HoCoPoLitSo welcomes all to the October edition of the Wilde Reading Series, which this year proudly opens its tenth season of highlighting local authors in Howard County. This month’s reading features Hannah V. Sawyerr and Ronald L. Smith, hosted by Laura Shovan. Please join us at independent bookstore Queen Takes Book on Tuesday, September 9th 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, and sign up when you arrive.

Below, get to know Hannah and Ronald!

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

Hannah: Maya Angelou and James Baldwin show up most in my writing. The epigraph of my first novel is a James Baldwin quote and I attended a James Baldwin conference before my second novel that influenced the writing. Both my first and second novels also feature nods to Maya Angelou.

Ronald: Me.

Where is your favorite place to write?

Hannah: I love writing in coffee shops. I love people watching and it helps me become “unstuck” the way I can when I am writing alone.

Ronald: In my office, looking out at the city and the great view.

Do you have any consistent pre-writing rituals?

Hannah: I have particular clothing items that I love wearing while writing! Some of these items include my Morgan State University Sweatshirt, my favorite pair of sweatpants, and my DewMore Baltimore shirt.

Ronald: I have to go through all my emails first, and then look at a few news sites, and then I get to work.

Who always gets a first read?

Hannah: The person who gets the first read is often the person I think about the most while writing. My last novel was largely inspired by my days as a youth slam poet, so the first person to read the manuscript was my former slam coach, Kenneth Something.

Ronald: My editor.

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

Hannah: House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.

Ronald: The Lord of the Rings.

What is the most memorable reading you have attended?

Hannah: This differs slightly from a traditional reading but I recently attended Charm City Slam in Baltimore and absolutely loved it!

Ronald: Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials books.

• Hannah V. Sawyerr was recognized as the Youth Poet Laureate of Baltimore in 2016. Her debut novel in verse All the Fighting Parts was recognized as a Morris Debut Award finalist, a Walter Dean Myers Award Honoree, a Rise Feminist Book Project Top Ten Title, and a Kirkus Best Book of the Year. Truth Is is her sophomore novel.

You can find out more about Hannah at hannahsawyerr.com, and on Instagram @hannsawyerr.

• Ronald L. Smith is an award-winning author of middle-grade novels including Black Panther: The Young Prince Trilogy, Hoodoo, Gloomtown, Where the Black Flowers Bloom, Project Mercury and more. He has also contributed to the anthologies The Hero Next Door, Hope Wins, and RECOGNIZE: An Anthology Honoring and Amplifying Black Life. A former advertising writer, he lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.

Ronald’s home page is strangeblackflowers.com and he can be found on Instagram @ronsmithwriter.

UPDATE: 11/4/2025 — With deepest gratitude for the enthusiasm of our audience, the event is now SOLD OUT. If you were unable to purchase tickets to this event, we hope you will consider joining us at another upcoming program, such as the annual Irish Evening on February 7, 2026.

In November of 1974, Lucille Clifton joined Carolyn Kizer to headline HoCoPoLitSo’s first-ever event, reading from their work and discussing their lives as writers to adult and student audiences in Wilde Lake. For the past year, HoCoPoLitSo has celebrated the full half-century since that day, an incredible 50 years of hosting several dozen more Nobel-, Pulitzer-, and National Book Award-winners here in Howard County, from beloved staple events like HoCoPoLitSo’s Irish Evening, to more recent initiatives like our partnership in the Howard County Poet Laureate and Youth Poet Laureate programs.

On behalf of HoCoPoLitSo’s current Board and staff, as well as all those dear friends, past and present, without whom we could never have achieved this milestone, we are deeply honored for the continuing opportunity to broaden the audience for contemporary poetry and literature, here at home and worldwide, and we hope you will join us for a special presentation of this year’s Lucille Clifton Reading Series, offered as a grand finale to HoCoPoLitSo’s 50th Anniversary Celebration at a Happiness Hour with Ross Gay on November 7, 2025.

