Howard County Poetry & Literature Society, HoCoPoLitSo, this year celebrates its 50th anniversary of presenting writers— from the internationally renowned to emerging locals— here in Howard County to audiences of all ages and backgrounds. The first step toward that achievement began on November 19th, 1974, when poets Lucille Clifton and Carolyn Kizer read from their work to students at Wilde Lake High School, and in the incredible half-century since that day, of all the many services HoCoPoLitSo is privileged to provide the community, we remain perhaps most proud of our student and youth-focused programming and close partnerships with local schools, including Howard County Public School System and Howard Community College.

In addition to welcoming student attendees at all events, HoCoPoLitSo each year provides for an active professional writer to take part in a residency in Howard County, visiting students for readings and workshops in their classrooms. More than 30 authors of diverse backgrounds have taken part in what is today the Bauder Writer-in-Residence Program; after a recent visit by Tope Folarin, the current resident, one student said:

About a third of the way into his speech, all I could think was ‘man, what an absolute badass.’ That guy was awesome, I’m super proud to have gotten to hear from someone like him. [Tope’s] statement of ‘I’ve got to open this door or die trying’ is exactly the kind of drive people need in life, and seeing someone who had a life full of that idea is absolutely amazing. It’s an aspect everyone needs in life, without a doubt. I wish we got to have more people giving talks like that at school [. . .] I hope he keeps on going like this.

To further encourage young writers, HoCoPoLitSo annually presents awards to student honorees of—

All-County Writing Competition — due March 31, 2025
Since 1981, HoCoPoLitSo hosts this annual writing contest open to current Howard County high school students, accepting entries across four categories: poetry, personal essay, short story, and short play.  Students submit their own work; there is no entry fee, and students may enter in as many categories as they wish.

Submissions are open NOW, and close on March 31, 2025.

Promise & Achievement in Language Arts — due April 15, 2025
Through this annual partnership between HoCoPoLitSo and Howard County Public School System, English department Instructional Team Leaders nominate students at their schools to receive award.  If you are a county educator who has not received communication on how to nominate students, please contact info@hocopolitso.org or 443-518-4568.

Nominations are open NOW, and close on April 15, 2025.

The students selected for awards receive personally-selected books tailored to their literary interests, presented by HoCoPoLitSo board members or affiliates at each school’s summer award and graduation ceremonies. A full list of the past year’s honorees is available in the HoCoPoLitSo Annual Report. In an interview with Business Monthly in 2024, Miriam Roy, a student recipient of award for Promise & Achievement in Language Arts then at Long Reach High School, said:

It was a lovely surprise to receive an award for my love of literature. I have always enjoyed reading literature and writing poetry since the beginning of middle school so receiving the award was a wonderful experience.

More recently, starting in fall of 2023, HoCoPoLitSo has partnered with Howard County Arts Council and Howard County Government through the office of County Executive Calvin Ball, to implement the first-ever offices of Howard County Poet Laureate and Youth Poet Laureate. Following the appointment of Mai-Anh Nguyen, then a student at Oakland Mills High School, as the inaugural Howard County Youth Poet Laureate, applications are now open for the second term of this one-year honorary position:

Howard County Youth Poet Laureate — due May 9, 2025
The role of Howard County Youth Poet Laureate is an honorary position formally appointed by the County Executive at the recommendation of a review panel coordinated by HoCoPoLitSo.  Candidates submit their own application, with supporting recommendations; eligible candidates are aged 14–21, and either reside in or will be able to present at in-person events in Howard County throughout the one-year term.  The next Youth Poet Laureate will serve from September 2025 to July 2026, and receives an honorarium of $500.

Applications are open NOW, and close on May 9, 2025.

The current Howard County Youth Poet Laureate, Mai-Anh Nguyen, will read at HoCoPoLitSo’s Wilde Reading Series in June.

The deadline for the 2025–2026 Youth Poet Laureate term applications has been extended to Friday, May 9th, at 11:59 p.m.

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.

HoCoPoLitSo welcomes all to the March edition of the Wilde Reading Series, with Ashley Elizabeth and Sue Ellen Thompson, hosted by Jared Smith. Please join us at independent bookstore Queen Takes Book on Tuesday, March 11th 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 Ashley and Sue!

