<![CDATA[SHORE LIT - newsletter archive]]>

<![CDATA[SHORE LIT - newsletter archive]]>Thu, 26 Mar 2026 01:03:38 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Shore Lit Newsletter June 2023]]>Tue, 06 Jun 2023 18:09:02 GMThttps://www.shorelit.org/newsletter-archive/shore-lit-newsletter-june-2023

What I’m Up To:

On Saturday June 17, the town of Easton will host the second annual Delmarva Pride Festival, and I’m thrilled to announce that Shore Lit will be participating with a Pride Pop-Up Bookshop celebrating queer stories for everyone.

We’re partnering with our friends at The Ivy, the cherished Baltimore bookstore, whose brilliant booksellers have put together a stellar collection of titles with queer and trans themes for you to browse and shop. There is truly something for everyone: romance, sci-fi, memoir, children’s, YA, poetry, literary fiction… you name it.

We’re especially excited that award-winning author and illustrator Elizabeth Lilly will be joining us in the afternoon to chat and sign books! Elizabeth’s work for children deals with the difficulty of understanding and loving yourself: Geraldine is about a lonely giraffe navigating life in a human school, while Let Me Fix You a Plate is about the food and love in her dual Colombian and American cultures. Elizabeth finds pride and joy in her identity as a lesbian, bi-racial, Colombian Latina, and she’s put together a curated capsule featuring some of her own favorite inspiring YA and picture books. Stop by and say hi!

Book-ban attempts aimed at LGBTQ+ content are soaring: seven out of the American Library Association’s top thirteen most challenged books feature queer stories. Shore Lit stands in defense of literary freedom with PEN America and the ALA, who remind us that banning books is “an attack on every person’s constitutionally protected right to freely choose what books to read and what ideas to explore.”

Free people read freely, y’all. So this month I’m making a point to read some of these frequently banned titles (descriptions pulled from the internet):

Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe. ALA Alex Award winner and Stonewall-Israel Fishman Non-fiction Award Honor Book. “Started as a way to explain to the author’s family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity–what it means and how to think about it–for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.”

All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson. New York Times bestseller. “In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson explores their childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia.”

Flamer by Mike Curato. Lambda Literary Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature. “It's the summer between middle school and high school, and Aiden Navarro is away at camp. Everyone's going through changes―but for Aiden, the stakes feel higher. Award-winning author and artist Mike Curato draws on his own experiences in his debut graphic novel.”

Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison. ALA Alex Award winner. “For Mike Muñoz, life has been a whole lot of waiting for something to happen. Not too many years out of high school and still doing menial work–and just fired from his latest gig as a lawn boy on a landscaping crew–he’s smart enough to know that he’s got to be the one to shake things up if he’s ever going to change his life.”

This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson. Guardian Best Book of the Year. Garden State Teen Book Award Winner. “There's a long-running joke that after ‘coming out’, a lesbian, gay guy, bisexual, or trans person should receive a membership card and instruction manual. This book is that instruction manual. This candid, funny, and uncensored exploration of sexuality and what it's like to grow up LGBT also includes real stories from people across the gender and sexual spectrums.”

The Walters Choir, Walters Church, Oxford, Maryland, part of the Maryland Spirituals Initiative. Image via the Water’s Edge Museum, Oxford.

What Else I’m Looking Forward To on the Shore This Month:
Film: Sky Hopinka @ Academy Art Museum, Easton
6:00 Tuesday, June 6
Free
The Native filmmaker and MacArthur Genius will present several of his experimental shorts, followed by a Q&A with Salisbury University professor Dr. Ryan Conrath.

Theater: Alice in Wonderland @ Dorchester Center for the Arts, Cambridge
June 8–11
$15 adults; $10 students, Free for children under 5
Produced and performed entirely by local students, Groove Theater’s Student Lab production of Lewis Carrol’s classic is a family-friendly romp through Wonderland.

Lecture & Concert: Maryland Spirituals Initiative Gospel Concert @ The Avalon Theater, Easton
6:00 Saturday, June 17
$10
This unique Juneteenth celebration will feature artist Ruth Starr Rose’s illustrated collection of African American spirituals, which was lost for nearly a century and just recently rediscovered, with lectures from the Water's Edge Museum scholars and a gospel choir performance.