📅 Friday, November 7
🕜 5:30 p.m. doors open, stage show at 6:30 (in-person)
📍 10901 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia, MD 21044
Howard Community College’s Kahlert Foundation Complex, room 101

Join us in-person in the Large Meeting Room (KC 101) of Howard Community College’s newly-opened Kahlert Foundation Complex; free and ample parking directly adjoins the venue. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. for an hour of light refreshments and music; a cash bar is offered for patrons aged 21 and older. Stage presentation begins at 6:30 p.m. with an introduction from the poet and former HoCoPoLitSo writer-in-residence Steven Leyva, whose filmed conversation with Ross will be available free through HoCoPoLitSo’s The Writing Life at a later date. After the show, book sales and signing is offered.

General admission is available while seating lasts for $25 per person, with discounted rates available for professional educators and currently-enrolled students. For questions or issues purchasing tickets, to request accommodations, or to discuss attendance by a larger group, please contact HoCoPoLitSo via e-mail to info@hocopolitso.org, or by phone call to (443) 518-4568.

All proceeds from the event support the live and recorded literary programs offered by HoCoPoLitSo for student and general audiences.

Ross Gay is interested in joy.
Ross Gay wants to understand joy.
Ross Gay is curious about joy.
Ross Gay studies joy.
Something like that.

Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. In addition to his poetry, Ross has released three collections of essays—The Book of Delights was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller; Inciting Joy was released in 2022, and his newest collection, The Book of (More) Delights was released in September of 2023.

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.

Earlier that day, Steven will join Ross in the recording studio of Howard Community College’s Dragon Media to record an edition of The Writing Life: the acclaimed half-hour, writer-to-writer talk show produced by HoCoPoLitSo. Their conversation joins the more than 130 pairings of great literary minds, available free, world-wide through HoCoPoLitSo’s YouTube channel.

Unranked is a four-piece American roots rock band made up of musical ruffians blending layered guitars, mandolin and violin aiming to please the human soul. Unranked blends a mix of Irish and Americana sound with beautiful harmonies creating a unique brand of music. Core members include Aaron Lubliner-Walters (mandolin/vocals), Skyle Malcom (violin/vocals), Neal Barthleme (electric guitar/vocals), and Will Hill (accoustic guitar/vocals).

HoCoPoLitSo is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (FEIN 52-1146948) registered in the state of Maryland, donations to which are tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law. A copy of our current financial statement is available upon request. Documents and information submitted to the State of Maryland under the Maryland Charitable Solicitations Act are available from the Office of the Secretary of State for the cost of fees and postage.

HoCoPoLitSo is or has in the past fiscal year been supported by funds gratefully received from the Maryland State and Howard County Arts Councils; Howard County Government; Community Foundation of Howard County; Maryland Humanities; Dr. Lillian Bauder; and from other generous individual and corporate contributors. The artistic contents and opinions expressed at HoCoPoLitSo events do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of HoCoPoLitSo’s grantors, donors, or individual Board or staff members.

On Thursday, September 18th, 2025, HoCoPoLitSo proudly presents in partnership with Howard Community College, Howard County Library System, and the Downtown Columbia Partnership, the 2025 installment of the Bauder Lecture Series, featuring a keynote from Safia Elhillo, distinguished poet and author of novel-in-verse Bright Red Fruit, followed by an in-depth conversation hosted by celeste doaks, editor, journalist, and author of American Herstory.

We hope you will join us for this free and public event, in person at the Horowitz Visual and Performing Arts Center on the college campus, or online streamed live via Vimeo at this link. The day’s events begin with a reading, keynote and stage conversation at 12:30 p.m., followed by a brief reception; a second session follows at 6:00 p.m. HoCoPoLitSo shall offer books from both authors for purchase and signing, to in-person attendees.

