging — HoCoPoLitSo’s 15th Annual Blackbird Poetry Festival
Noah Arhm Choi headlines the Blackbird Poetry Festival to be held on April 27, 2023, at Howard Community College (HCC). The festival is a day devoted to verse, with a student workshop, readings, and HCC Poetry Ambassadors. The afternoon Sunbird Reading features Choi, Regie Cabico, local authors, and Howard Community College faculty and students. This free daytime event starts at 2:30 p.m. in the Rouse Community Foundation Building room 400 (RCF 400). The Nightbird program, in the Horowitz Center’s Monteabaro Hall, begins at 7:30 p.m. The evening features an introduction by Regie Cabico, a reading by Noah Arhm Choi, a reception and book signing. Nightbird tickets, $20 (HCC students free). If you need help with your order, the Horowitz Center Box Office (443.518.1500) has limited phone hours to answer your questions. Tickets for Nightbird can be found through this link: https://ci.ovationtix.com/32275/production/1156148.
Noah Arhm Choi is the author of Cut to Bloom (Write Bloody Publishing) the winner of the 2019 Write Bloody Prize. They received a MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and their work appears in Barrow Street, Blackbird, The Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, Split this Rock and others. Noah was shortlisted for the Poetry International Prize and received the 2021 Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize, alongside fellowships from Kundiman, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. They work as the Director of the Progressive Teaching Institute and Associate Director of DEI at a school in New York City. Jeanann Verlee, the author of Prey, noted “Cut to Bloom is neither delicate nor tidy. This immense work both elucidates and complicates ethnic, generational, and gender violence, examining women who fight for their humanity against those who seek to silence―indeed, erase―them.”
Regie Cabico is a spoken word pioneer having won The Nuyorican Poets Cafe GrandSlam and later taking top prizes in three National Poetry Slams. Television credits include 2 seasons of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, NPR’s Snap Judgement and MTV’s Free Your Mind. He is the lead teaching artist for Poetry Out Loud and has recorded several videos for the National Endowment for the Arts and Poetry Foundation.
For more than forty-five 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 partners with other cultural arts organizations to support the arts in Howard County, Maryland. More information is available at http://www.hocopolitso.org.
HoCoPoLitSo receives funding from the Howard County Arts Council through a grant from Howard County government; Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the state of Maryland; the Community Foundation of Howard County; Dr. Lillian Bauder; and individual contributors.
Colm Tóibín and Maureen Dowd headline HoCoPoLitSo’s 45th Annual Irish Evening
7:30 p.m. Saturday, February 18, 2023
Smith Theater – Howard Community College
HoCoPoLitSo’s 45th annual Irish Evening of Music and Poetry on Saturday, February 18, 2023, at 7:30 p.m. presents Where Journalism Meets Literature: A Conversation with Colm Tóibín and Maureen Dowd. Tóibín and Dowd will explore the crossroads between journalism and literature and read from their recent works. The evening also features music by Poor Man’s Gambit and Ireland’s new Ambassador to the U.S, Geraldine Byrne Nason, has been invited.
General in person admission is $45 and a livestream viewing option is $20.
In-person event tickets: https://ci.ovationtix.com/32275/production/1142555?performanceId=11188584
Livestream tickets: https://ci.ovationtix.com/32275/production/1142556?performanceId=11188582
Colm Tóibín has been shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize and received the 2021 David Cohen Prize for Literature, a lifetime achievement award. In his most recent novel, The Magician, Tóibín explores the heart and mind of a writer, Thomas Mann, whose life is driven by a need to belong and the anguish of illicit desire, in a stunning marriage of research and imagination. Oprah Daily noted the “dazzling, epic family saga set across a half-century spanning World War I, the rise of Hitler, World War II, and the Cold War that is a feat of literary sorcery in its own right.” Tóibín, an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet, has a book of essays, A Guest at the Feast, scheduled for release in January 2023.
Maureen Dowd, a New York Times Op-Ed columnist, writes about American politics, popular culture, and international affairs. The winner of the two Pulitzer Prizes- one in 1999 for distinguished commentary and the other in 1992 for national reporting, Dowd was born in Washington, D.C and previously worked for the Washington Star. She is the author of three New York Times best sellers: Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk (2004); Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide (2005) and The Year of Voting Dangerously: The Derangement of American Politics (2016).
The evening program begins at 7:30 p.m. Irish beverages, snacks and books will be offered for sale beginning at 7 p.m. and during intermission. A book sale and signing follows the reading and discussion. After intermission, Poor Man’s Gambit will play traditional Irish music, with fiddle, button accordion, guitar, bodhran, and bouzouki.
Recommended Reading: Student Neal Goturi Takes a Look at Popular Cherry Castle Anthology Where We Stand.
As the popular anthology Where We Stand, Poems of Black Resilience is available for sale again, we share student Neal Goturi’s review of a reading held this summer to promote the first printing of the anthology. Neal is a sophomore at River Hill High School and he has recently begun serving as a Bauder Youth Advisor on the board of the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society.
“I can not praise and recommend
Where We Stand: Poems of Black Resilience enough.”
Last summer, I went to the reading of the poetry anthology, Where We Stand: Poems of Black Resilience, in the Lucille Clifton Reading Room of Busboys and Poets, the popular restaurant in Downtown Columbia that has a performance space on the second floor. It was the first reading I had ever attended; I was excited to take a break from the more conventional avenues of consuming literature and branch out.