Book Fair: Chesapeake Children’s Book Festival @ Talbot County Free Library, Easton
10:00-2:00 Saturday, June 24
Free
More than 20 children’s book authors and illustrators will be at the library to kick off the 2023 Summer Reading Program. The best part: any kiddo who signs up gets a voucher good for one free book from the attending author of their choice.

]]><![CDATA[Shore Lit Newsletter, May 2023]]>Mon, 01 May 2023 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.shorelit.org/newsletter-archive/shore-lit-newsletter-may-2023

What I’m Up To:

I think a lot about what life in a rural community offers us that life in the city can’t. When I left New York, I hoped I would be trading quantity for quality. That has turned out to be true for me.

While I had access to so much in New York, I found, after a while, that I wasn’t really absorbing any of it. For me, the gift of living in a small town is time and attention. Both are more abundant here, and I can afford to be more generous with each than I ever could in the city. My life is richer as a result.

The same principle applies to Shore Lit. As a one-person organization, I will never be able to produce the number of events a great city bookstore does. But that was never the point. My hope in starting Shore Lit was to offer this community a way to connect through literature—to read excellent books we may not have otherwise discovered, and to discuss the ideas presented in those books with our neighbors in a setting that encourages curiosity. It’s about the conversations, as much as it’s about the content.

With that in mind, I’m experimenting with a new community conversation series this summer. Academy Art Museum Director Sarah Jesse and I will be leading a Summer Book Club in the AAM galleries—one book each month that coincides with the themes of an AAM exhibition.

These conversations will be intimate, 15 to 20 people tops (depending on the size of the gallery), giving participants the chance to connect with one another and to share their responses, interpretations, and questions about the work—both the art work on the walls, and the text we’re reading. Sarah and I will give some background on each, and we’ll offer some guided questions, but we won’t be lecturing. We imagine these as facilitated conversations, rather than formal talks. All are free (though registration is required for planning purposes), and books are available for purchase at AAM. I hope you’ll join us!

What Else I’m Reading

To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf. I’ve joined A Public Space’s APS Together reading group, led by novelist Mona Simpson, to work through Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece this month. It’s like being back in school, in the best possible way.

River House, Sally Keith. An elegy for the speaker’s mother and a metaphor for the imperative of life after loss. I cried, and then I read these poems again start to finish.

How To Do Nothing, Jenny Odell. I finally got around to this buzzy 2020 book about “the attention economy.” I had been expecting something softer, more self-helpy, and was pleasantly surprised at the intellectual rigor and insight Odell brings to the topic.

Bonus: Use code BANNEDBOOKS10 to get 10% off orders at Bookshop.org all month long.

What Else I’m Looking Forward To on the Shore This Month:

Multicultural Festival @ Idlewild Park, Easton
10:00-2:00 Saturday, May 6
Free
A beloved family event returns with music, artisanal goods, and, of course, food: Haitian, Salvadoran, Indian, and Pakistani options will be available (plus hot dogs, sausages, snow cones, and ice cream).

Performance: Hoesy Corona’s Terrestrial Caravan @ Adkins Arboretum, Ridgley
1:00 Sunday, May 7
Free
Complementing his site-specific atrium installation currently on view at the Academy Art Museum, Corona will conduct a performance piece in which performers wearing his climate ponchos will walk the Arboretum grounds.

Theater: The National Theater’s King Lear @ The Avalon Theater, Easton
1:00 Saturday, May 13
$15
DC’s Shakespeare Theater just set the bar for modern adaptations of Lear with Simon Godwin’s record-breaking spring 2023 production. See how Ian McKlellan’s performance compares in this replay from the London stage’s 2018 version.

Book Talk: David Sedaris @ Browseabout Books, Rehoboth Beach
6:00 Tuesday, May 30
$18.99 (includes a paperback copy of Happy-Go-Lucky)
If you missed everyone’s favorite Christmas elf at The Avalon last fall, you can catch him on the paperback tour for Happy-Go-Lucky. But the best part of a Sedaris event may very well be the signing line, where he chats and jokes with every last fan.

]]><![CDATA[Shore Lit Newsletter April 2023]]>Sat, 01 Apr 2023 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.shorelit.org/newsletter-archive/shore-lit-april-newsletter

What I’m Up To:
I came late to poetry. Though I was always a hungry reader, the poetry I was exposed to in school was old and, it seemed to me then, boring. I didn’t get it. It wasn’t until I was in graduate school for creative writing, when I was suddenly surrounded by young writers talking seriously about craft and constantly swapping their favorite poems, that I began to really read it. I’ve come to love poetry’s mix of playfulness and precision. It’s still the genre I have to work hardest at, but it’s now as essential to my reading life as prose.