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

Ashley: The person that shows up the most is my grandmother. I draw a lot from the ancestors and sometimes it feels as though she’s not actually gone. It does hurt when I wake up from a work, but feels good while I am in it. Others that show up quite frequently include my partner, my parents, and my sister.

Sue: My mother—although my father shows up almost as often.

Where is your favorite place to write?

Ashley: I am not a writer that needs to be in a specific environment to write. I can write whenever, wherever as long as the ideas are coming. The most common place for me to write or at least start a draft is in my car in my voices notes app or regular notes if I’m at a stoplight, but it always gets transferred to paper for initial edits.

Sue: At home in Oxford, MD, in my studio over the garage.

Do you have any consistent pre-writing rituals?

Ashley: Not at all. I wait for ideas to come to me, and once they do, I must get to it in that moment instead of trying to reach an idea of comfortability. By then, the idea usually is long gone!

Sue: I like to get physical exercise first, so I always go to the gym before sitting down to write.

Who always gets a first read?

Ashley: This depends on the piece and when I write it. Normally, my sister, Mel Sherrer, gets a first look since I take a lot of her workshops and it’s only fair to share what I got from the workshop. Sometimes, my partner gets a first read if I drop everything to write some.

Sue: No one aside from myself.

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

Ashley: There are several. Whenever I am grieving, I return to The Cruel Country by Judith Ortiz Cofer. House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros usually brightens my day as well. Such a colorful text. With my students, I return to our curricular texts quite often. They each bring something different and I get something different from them each time I return. Before I do re-reads I do try to read something different in between re-reads. You know, for balance.

Sue: Jane Kenyon’s Collected Poems.

What is the most memorable reading you have attended?

Ashley: As an audience member, Nikki Giovanni‘s reading will always stay with me. Out of the several readings I’ve been to, I think I took the most notes during that reading.

As a reader, I’ve been fortunate enough to take part in several events. It’s hard to pick which was most memorable, but probably my second reading with Garden Party Collective as it was to highlight my chapbook about teaching, red line. The parents of one of my students that died suddenly were there, and it was the first time I felt physically unable to continue to read but also felt like I had the most impact with.

Sue: Philip Levine‘s 2011 reading at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont, right after he’d been appointed U.S. Poet Laureate.

• Ashley Elizabeth (she/her) is a Baltimore-based poet and winner of the 2024 Garden Party Collective Chapbook Contest. She is a Pushcart-nominated writer and educator whose work has appeared in SWIMM, Voicemail Poems, Rigorous, and Sage Cigarettes, among others. She is the author of four chapbooks, including red line and CHARM(ed). Her debut full-length collection, A Family Thing, is out now from ELJ Editions.

You can find Ashley on Instagram and Twitter as @ae_thepoet, or @aetheblkpoet on Bluesky, or on her personal website, aetheblkpoet.com.

• Sue Ellen Thompson is the author of six books of poetry— most recently Sea Nettles: New & Selected Poems. Before moving to the Eastern Shore in 2006, she taught at Middlebury College, Binghamton University, Wesleyan University, and Central Connecticut State University. A resident of Oxford for the past 18 years, she has been mentoring adult poets and teaching workshops at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda. In 2010, the Maryland Library Association awarded her its prestigious Maryland Author Award.

Sue’s home online is sueellenthompson.com, and she can be reached on Facebook as Sue Ellen Thompson, Poet.

Howard County Poetry and Literature Society is honored to receive the award of a $10,000 grant from Maryland Humanities through the 2025 Marilyn Hatza Memorial Strengthening the Humanities Investment in Nonprofits for Equity (SHINE) Grant Program, with our deepest gratitude for the recognition and support of Maryland Humanities, Maryland Historical Trust, and the Maryland Department of Planning. The SHINE Grant Program closely aligns with HoCoPoLitSo’s values and mission to broaden the audience for contemporary literature and celebrate culturally diverse literary heritages, and these grant funds will help to support HoCoPoLitSo’s operations and literary programming throughout this 50th anniversary year. #MDHumanities @MDHumanities

The operations and programming of HoCoPoLitSo in 2025 are financed in part with State Funds from the Maryland Historical Trust, an agency of the Maryland Department of Planning which is an instrumentality of the State of Maryland. However, project contents or opinions do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Maryland Historical Trust or the Maryland Department of Planning.