In Safia Elhillo’s Bright Red Fruit, teenager Samira is determined to spend her summer exploring DC and growing as a poet—but a scandalous rumor leaves her grounded and vulnerable. Seeking solace online, she’s drawn into a secret relationship with an older poet that threatens her reputation, her community ties, and her dreams. Bright Red Fruit is a powerful coming-of-age story about navigating desire, family expectations, and the search for self.

Sudanese by way of Washington, DC, Safia Elhillo is the author of the books The January Children, Girls That Never Die, Home Is Not A Country, and Bright Red Fruit. Elhillo’s work appears in Poetry Magazine, Callaloo, and The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-day series, among others, and in anthologies including The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop and The Penguin Book of Migration Literature. With Fatimah Asghar, she is co-editor of the anthology Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket Books, 2019), which was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in 2020. Her fellowships include a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, Cave Canem, and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University. Elhillo received the 2015 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, and was listed in Forbes Africa’s 2018 “30 Under 30.” Her work has been translated into several languages, and commissioned by Under Armour, Cuyana, and the Bavarian State Ballet. She currently lives in Los Angeles.

celeste doaks is the author of “Cornrows and Cornfields”, and editor of the poetry anthology “Not Without Our Laughter”. Her chapbook, “American Herstory”, was Backbone Press’s first-place winner in 2018. “Herstory” contains poems—which have been featured at the Whitney Museum of American art, Brooklyn Museum, and most recently the Smithsonian American Art Museum— about the artwork former First Lady Michelle Obama chose for the White House. Doaks is a Carolina African American Writers’ Collective (CAAWC) member and has received fellowships and residencies from Yaddo, Atlantic Center of the Arts, Community of Writers Squaw Valley, and the Fine Arts Work Center. Doaks is a three-time Pushcart award nominee and a creative writing professor for over a decade. Her poems, reviews, and cultural essays have appeared in multiple US and UK on-line and print publications including “Ms. Magazine”, “The Rumpus”, “The Millions”, “Huffington Post”, “Chicago Quarterly Review”, “Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora”, “The Hopkins Review, Bmore Art Magazine”, “Asheville Poetry Review” and many others.

The annual Bauder Lecture Series is made possible by a generous grant from Dr. Lillian Bauder, a community leader and Columbia resident. Each year, the Howard County Book Connection— a partnership of HoCoPoLitSo and representatives from most departments of Howard Community College— selects one book, whose author is invited to headline the lecture; HoCoPoLitSo provides for a local author to join as a special guest, moderating an on-stage writer-to-writer conversation, and audience Q&A. In addition, up to two Howard Community College students are honored with the presentation of the Don Bauder Awards, for their response to the chosen 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.

For more information, or to view recordings of past years’ lectures, please visit Howard Community College’s Bauder Lecture Series event listing, or the home page of the Howard County Book Connection.

HoCoPoLitSo, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit registered in the state of Maryland, gratefully receives funding from the Maryland State and Howard County Arts Councils; Howard County Government; Community Foundation of Howard County; Maryland Humanities; Dr. Lillian Bauder; and from other generous individual and corporate contributors.

As Mai-Anh Nguyen’s inaugural one-year term comes to a close, HoCoPoLitSo and program partners welcome one and all to attend the announcement of the second local young writer to be appointed as Howard County Youth Poet Laureate, to be presented by County Executive Calvin Ball on Wednesday, September 17th, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. at Busboys and Poets in Columbia. RSVP is requested to ensure adequate seating.

The Howard County Youth Poet Laureate Program, created in partnership of HoCoPoLitSo, Howard County Arts Council, and Howard County Government through the Office of the County Executive, is an honorary one-year position selecting a young author from the Howard County area, ages 14–21, who demonstrates a passion for poetry and its power to connect our communities through local public readings and participation in civic events. Applications for this second term were accepted from January to May this year, and reviewed by an independent artistic review panel coordinated by HoCoPoLitSo and made up of local poets and educators Ashley Elizabeth, Naomi Ayala, and Sylvia Jones. Acting on the panel’s recommendation, the next Youth Poet Laureate will be formally appointed by the County Executive to act as an ambassador for literacy, arts, and youth expression.