So this year, in celebration of National Poetry Month, I’m particularly excited to be partnering with the Talbot County Free Library and The Shore Poetry journal to present a special eco-poetry event. We’re bringing together fifteen fantastic poets—all previous contributors to The Shore Poetry—on Earth Day to share work that engages with the theme of place and our human impact on it.

Even if you don’t think you’re a “poetry person” (maybe especially if you don’t think you’re a poetry person), I hope you’ll join us for this fun, casual event. Come as you are, stay for one poem or the whole show, and check out some of the most exciting contemporary poetry being created in our region.

What Else I’m Reading:

What Lies in the Woods, Kate Alice Marshall. Murder mysteries are my guilty pleasure, though I try to avoid the more lurid “dead girl” narratives and to look for writers who pay as much attention to language as they do plot and character. Kate Alice Marshall checks all my boxes.

When We Were Sisters, Fatimah Ashgar. What happens to ordinary orphans, the ones without superpowers? the protagonist asks. This lyric novel describes life in the margins for three Muslim-American siblings. I’ll be at the TEDI bookclub discussion coming up on April 13, and hope to see some of you there!

Above Ground: Poems, Clint Smith. The author of the required reading How the Word Is Passed—2021’s nonfiction exploration of the ways African American history is preserved and erased—has a new book of poems that grapple with hope, disappointment, and endurance.

Breaking Form podcast, James Allen Hall & Aaron Smith. Described to me by Dr. Hall as a “dirty, gay poetry podcast,” this clever, raunchy, and hilarious show is all I want to listen to recently. The hosts make a point to say that they’re “not for everybody,” but I’d recommend them to anyone who wants to see what poetry looks like out of the classroom, in the hot and messy real world.

Kent County Poetry Festival:
1:00 Saturday, April 1: Local Celebrity Poets with James Allen Hall @ The Raimond Center
7:00 Saturday, April 1: Patricia Spears Jones in conversation with Maureen Corrigan @ Norman James Theater, Washington College
2:00-5:00 Sunday, April 2: Open-Mic Poetry @ Robert Ortiz Studio
A full weekend of free poetry events in Chestertown. (I’m trying to get up the nerve to read at the open mic.)

Film: The Quiet Girl @ Cinema Art Theater, Lewes
6:00 Wednesday, April 5
$9.00 RBFS Members, $11.50 General, $5.00 Student
This gorgeous adaptation of Claire Keegan’s novella Foster got an Oscar nom for Best International Feature. It’s been hard to find on the Shore, but the Rehoboth Beach Film Society is screening it this month.

Lecture: “Friends ‘til the End: Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell” @ TCFL, Easton
6:00 Thursday, April 13
Free
Local poet and Pulitzer-prize nominee Sue Ellen Thompson will discuss the very close friendship between two of the 20th century's greatest poets.

Exhibition Opening: In Praise of Shadows & LaToya Hobbs: Woodcuts @ Academy Art Museum, Easton
10:00-4:00 Saturday, April 22
Free
Two excellent-looking new shows are opening at AAM this month: In Praise of Shadows presents works on paper by big-name artists like Dox Thrash and Louise Nevelson, and LaToya Hobbs: Woodcuts features large-scale woodcuts by the Baltimore-based artist, who will offer a lecture on her process and influences at the opening.

]]><![CDATA[Shore Lit Newsletter March 2023]]>Mon, 27 Mar 2023 16:10:31 GMThttps://www.shorelit.org/newsletter-archive/shore-lit-newsletter-march-2023

What We’re Up To This Month:
I discovered Lawrence Weschler in 2006 while interning at McSweeney’s, the indie house that had just published his award-winning essay collection Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences. In it, he explores images, forms, and compositions found in life that seem also to repeat throughout art history: Rothko’s 1969 black and white colorblocks mirroring newspaper covers from that year’s moon landing; Joel Meyerowitz’s photograph of a 9/11 first responder echoing Valezquez’s rendering of the god of war. Art, imitating life, imitating art.