Founded in 1974, HoCoPoLitSo this year rejoices in its golden 50th anniversary of bringing world-renowned authors to Howard County to broaden the audience for contemporary literature and celebrate culturally diverse literary heritages. As we charge forward in this joyous season, we recognize that it would not have been possible to get here any other way than one step at a time— and certainly not without the generous support of our many friends, peers, and partners. In that spirit, Susan Thornton Hobby, Recording Secretary and The Writing Life Producer, penned the cover story of our FY2024 annual report: “We All Contribute to 50 Years of Stone Soup.”

This past year, leading up to the anniversary, was defined by new and expanded collaborations: in late 2023, HoCoPoLitSo partnered with Howard County Arts Council and Howard County government through the office of County Executive Calvin Ball to create the first-ever positions of Howard County Poet Laureate and Youth Poet Laureate; we hope you will be able to join us for events featuring the inaugural appointees, Truth Thomas and Mai-Anh Nguyen— and applications are open now for the second youth laureate term.

Now in 2025, this year’s Bauder Writer-in-Residence, Tope Folarin, is making visits to county schools throughout the remainder of the school term, and applications are currently accepted for this year’s All-County Writing Competition. The Wilde Reading Series has moved to the newly-opened independent bookstore in the heart of Columbia, Queen Takes Book, and the annual Lucille Clifton Reading was held in partnership with the Howard County Conservancy this past October. Ahead of us are our signature events in collaboration with Howard Community College: HoCoPoLitSo’s Irish Evening coming soon on February 15th — tickets on sale NOW — and the Blackbird Poetry Festival, to be held April 24th, and we hope you can join us for all this and more.

As we reflect on the past half-century, we also look forward to how HoCoPoLitSo can change and adapt to best meet the needs of our community for another 50 years to come. Recently, new members of HoCoPoLitSo’s board of directors took the initiative to produce an updated online newsletter, distributed through hocopolitso.substack.com, which we call: HoCoPoLitSo’s “Rhyme and Reason.” If you were not previously receiving e-mails from HoCoPoLitSo, we hope you will subscribe to keep abreast of quarterly happenings in the world of lit, and future annual reports.

let there be lit.

HoCoPoLitSo welcomes all to the February edition of the Wilde Readings Series, with Michael Ratcliffe and K.R. Raye, hosted by Laura Shovan. Please note this February 2025 reading will be held via online livestream, through Zoom and Facebook: we hope you will join us online February 11, 7–8:30 p.m.

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 Michael and K.R!

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

Michael: Two people show up most often in my writing— my great-great grandparents, John and Mary Ratcliff. They and their lives are the focus of the poems in my chapbook, Shards of Blue.

K.R.: It’s never a person that shows up in my writing, it’s themes. All of my stories speak about the power of friendship and faith (or the lack thereof). Whether I’m writing Horror, Drama, Romance, New Adult, or Young Adult Fantasy, friendship and faith play a role in some way.

Where is your favorite place to write?

Michael: I recently made and installed a bench at the far corner of our property where two stone walls meet in the woods. I think that’s going to be my new favorite place to write. There are a few other spots on the property, each with a large rock to sit on, that are great places to ponder and write. For now, it’s at my desk, looking out on woods and mountainside.

K.R.: I love writing in Florida on a screened-in back porch as the palm trees sway and the birds frolic in the lake.

Do you have any consistent pre-writing rituals?

Michael: I don’t have consistent rituals, but I generally prefer to write in the morning, with coffee featuring prominently in the process. Except in the summer, when mornings are devoted to cycling or gardening. Then, writing has to wait till later in the day.

K.R.: No, I don’t have any pre-writing rituals. I can typically write anytime and anywhere. Plus, I draw inspiration from my environment, so situations and settings spark me to write when I experience them.

Who always gets a first read?

Michael: My sister. She’s a professional copy editor and also a writer.

K.R.: My husband! He’s an excellent critic. I know if he questions something, I need to work on it and if he loves it, it’s solid. Plus, reading it first is his reward for patiently sharing me with my crazy characters during the writing process.

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

Michael: Fiction, Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country. Nonfiction, Karl Marx’s Capital, volume 1. And, in the some say fiction/some say nonfiction category: the Book of Mormon.

K.R.: I don’t tend to re-read books because my To-Be-Read pile is so large and I love diving into new characters and worlds. However, on my journey to getting our Young Adult Fantasy novel traditionally published, I’ve had to re-read The Hunger Games and Percy Jackson.