This event is free and open to the public, but requires registration to attend: please click here to register.

HoCoPoLitSo welcomes all to the September edition of the Wilde Reading Series, which this year proudly opens its tenth season of highlighting local authors in Howard County. This month’s reading features Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson and Danuta Hinc, hosted by Ann Bracken. Please join us at independent bookstore Queen Takes Book on Tuesday, September 9th 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, and sign up when you arrive.

Below, get to know Elizabeth and Danuta!

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

Elizabeth: My grandmother. She died in a tragic way in the 1960s before I was born, and it was a family secret for decades. I’ve long understood that her death had a ripple effect on me and my family, and I’ve written several essays about her in an effort to understand who she was and what happened.

Danuta: In When We Were Twins, the figure who returns again and again is my mother. Her story of delivering my twin sisters, Hanna and Mariola—who were born three years before me and who lived for only ten days—was one of those family narratives I carried with me from childhood, though it was often wrapped in silence. That brief and fragile life, and the way my mother bore it, became the quiet undertow of the novel, in Taher’s mother, Laila. Writing it, I felt as though I was reaching toward a presence I had never truly known, yet one that shaped me profoundly. The sisters who were absent and yet always there, their absence rippling through my mother’s body, her memory, and my own beginnings.

In my novel-in-progress, Sisters, the circle widens. Here it is not only my mother’s voice but my whole family that steps into the light—my parents, my grandparents, and most of all, my sister, Olka, Aleksandra. She was my constant companion and, in many ways, my first co-creator of stories. We grew up together in Poland at a time of political tension and silence, but our own bond was full of invention, curiosity, and defiance. When I write about her, I feel I am also writing about that primal closeness between siblings, the way we are each other’s mirrors, rivals, guardians, and witnesses. In Olka, and in the family who shaped both of us, I find the wellspring of the questions that drive my work, how memory is carried, how history lives in the body, and how love binds us through even the most difficult silences.

Where is your favorite place to write?

Elizabeth: I need quiet when I write. I can’t get anything done in a busy cafe, for instance, because I’m easily distracted and I absorb the energy around me. I write in my home office mostly. But my all-time favorite place to write is when I take myself to my favorite state park in Western Maryland and I get to write in the cabins there in front of a crackling wood stove surrounded by nature.

Danuta: I have two places that anchor me when it comes to writing. One is my home in the suburbs of Annapolis, where the familiar rhythm of the seasons and the quiet order of daily life give me steadiness. The other is our condo on the beach in Ocean City, Maryland, where the horizon of water and sky seems to stretch language itself, reminding me of the vastness that stories can hold. These are the places where I return, where the work continues steadily.

And yet, over the years, I have learned that what inspires me most deeply is not the familiar but the unsettled—the act of moving, of inhabiting new spaces that are not quite mine. Being in a new place shakes me open. It makes me notice differently, listen more closely, and enter into a kind of heightened attention that is essential for writing. Most recently, it was Africa, where we spent the month of June traveling along the West Coast, visiting nine countries. Each day offered a new cadence, a new rhythm, a new way of seeing. Before that it was Indonesia and Australia, where we spent a month in 2023, and earlier still, the Mediterranean, where we spent three weeks surrounded by a history layered with myth.

I always carry notebooks with me when I travel. Sometimes the notes are directly about the landscapes and encounters I experience, but often they begin to circle back to the novel I am working on at the time. What I discover is that travel doesn’t take me away from my writing—it folds into it, expands it. Movement, displacement, and the encounter with elsewhere always return me to the deeper questions I am exploring in fiction–memory, belonging, silence, and the way stories migrate across borders and time.

Do you have any consistent pre-writing rituals?

Elizabeth: I tend to set the stage by clearing my desk and lighting an unscented candle. I’ll have water and coffee or tea. And I’ll sometimes play what I think of as “transition music” to get me grounded, usually music by Stan Getz or Erik Satie or François Couperin. But when I write, I need silence.