The interns at McSweeney’s are not paid, or they weren’t then, but they are invited on their last day to help themselves to a few books from the office stock, which is how I came to own that volume (which is, sadly, now out of print). I flipped through it, fascinated, and then put it on my bookshelf for a decade. It wasn’t until grad school that I truly got to know his writing, when a professor assigned his seminal essay “Vermeer in Bosnia.” In it, he draws connections between the Vermeer paintings he observed hanging in the Mauritshuis Museum and the Yugoslav war-crimes tribunal he was covering nearby in The Hague. He concludes, startlingly and convincingly, that these apparently incomparable things are in fact remarkably similar: they are both about finding interior peace in the face of ravaging violence.

This is, I now know, Weschler’s specialty: pairing seemingly unrelated things to revelatory effect. I was stunned by the power of his insights as well as the openness of his prose. In refreshing contrast to the tight-fisted academic exegeses I was used to, Weschler’s essays are rangy conversations, brilliant and accessible, illuminating and human-scaled. I had found my new favorite essayist.

Of course, I’m not alone there. Lawrence Weschler is a legend. He was a staff writer at the New Yorker for more than twenty years, twice winning the George Polk Award for reporting, and the author of more books than I can name. His work has won the National Book Critics Circle Award and been shortlisted for the Pulitzer, and in forty-plus years of trying to make sense of the comedies and tragedies of this world through his writing, he has yet to slow down. His new biweekly substack, Wondercabinet, is fantastic, and he continues to write books, articles, and exhibition catalogues at a dizzying pace. (His article on the record-breaking Vermeer exhibition at the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam is due out this week or next in the Atlantic.)

So imagine my surprise to find an email from him in my inbox a few months ago. He had, apparently, stumbled across an essay about his work I had written some years ago for the Los Angeles Review of Books and reached out to introduce himself. It was like getting a letter from Santa Clause, or the President. Elated, I asked him if he would consider coming to Easton as a Shore Lit visiting writer, and—I can still hardly believe this—he said yes.

A huge thank you to the Academy Art Museum and George Mason University for making this program possible. Seeing Lawrence Weschler speak about his work in person is a bucket-list moment for me, and I am beyond thrilled that it is happening here, on the Shore. He'll be lecturing at 6:00, Friday, March 3 at AAM; I hope you are all able to join us for what’s sure to be an incredible evening.

What Else I’m Reading this Month:

Night of the Living Rez, Morgan Talty. Set on a Penobscot reservation in Maine, this story collection has been racking up award noms. Talty combines gritty materiality with humor, offering an irreverent Indigenous narrative that rejects sentimentality—even as it examines the complexities of addiction, poverty, and intergenerational trauma.

This Time Tomorrow, Emma Straub. Reliably, Straub hits that sweet spot between clever and warm-hearted. In this novel, 40-year-old Alice time travels back in time to her 16-year-old life and is given the chance to change the trajectory of her father’s future.

Still Pictures, Janet Malcolm. The legendary journalist looks back at her own life through a series of snapshots, which function more as metaphor than documentary. Though spare, Malcolm’s memoir is relentlessly elegant. To wit: “The events of our lives are like photographic negatives. The few that make it into the developing solution and become photographs are what we call our memoirs.”

What Else I’m Looking Forward to on the Shore this Month:

Film: Women Talking @ Regal Cinema, Salisbury
March 4-9, various showtimes
$12-$18
Sarah Polley stacked her film adaptation of Miriam Toews’s novel with serious heavy hitters: Rooney Mara, Frances McDormand, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley. Skipping the Shore entirely in its original release, it’s playing on just a few dates this month in the run-up to the Oscars.

Reading & Workshop: Meredith Davies Hadaway, Sophie-Kerr Poet-in-Residence, Rose O'Neill Literary House, Washington College, Chestertown
5:30 Tuesday, March 7
Free
Meredith Davies Hadaway has published three collections of poetry, including At the Narrows, winner of the Delmarva Book Prize, as well as essays and reviews for anthologies and journals. She'll read from her work, and then lead a generative writing workshop.

Music: Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra March Concert, Easton Church of God, Easton
7:30 Thursday, March 9
$50
Elizabeth Song, winner of the Elizabeth Loker Concerto Competition, will be the featured soloist for performances of Johannes Brahms's Tragic Overture and Florence Price's Symphony No. 1 in E Minor.