What is the most memorable reading you have attended?

Michael: Any of the Mother Earth Poetry Series readings at Red Emma’s in Baltimore. Each had a vibe that I haven’t felt elsewhere. Also at Red Emma’s, Amanda Kolson Hurley reading from and talking about her book, Radical Suburbs. I’ve spent much of my professional career defining urban, suburban, and rural areas, and I have a general interest in radical communitarian groups, so we had a lot to talk about at that reading.

K.R.: Book Club discussions are always enlightening because readers share what they thought and how the story affected them. One in particular was hilarious because a reader kept swearing that I must have been a fly on her dorm room wall to have shared so many of her secrets in my novel.

• Michael Ratcliffe is a geographer whose is a geographer whose poetry often reflects his interests in landscape and spirituality. His poems have appeared in print and online, including in Maryland in Poetry, Peacock Journal, Fourth and Sycamore, and Poetry X Hunger. Mike lives with his wife on two acres on Catoctin Mountain outside Emmitsburg, Maryland, where he gardens, takes care of trees, and sets out on long bike rides.

You can find more on Michael at michaelratcliffespoetry.wordpress.com.

• K.R. Raye lives in Maryland with her husband and two sons. She is the author of The Colors Trilogy, award-winning, Amazon best-selling contemporary New Adult novels. Throughout her diverse career working as a mechanical engineer, adjunct professor, and in sales, she continues to weave her love of marketing, computer information systems, and operations together with her passion for writing.

K.R.’s homepage is krraye.com, and she maintains a presence on several social media fronts, including BlueSky, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

The deadline for the 2025–2026 Youth Poet Laureate term applications has been extended to Friday, May 9th, at 11:59 p.m.

The Howard County Youth Poet Laureate program, a partnership between HoCoPoLitSo, Howard County Arts Council, and the Office of County Executive Calvin Ball, in the last year proudly welcomed our inaugural youth laureate, Mai-Anh Nguyen, at the announcement made in September 2024 at Busboys and Poets in Columbia, with several events since completed or planned around the county, including a Wilde Reading from Mai-Anh in June.

The role of the Youth Poet Laureate is an honorary position formally appointed by the County Executive, who will act as an ambassador for literary arts, and amplify the voice of youth expression in our community through participation in public events and readings across their one-year term. Applications for the 2025–2026 academic year are open NOW for eligible young poets, ages 14–21, who either reside in or will be able to present at in-person events in Howard County. The next Youth Poet Laureate will serve from September 2025 until July 2026, and receives an honorarium of $500 in two equal payments.

Eligible candidates may apply now by clicking HERE! The deadline for submissions has been extended until May 9, 2025. Full program guidelines can be found on the Howard County Arts Council grants homepage; for questions on the application process, please contact grantsandprojects@hocoarts.org, or by phone call to (410) 313-2787 during regular business hours.

Please note this contest is open to current students of public and private high schools in Howard County, Maryland.

Hosted by Howard County Poetry & Literature Society (HoCoPoLitSo) since 1981, the annual All-County Writing Competition recognizes the literary talents of Howard County students across four categories: poetry, personal essays, short stories, and short plays.  All current students of Howard County public or private high schools may enter in as many or as few categories as they wish— please submit a separate form for each.  Personally chosen book awards, in many cases signed by past HoCoPoLitSo visiting writers, are presented for each category at high school award ceremonies.

Entries are accepted now, via the Google Form accessible here at bit.ly/allcounty25, via the QR code below, or by postal mail to HoCoPoLitSo, 10901 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia, MD 21044.

And calling all teachers and students—

Coming up soon is HoCoPoLitSo’s 47th annual Evening of Irish Music and Poetry, featuring Seán Hewitt, hosted by Cóilín Parsons, and music by Poor Man’s Gambit. A special discounted rate of $30 is offered for all educators and students, available now up to the day of the event online or by calling the Horowitz Center Box Office at 443-518-1500, Wed.–Fri., 12–4 p.m. We hope you will join us for what is sure to be another memorable evening in February.

HoCoPoLitSo welcomes all to the January edition of the Wilde Readings Series, with David Drager and Sally Rosen Kindred, hosted by Jared Smith. Please join us at independent bookstore Queen Takes Book on Tuesday, January 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! 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 David and Sally!