Danuta: Reading has always been my most faithful ritual. Before I write, I read—not necessarily books directly related to what I am working on, but words that remind me of what language can do. A poem, a page of philosophy, a fragment of fiction, they open the door, set my mind into motion, remind me that writing is part of a long conversation that stretches across centuries. Reading is the way I tune my instrument before I begin to play.

Another ritual, though less deliberate, is not eating. I think most clearly when I am slightly hungry, when the body is alert rather than satisfied. The clarity of thought, the sharpness of images, the way ideas connect to one another, these come most vividly to me in that state of attentiveness. Over time, I even changed my diet to keep my brain sharp, learning how profoundly the body influences the mind.

In some ways, these rituals are small acts of silence and restraint—reading before speaking, withholding before consuming. They echo the themes that shape my work, listening before telling, holding absence before filling it. Writing asks for that kind of pause, the interval in which something unspoken can rise to the surface.

Who always gets a first read?

Elizabeth: I don’t have a standard first reader. It depends on the project. Sometimes it’s the editor I’m working with. Sometimes it’s a fellow writer who I trust. Because I write journalism, essay, memoir, short fiction, and longform nonfiction books, I tend to switch up who reads my work first.

Danuta: My husband, Tim, is always the first reader. He is, quite simply, a superb gift to my writing. His honesty is unwavering. He never avoids the difficult or probing question, never offers easy praise in place of real engagement. What he gives me instead is insight, the kind that comes from reading deeply, from taking literature apart with the precision of someone who studies and teaches it, even though his profession is engineering. He reads with rigor, with clarity, and with a sensitivity that pushes me to see the work more fully than I could on my own.

The next reader is my son, Alex, whose relationship with books astonishes me. He is thirty years younger than I am, and yet I sometimes think he has already read more than I ever will. His reading is wide, sophisticated, and fearless. He discusses literature on a level that both humbles and inspires me, and his way of seeing connections—between texts, between ideas, between worlds—reminds me that literature itself is an endless conversation.

To place a manuscript in their hands is both terrifying and consoling. Terrifying because I know they will see the work without illusions, and consoling because their vision is what steadies mine. Writing is solitary, but in these first readings, I find the essential witness, someone to hold the silence with me, and then break it with truth.

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

Elizabeth: So many! But I’ll pick two: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard and One Man’s Meat by E.B. White.

Danuta: I rarely read books more than once. There are simply too many waiting for me, and time feels far too short. When I read a book I love, I often tell myself I will return to it, but almost always I move forward instead, following the long line of unread voices that call.

What I do find myself doing, however, is reading a book in Polish, and then again in English translation. Perhaps that counts as reading it twice. But what interests me most in that repetition is not the comfort of familiarity, but the difference—the way language transforms the same thought, the same image, into something subtly or even profoundly new. Translation fascinates me, how one text flows into another like water through a different channel, carrying with it both what remains and what shifts.

This preoccupation has followed me into my novel-in-progress, Sisters. In Part V, I imagine a correspondence between Saint Paul and Saint Thomas, letters that never existed but that I invent. Writing them has drawn me back to the Bible and the ways it has moved across languages: Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, English, Polish. Each translation both preserves and alters, both reveals and conceals. It is this paradox—the possibility that words can both endure and transform—that keeps me thinking about language itself as the great unfinished text, one that none of us can ever read just once.

What is the most memorable reading you have attended?

Elizabeth: I saw the poet Rita Dove speak at the University of Buffalo in the 1990s and she was transcendent.

Danuta: There have been too many to name, but a few rise instantly to the surface. The first was hearing Czesław Miłosz read at the Library of Congress in the 1990s. For me, it was like stepping across an invisible border. In high school and college in Poland, his work had been banned, his voice officially silenced by the communist government. To sit in Washington, D.C., a decade later, and listen to him read his own words aloud—it felt like touching something sacred, as though history itself had shifted and allowed what had once been forbidden to return in the most direct and human form.