Exhibition Opening: “State of the Art” and "Bill Wolf Sculpture," Dorchester Center for the Arts, Cambridge
5:00-7:00 Saturday, March 11
Free
Dorchester Center for the Arts presents the exhibit State of the Art in partnership with the University of Maryland Global
Campus and the American Poetry Museum. Bill Wolf: Sculpture will be on display in the upstairs performance hall. The Sagacious Traveler will be performing at the opening reception, part of Cambridge's Second Saturday arts celebration.

Theater: Fun Home @ Black Box Theater, Salisbury
Thursday, March 9-Sunday, March 12
$20 general public (discounts for students, seniors, faculty)
Adapted from Alison Bechdel’s extraordinary graphic memoir of the same name, this Tony Award-winning musical charts young Bechdel’s relationship with her closeted homosexual father, who runs a funeral parlor out of the family’s home.

Exhibition: Fractured Modernities: Contemporary Turkish Art @ Academy Art Museum, Easton
On view through April 16
Free
Turkish-born curator Mehves Lelic has selected four contemporary artists whose work collectively demonstrates the exhaustion and joy of living and making art under authoritarian rule.

Support Shore Lit's Programs:One of our core values is building inclusive community. For that reason, Shore Lit events are always free. To keep them that way, we are grateful to newsletter subscribers like you who help fund our programs. If you have the means and you value our mission of bringing literary authors to the Eastern Shore, please consider a $25 gift to support our programs. If you have more or less to offer, we are grateful for your generosity; no gift is too big or too small. If you aren’t in a position to offer monetary support, you remain a crucial part of this community, and we thank all of you for your consideration.

Donate Now

Shore Lit aims to enhance cultural offerings on the Eastern Shore with free community author events. This newsletter is written by Shore Lit Founder and Director Kerry Folan.

]]><![CDATA[Shore Lit Newsletter February 2023]]>Wed, 01 Feb 2023 08:00:00 GMThttps://www.shorelit.org/newsletter-archive/shore-lit-newsletter-february-2023

Reserve Your Seat for Jung Yun @ AAM!

What I’m Up To This Month:
Next week, for our first event of the spring season, Jung Yun will be in town to discuss her fantastic novel O Beautiful. I couldn’t be looking forward to this book talk more.

This was one of my favorite reads of 2022 for a couple reasons, including the protagonist, who is unlike any fictional heroine I’ve met. A quick synopsis: Now in her forties, newly minted journalist Elinor Hanson returns home to North Dakota to write about the impact of the oil boom on the state. Elinor is complex—both tough and vulnerable, ambitious and self-destructive, like many women I know in real life, and I can’t wait to talk to Jung about how she managed to craft such a realistic and compelling heroine.

I also love the way this novel refuses to make villains out of ordinary people, or to take sides in the complicated arguments over ownership and belonging the oil boom exacerbated in small towns suddenly overrun with itinerant workers. Race, class, gender, and violence are considered thoughtfully and with empathy for all involved, broadening the conversation, rather than shutting it down. For more pre-game chat, click through to my interview with Jung in the Talbot Spy. And don’t forget to reserve your seat!

What Else I’m Reading:

The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett. This elegant novel is about twins, identity, racial passing, and choices you can’t take back. Trying desperately to finish in time for the TEDI bookclub meeting at the library on Thursday, Feb. 2!
The Crane Wife, CJ Hauser. The title essay (which went viral in 2019) examines the ending of the writer’s engagement through the lens of the famous folk tale. This brainy, poignant collection expands beautifully on that theme.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin. 2022’s favorite novel lives up to the hype. Come for themes of friendship, collaboration, and creativity delightfully explored; stay for the ‘90s video game nostalgia. Bonus: The audiobook narrator is terrific.

What Else I’m Looking Forward To This Month:
Lecture: “Bear Me Into Freedom” with Jeffrey C. McGuiness @ Talbot Historical Society, Easton
1:00 Wednesday Feb. 1
Free THS, $5 non-members
The photographer discusses his project documenting Frederick Douglass’s Talbot County.

Theater: Tree Avon Players presents Time Stands Still @ Oxford Community Center
February 16-26
$25 general admission; $15 students
This contemporary drama, which revolves around a photojournalist injured in the Iraq war and her reporter boyfriend, won Laura Linney a Tony nod back in 2010.

Artist Talk: Cheryl Warrick @ Academy Art Museum, Easton
5:30 Saturday Feb. 18
Known for organic forms and abstract maximalism, the artist will discuss the work currently on view in AAM’s Abstract Surge exhibition.