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

Sally: My mother. She was a poet, and I think my earliest poems were attempts at conversations with her. I’m still writing some poems to her ghost.

Where is your favorite place to write?

David: Any place I can be alone, and when no one notices that I am missing.

Sally: My desk at home, upstairs where I can see the tops of the trees, or the couch downstairs where a dear dog and cat keep me company.

Do you have any consistent pre-writing rituals?

David: No.

Sally: Most days I walk in the woods first, and I always make a cup of tea.

Who always gets a first read?

David: The audience at an open mic.

Sally: I’m so lucky to have three dear friends—two I’ve known since middle school, once since my early twenties—who are longtime, thoughtful first readers. And of course my spouse.

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

David: The Stranger by Albert Camus.

Sally: A book of contemporary poems I return to often—and have read more than twice just recently—is Jessica Cuello’s Liar. It does striking work with language, syntax, repetition, and the child’s idiosyncratic perspective on her world.

What is the most memorable reading you have attended?

David: Patricia Smith at the Pratt Library when Blood Dazzler was recently released.

Sally: I was fortunate enough to hear Lucille Clifton read twice—once at College Park in the early 90s, and again in 2007 in Columbia. Like her poems, she was fierce, witty, celestial—a singular presence and voice.

• David Drager is “an oral poet…a denizen of poetry world divers…a wolf in beloved’s clothes…a moment’s hesitation before storm…a wanderer between silence and of sky…a word racing, gracing noting, mess of grammar lack.”

He has been known to log into Facebook once or twice a year.

• Sally Rosen Kindred‘s third book is Where the Wolf (2021), winner of the Diode Book Prize and the Julie Suk Award. She is also the author of No Eden and Book of Asters, and three chapbooks. She’s received two poetry awards from the Maryland State Arts Council, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Kenyon Review Online, Image Journal, Shenandoah, and New Ohio Review. She teaches online for The Poetry Barn.

Sally’s homepage is sallyrosenkindred.com, and she can be reached online via Facebook @sallyrosenkindred and Bluesky @sallypoet.bsky.social.

HoCoPoLitSo’s annual Evening of Irish Music and Poetry
on Saturday, February 15th, 2025, at 7:30 p.m. presents
The Language of Landscape:
Seán Hewitt on Place, Identity, and Belonging
featuring writer Seán Hewitt
in conversation with Cóilín Parsons,
and music by Poor Man’s Gambit.

In-person admission available for purchase now

HoCoPoLitSo’s 47th annual Evening of Irish Music and Poetry on Saturday, February 15th, 2025, at 7:30 p.m. presents The Language of Landscape: Seán Hewitt on Place, Identity, and Belonging, featuring poet, memoirist, novelist and literary critic Seán Hewitt, reading from his work including his memoir All Down Darkness Wide, followed by a conversation moderated by Cóilín Parsons, Georgetown University Associate Professor and Director of Global Irish Studies. The evening also features music by Poor Man’s Gambit; Ireland’s Deputy Ambassador to the United States, Fionnuala Quinlan, has been invited to continue the long-standing tradition of providing opening remarks.

The evening program commences at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, February 15th, 2025 in the Smith Theatre of the Horowitz Visual & Performing Arts Center on the campus of Howard Community College; guests may be seated starting at 7 p.m. Irish beverages will be offered for sale to patrons aged 21 and up at a CASH-ONLY bar in the lobby prior to the stage show, and during intermission. Non-alcoholic refreshments and scones will be provided free to attendees. A book signing follows the reading and discussion, and books by the featured authors will be available for purchase. After intermission, Poor Man’s Gambit will play a concert of traditional Irish music.

General in-person admission is available NOW for $50 up to the day of the event, with a discounted rate of $30 offered for educators and students, online or by calling the Horowitz Center Box Office at 443-518-1500, Wed.–Fri., 12–4 p.m. We hope you will join us for what is sure to be another memorable evening in February.

—

—

You can find more information on this year’s event, including artist biographies, as well as on the history of HoCoPoLitso’s Irish Evening on its dedicated page, here. All proceeds from the event are used to underwrite HoCoPoLitSo’s literary programs in the community, and the production of The Writing Life, a writer-to-writer talk show now seen worldwide by more than one million viewers on youtube.com/hocopolitso, and through Howard Community College’s Dragon Digital TV.

—

—
In-person event tickets:
https://ci.ovationtix.com/32275/production/1223209