Where We Stand has its roots in a group of socially conscious poets and artists coming together to process the outcomes of the 2016 election and the impending doom of America’s ethos. By the end of production, one understood that editors Enzo Sirloin, Melanie Henderson, and Truth Thomas have put together a must-read collection . It features nearly 30 authors, and a number of poems from each. Powerful photographs partition the book into four parts: Watch for Black Lives, The District Line, The Breathing Fence, and Black Joy Matters.
The evening’s first reader was Joseph Ross, opening with his lines from the anthology:
There is an essential difference
(“Cross, Hood, Noose An American History Lesson”, Ross, Where We Stand, 16)
between wood and flame.
It is a gap wide enough
for the Pledge of Allegiance
to walk through laughing.
Remember to not let the base
burn so the cross can stand
for as long as needed…
[In the following clip, Ross reads his poem, “If Mamie Till was the Mother of God,” at the Busboys & Poets event. The powerful poem, not featured in the anthology, won the Enoch Pratt Free Library / Little Patuxent Review Poetry Contest in 2012.]
His poetry commanded attention and set the tone for the night. As the night went on, the speakers read through selected poems — the air kept quiet and was foreboding. Each story told by verse was so heavy that I felt like I needed to take a moment to process it — a break from the cacophony of injustice presented. The person sitting next to me agreed.
Later, as I was walking out, I realized the irony of the situation. We desired something inaccessible to the artists who had just presented: a break. Be it from tragic stories, blind angels, or clipped wings. After only a glimpse of the potency of American venom, the recess from reality requested is out of sight to those most inundated. That is something so foul that no gilded sentiment or sentence can do it justice; it lies beyond a formation of words.
I’ve recently become more aware of my privilege and the privilege present in my community. Columbia is always serene on summer evenings. It is a sheltered and affluent suburban enclave. This lends itself to the vast majority of residents enjoying a level of cognitive dissonance to the obstacles myriads of Americans face. The poets who performed on July 8th brought black experiences into the spotlight and celebrated them; they shortened the empathetic gap between.
I can not praise and recommend Where We Stand: Poems of Black Resilience enough. It is raw, essential, and uniquely comforting. While I was writing this post, the anthology quickly sold out online. If you looked, you could find the odd copy at places like Busboys and Poets. Its publisher, Cherry Castle Publishing has just issued a second printing of the anthology. To order a copy, visit their website cherrycastlepublishing.com
Where We Stand, Poems of Black Resilience quickly sold out of its first printing. As of November 25, this popular and important anthology is available again. Visit CherryCastlePublishing.com to get yourself and everyone you know copies.
Author Gabriel Bump to Deliver Keynote at Howard Community College’s Second Annual Bauder Lecture
Acclaimed author of “Everywhere You Don’t Belong” joined in conversation with Tyrese L. Coleman at the Horowitz Visual & Performing Arts Center
COLUMBIA, MD – Howard Community College announced that Gabriel Bump, author of “Everywhere You Don’t Belong,” a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2020 and an Electric Lit Favorite Novel of 2020, will deliver the keynote at the second annual Bauder Lecture. Bump’s keynote will be offered in a hybrid format, both live in person and streamed via Vimeo, on September 22, 2022, at 12:30 p.m. His keynote will be followed by an in-depth conversation with DC-based writer Tyrese L. Coleman.
Bump’s novel, “Everywhere You Don’t Belong,” follows protagonist Claude, a young Black man born on the South Side of Chicago and raised by his civil rights-era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change; yet when riots consume his neighborhood, he hesitates to take sides, unwilling to let race define his life. He escapes Chicago to go to college, to find a new identity, and to leave the pressure cooker of his hometown behind. But as he discovers, there is no safe haven for a young Black man in this time and place called America.
Following his keynote, Bump will be joined by Washington, D.C.-based writer, Tyrese L. Coleman, author of “How to Sit,” for an in-depth conversation. Tyrese L. Coleman is a writer, wife, mother, and attorney. Her debut collection of stories and essays, “How to Sit,” was published by Mason Jar Press in 2018 and nominated for a 2019 PEN Open Book Award.
The Bauder Lecture by Howard Community College is made possible by a generous grant from Dr. Lillian Bauder, a community leader and Columbia resident. Howard Community College presents an annual endowed author lecture, and the chosen book will be celebrated with two student awards. Known as the Don Bauder Awards, any Howard Community College student who has read the featured book is eligible to respond and reflect on the book in an essay or other creative format. The awards honor the memory of Don Bauder, late husband of Dr. Lillian Bauder and a champion of civil rights and social justice causes.
“Everywhere You Don’t Belong” was selected by the Howard County Book Connection committee as its choice for the 2022–2023 academic year. The Howard County Book Connection is a partnership of Howard Community College and the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society.
The Bauder Lecture will take place in Howard Community College’s Smith Theatre at the Horowitz Visual and Performing Arts Center, 10901 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia, Maryland. The event will be live streamed on Vimeo and archived.
To learn more about the Bauder Lecture and RSVP for the event, visit howardcc.edu/bauderlecture.
HoCoPoLitSo 