Film: African American Film Festival @ Cinema Art Theater, Lewes
Feb 17-19
$10 per film general admission; $5 for students
Back after a COVID hiatus, the AAFC screens feature-length and short documentaries spotlighting African American culture.

Support Shore Lit’s Programs:
One of our core values is building inclusive community. For that reason, Shore Lit events are always free. To keep them that way, we are grateful to newsletter subscribers like you who help fund our programs. If you have the means and you value our mission of bringing literary authors to the Eastern Shore, please consider a $25 gift to support our programs. If you have more or less to offer, we are grateful for your generosity; no gift is too big or too small. If you aren’t in a position to offer monetary support, you remain a crucial part of this community, and we thank all of you for your consideration.

Donate Now

Shore Lit aims to enhance cultural offerings on the Eastern Shore with free community author events. This newsletter is written by Shore Lit Founder and Director Kerry Folan.

]]><![CDATA[Shore Lit Newsletter January 2023]]>Sun, 01 Jan 2023 08:00:00 GMThttps://www.shorelit.org/newsletter-archive/shore-lit-newsletter-january-2023Announcing Our Spring Line-Up: Save the Dates!

What I’m Up To:
Happy new year! We are just about to enter the deepest, darkest part of winter—or, as I like to call it, reading season. As things slow down this time of year, the world seems to give us permission to get quiet, stay in, and cozy up with a good book. I find I read more in January than I do pretty much any other time of year. You know that Scandinavian saying, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing,”? My version would be something like, “no bad weather, only bad books.”

As you prep your own TBR piles and select your book-club reads for the upcoming months, here are two I highly recommend: Jung Yun’s fantastic novel O, Beautiful and Lawrence Weschler’s mind-blowing book of essays, Everything that Rises. Shore Lit is hosting both of these incredible authors in partnership with the Academy Museum of Art this season and we hope to see many of you there!
Also, please save the date for Saturday, April 22—Earth Day. We are working on a very special eco-poetry event, presented in collaboration with The Shore Poetry journal and Talbot County Free Library, featuring several fantastic poets. More details to come on that soon! For now, keep scrolling for more info on our spring events at AAM.

Jung Yun, O Beautiful
6:00 Thursday February 9 @ Academy Art Museum
Free
Jung Yun was born in Seoul, South Korea, and grew up in Fargo, North Dakota. Her first novel, Shelter (2017, Picador), was a Finalist for the 2016 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, the Good Reads Best Fiction Book of the Year, the Boston Authors Club's Julia Ward Howe Award, and long-listed for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. Her most recent novel, O Beautiful (2021, St. Martin’s Press), interrogates the North Dakota oil boom through the lens of Elinor Hanson, a half-Korean, half-caucasian journalist who returns home to write about changes in the Bakken. The book is a New York Times editor’s choice selection and one of the San Francisco Chronicle’s “15 Best Books of 2021.” Yun will be in conversation with Shore Lit Founder Kerry Folan.

Lawrence Weschler, Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences
6:00 Friday March 3 @ Academy Art Museum
Free
From a cuneiform tablet to a Chicago prison, from the depths of the cosmos to the text on our T-shirts, art historian and journalist Lawrence Weschler finds strange connections wherever he looks. Weschler, a staff writer at the New Yorker from 1981-2002, combines his keen insights into art, his years of experience as a chronicler of the fall of Communism, and his triumphs and failures as the father of a teenage girl into a freewheeling lecture based on his award-winning book Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences. This event is part of AAM’s Kittredge-Wilson lecture series, made possible by the generous support of Paul Wilson, and presented in partnership with Shore Lit.

What Else I’m Reading:
At least once each winter, usually on a day when it’s particularly horrible outside, I make a fire, pour a bourbon, and indulge in reading a book in a single sitting. It’s a totally luxurious winter indulgence. The trick is to pick a book that is a) utterly compelling from start to finish and b) short enough to complete in an afternoon—which, for me, usually means a narrative-driven novel under 200 pages. Last year was John Banville’s Snow, which was perfect on all levels. From my TBR pile, here are this year’s contenders:
Foster, Claire Keegan (92 pages)—A new novel from an Irish writer critics are comparing to Chekov (!)

Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf (108 pages)—Haven’t read it since high school and am inspired by the new opera to revisit

Train Dreams, Denis Johnson (116 pages)—Never read it, but it was an absolute bible for the fiction writers in my MFA program

Time Is a Mother, Ocean Vuong (113 pages)—Poetry, not fiction, but a buzzed-about book from last year that’s been on my coffee table for months

Madder: A Memoir in Weeds, Marco Wilkinson (183 pages)—Also not fiction, but I was so impressed with Wilkinson’s Fall for the Book author talk I’m willing to make an exception

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital, Lorrie Moore (148 pages)—A classic and a birthday gift from a friend, also been on my coffee table for months

Kick the Latch, Kathryn Scanlan (129 pages)—Based on Leslie Jamison’s review in the New Yorker, this lyric, hybrid fiction-nonfiction book is right up my alley

What Else I’m Looking Forward To on the Shore this Month:

White Noise @ Cinema Arts Theater, Lewes
2:00 Wednesday, January 4
$11.50 General Admission
Bad news is I could only find one theater on the entire Shore screening Noah Baumbach’s highly anticipated adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel. Good news is it’s also available on Netflix as of this month.

Mary Cassatt: Labor and Leisure Opening Reception @ Academy Art Museum, Easton
5:30 Friday, January 20
Free
Some major loans give weight to this exhibition featuring everyone’s favorite American Impressionist. Enjoy drinks and snacks at the opening reception.
Josh Christina Band @ Academy Art Museum, Easton
7:00 Saturday, January 21
$20
WHCP, Cambridge’s public radio station, will soon be expanding to serve the entire Mid-Shore. Hear more about that preceding a high-energy performance by young rockabilly star Josh Christina.
Kameelah Janan Rasheed @ Washington College’s Kohl Gallery, Chestertown
5:30 Monday, January 30
Free
A 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, the multi-media artist kicks off the opening of her Smooooooooooooooth Operator exhibition and winter residency with an artist talk and reception.

Support Shore Lit’s Programs:
One of our core values is building inclusive community. For that reason, Shore Lit events are always free. To keep them that way, we are grateful to newsletter subscribers like you who help fund our programs. If you have the means and you value our mission of bringing literary authors to the Eastern Shore, please consider a $25 gift to support the Fall 2022 program. If you have more or less to offer, we are grateful for your generosity; no gift is too big or too small. If you aren’t in a position to offer monetary support, you remain a crucial part of this community, and we thank all of you for your consideration.

Donate Now

Shore Lit aims to enhance cultural offerings on the Eastern Shore with free community author events. This newsletter is written by Shore Lit Founder and Director Kerry Folan.

]]><![CDATA[Shore Lit December Newsletter]]>Sat, 26 Nov 2022 15:59:18 GMThttps://www.shorelit.org/newsletter-archive/shore-lit-december-newsletter

The Buzzed Word, Ocean City

Bookstores vs. Amazon:
Does it really matter where you buy your holiday gifts?

My proudest moment as an aunt—possibly as a human—is arriving at my mom’s house for a recent family weekend and overhearing my six-year-old nephew say to his little brother, “Aunt Kerry is here! That means it’s time for books.”

My nephews know I will always bring books when I come to visit. So do my friends. Books are my favorite gifts for my people.
If you’re reading this newsletter, books are probably your gifts for your people, too. And, therefore, you are well aware of how tricky this can get living in a rural community like ours, where book-buying options are limited. Especially with the holidays coming up, maybe you have been wondering, as I have: Can’t I just order from Amazon and call it a day?

I spent some time this month reading articles and talking to booksellers, trying to figure out if where we shop for books really matters. And I came away with a clear answer: Yes, it matters quite a lot. No, we shouldn’t shop for books at Amazon.

Here’s what I learned about why it’s worth it to spend your holiday dollars at local, independent bookstores today, on Indies First Saturday, and throughout the season (even when it takes a little extra effort):

Browseabout Books, Rehoboth Beach

Buying Indie Is Better for Authors
“If independent bookstores disappeared, authors would be screwed,” Dennis Johnson, co-founder and publisher of Melville House bookstore and press, told the New York Times in 2021. Journalist William Deresiewicz agrees. His 2020 book Death of the Artist, which examines the impact of technology on the arts, explains why:

Amazon’s online distribution model has changed two critical elements of bookselling. First, their famous algorithm, which recommends titles, narrows the diversity of books online shoppers see. Second, Amazon is willing to sell books at a loss in order to dominate the market. The result is that a handful of super-famous writers benefit from exposure and volume, but everyone else suffers. Deresiewicz points at stats from the Authors’ Guild, who reported a 30 percent drop in the writing income of American authors from 2009 to 2015. It used to be tough to make a living as a writer, he says. Now, it’s almost impossible.