Another unforgettable moment was a conversation between Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott. Listening to them, I felt an overwhelming sense of intimacy with greatness. It wasn’t only their poetry that moved me, but the generosity of their presence, the way they spoke to one another as peers and friends. I fell in love with both of them in that conversation, their voices, their wisdom, their humanity.

And then, more recently, Olga Tokarczuk at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C., just a year before she received the Nobel Prize in Literature. I was impressed not only by her luminous intelligence, but also by her translator, Jennifer Croft, whose voice carried the work across languages with such care and brilliance. That evening reminded me again how literature is never a solitary act, but a dialogue, a movement between writer and reader, author and translator, silence and speech.

• Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson is the author of the critically-acclaimed book Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free, which came out in June from Simon & Schuster. Named a New York Times Editors’ Choice, an Amazon Editor’s pick for Best History, and a must-read book featured in Oprah Daily, The Atlantic, Elle, Forbes, Harper’s Bazaar, and on NPR’s All Things Considered, among many others, the book has been hailed as an exceptional biography and an essential read that “puts the American fashion icon Claire McCardell back in the pantheon,” according to The New York Times Book Review.

Elizabeth can be found online at eedickinson.com, and on Instagram @elizabethevittsdickinson.

• Danuta Hinc is a Polish American novelist and essayist, author of When We Were Twins, praised by Kirkus Reviews as “a subtle psychological snapshot of radicalization.” Her work has appeared in Literary Hub, Washingtonian, Popula, and Consequence Magazine. She holds an M.A. from the University of Gdańsk and an M.F.A. from Bennington College. A recipient of the Barry Hannah Merit Scholarship, she is a Principal Lecturer in English at the University of Maryland.

Danuta’s online presence includes danutahinc.com, danuta.substack.com, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

HoCoPoLitSo welcomes all to the May edition of the Wilde Reading Series, with Howard County Youth Poet Laureate Mai-Anh Nguyen and Leona Sevick, hosted by Ann Bracken. Please join us at independent bookstore Queen Takes Book on Tuesday, June 10th at 7 p.m., at 6955 Oakland Mills Rd, Suite E, Columbia MD, 21045. Please note this event is the final Wilde Reading for this year’s season; the monthly event is expected to resume in September, and will again be presented at Queen Takes Book.

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 Mai-Anh and Leona!

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

Mai-Anh: I often feel uncomfortable writing about real people or even taking inspiration from my interactions with my friends and family—unfortunately for anyone who attends my readings, this means that the majority of my poetry is centered around myself. I like to say that I write about the intricacies of being a teenage girl, something I would say I am an expert on.

Leona: My answer to this question has changed over time, but I have always written most about some member of my family. At first, my children featured prominently in my work. With my father’s death a year ago, he has occupied much of my mental and writing space in my recent work.

Where is your favorite place to write?

Mai-Anh: Most of my writing is done in the comfort of my room, more specifically bundled up in my bed. I believe the words flow best there, in the place between dreams and waking.

Leona: I have a second story porch with comfortable Adirondack chairs. I call this place my “writing porch.” I also write at my kitchen table.

Do you have any consistent pre-writing rituals?

Mai-Anh: I don’t think there’s anything special about my writing process. The majority of my poems begin at the end—meaning I typically think of the last line first, then work around it.

Leona: I always read a poem or two in a journal I love in order to prepare me for writing.

Who always gets a first read?

Mai-Anh: I typically keep my poems to myself until I read them in front of an audience, like ripping off a band-aid.

Leona: My friend, the poet Lauren Alleyne, almost always gets first read.

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

Mai-Anh: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I own two copies and hope to collect more in the future. With every reread, I feel as though I discover a new emotion or joke within the pages that I had failed to notice before. I would recommend it to anyone and everyone.

Leona: Sharon Olds’ Stag’s Leap.

What is the most memorable reading you have attended?

Mai-Anh: I’ve attended very few live poetry readings, but my favorite so far has been a reading by a good friend who was published in the first edition of Navigating the Margins.

Leona: I had the great pleasure just last week of hearing Andre Dubus III read at the Longleaf Writers Conference. That reading from his memoir will stick with me for a long time.

• Mai-Anh Nguyen is currently a junior at Oakland Mills High School, where she serves as the president of the National Art Honor Society and participates in orchestra, Youth Climate Institute, and Spanish National Honor Society. Mai-Anh was appointed as the inaugural Howard County Youth Poet Laureate in the 2024–2025 academic year. In her free time, she enjoys playing tennis, drawing, and writing.

• Leona Sevick‘s work appears in Orion, Birmingham Poetry Review, Blackbird, The Southern Review, and The Sun. Leona serves on the advisory board of the Furious Flower Black Poetry Center and is provost and professor of English at Bridgewater College in Virginia, where she teaches Asian-American literature. She is the 2017 Press 53 Poetry Award Winner for her first full-length book of poems, Lion Brothers. Her second collection of poems, The Bamboo Wife, is published by Trio House Press (2024). Leona’s home page is leonasevick.com.

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.

Welcoming Kwame Alexander, Lady Brion, and many more to Columbia’s Merriweather District

Since 2017, the must-attend Books in Bloom Festival, presented by Howard Hughes Holdings and the Downtown Columbia Partnership, in Color Burst Park in Columbia’s Merriweather District, has offered attendees the chance to meet their favorite authors, discover new books, and participate in a variety of interactive experiences for all ages. HoCoPoLitSo is proud to have the opportunity to sponsor this year’s festival, on Saturday, May 10th, 2025, through funding generously received from Maryland Humanities.

We hope that you will join us for the day’s celebrations, featuring a lineup of authors including: Kwame Alexander, Eric Puchner, Laurie Frankel, Andy Shallal, Sue Fliess, Ann Marie Stephens, E. Ethelbert Miller, Howard County Poet Laureate Truth Thomas and Youth Poet Laureate Mai-Anh Nguyen, and Maryland Poet Laureate Lady Brion. The event is free and open to the public, RSVP requested.

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.

HoCoPoLitSo’s sponsor of Books in Bloom 2025 is made possible through Maryland Humanities’ Marilyn Hatza Memorial SHINE grant, 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. #MDHumanities @MDHumanities

The Howard County Youth Poet Laureate program last year proudly welcomed Mai-Anh Nguyen as the inaugural appointee, at the announcement held in Busboys and Poets, Columbia. Since then, Mai-Anh has been heard at numerous events throughout the county, in her role as a voice for youth expression and the literary arts. In a recent interview with Howard County Arts Council, Mai-Anh said the best part of her term so far has been, “When my classmates and teachers become interested in poetry after seeing me on the news. I like having people ask me, ‘can you write something like this?'”

The Youth Poet Laureate is an honorary position, formally appointed by the County Executive to a one-year term, participating in public events and readings across the county. Eligible applicants are aged 14–21 and either live in or are able to present at in-person events in Howard County, such as from a nearby college. The next Youth Poet Laureate will serve from September 2025 – July 2026, and receives an honorarium of $500. Eligible candidates can submit their own applications, open NOW and due Friday, May 9, 2025.

To anyone thinking of applying, Mai-Anh wants “to encourage people to try, whether you’ve just started or have been interested in poetry for a long time. You never know until you take a leap.”

Click here to apply!

The Howard County Poet Laureate and Youth Poet Laureate programs are a partnership of HoCoPoLitSo, Howard County Arts Council, and Howard County Government through the Office of County Executive Calvin Ball. Full program guidelines can be found on Howard County Arts Council’s “Grants for Artists” homepage; for questions or technical issues concerning the application process, please contact grantsandprojects@hocoarts.org or by phone call to (410) 313-2787 during regular business hours.