Indie bookstores resist those forces by hand-selling titles staff are passionate about and promoting authors through events. Though authors get paid pretty much the same no matter where their book is sold, most books have a better chance of ever being sold at all through an independent bookstore. “If you want to support debut authors, or mid-list authors, or certain voices, those books are going to be more apparent in an independent bookstore,” Allison Hill, CEO of American Booksellers Association (ABA), told the New York Times.

Buying Indie Is Better for the Publishing Industry
Publishers have always had to produce a few big hits in order to fund the rest of their list, but recently, focus on best-sellers has increased as Amazon’s low-cost model has eaten into publisher profits. The fear among many in the industry is that houses will eventually publish only “safe bets,” rather than taking risks on new and diverse voices.

Indie bookstores support diversity by taking chances on small, independent, and university presses. “We love supporting small presses and first-time novelists,” Susan Kehoe, owner of Browseabout Books in Rehoboth Beach, told me. “If someone on our staff falls in love with a little-known title or author, we can sell hundreds of copies of a book.”

Mickie Meinhardt, owner of The Buzzed Word in Ocean City, elaborated. “Indie bookstore are indispensable to keeping the industry diverse and progressing because they are built on personal recommendations by sellers who are not beholden to the ‘safe’ agenda. They are champions of what they love, which can range across the book spectrum,” she explained over email. “At the Buzzed Word, that means women writers, writers of color, queer writers, and translated literature. It means fantasy series and manga alongside National Book Award–winning fiction and memoir. Without these dedicated booksellers championing othered voices, the industry—and the books on offer—would be very homogenous indeed.”

Buying Indie Is Better for Our Local Communities
Any book lover will happily list off the many ways bookstores have enriched our lives: they inspire us with beautiful spaces, they introduce us to favorite authors and stories, they create occasions to gather and discuss what we’re reading with friends and neighbors. As Jinny Amundson, co-owner of Old Fox Books in Annapolis, put it to me, “A community bookstore shares a collective memory in the minds and hearts of its customers—the smells, and sounds, and how it made them feel. That memory is powerful and long-lasting.”

But ABA CEO Allison Hill points out that there is a practical benefit of supporting indie bookshops, as well. “Approximately 29% of all revenue at independent bookstores immediately recirculates in the local economy, versus only 6% when consumers shop on Amazon,” she told me in an email interview. The owners and booksellers care about the community because “they are the community, so they are in tune with, and responsive to, the community’s needs.” The more we put in, the more we get back.

Old Fox Books, Annapolis

Where To Shop Indie from the Eastern Shore
In short, a good bookstore is more than just a place to buy a book. The bookstores I love create a welcoming space for all kinds of customers, authentically engage their community, and foster conversations around the books they’re excited about. If, like me, you’re convinced that it’s worth the extra effort to place an order from an indie bookshop for your holiday gifts, here are my recs for bookstores on or near the Shore that tick all those boxes—plus one good online option (that’s not Amazon).

Browseabout Books, Rehoboth Beach
302-226-2665
“Browseabout has been a part of the local Rehoboth Beach scene for nearly 50 years. We hire locally, we support local authors and publishers, and we give generously to local nonprofits. We literally exist to serve our community of year-round customers and summer visitors.”--Susan Kehoe, Owner

The Buzzed Word, Ocean City
410-520-4542
“We are entirely queer-women-owned and -run, which is a huge point of pride, and have become known as a queer space in the area. We also heavily center writers of color and have heard many times from visitors of color that they are very glad to see themselves represented in such quantity here. I think we are part of a small sea change happening in this town, helping push it to a more contemporary cultural attitude. Or trying to!”--Mickie Meinhardt, Owner

Old Fox Books, Annapolis
410-337-2966
“What it comes down to is that your indie bookstore is a friend. I know that sounds corny, but it's actually the truth. You can talk to us on the phone, we'll respond to emails, and we'll listen to your stories—the ones you've read and are reading, and the one you're living at the moment. Amazon can't do that. Connecting to others is powerful and long-lasting.”--Jinny Amundson, Co-Owner

BONUS: Bookshop.org
Amundson recommends Bookshop.org if you want to support local but prefer to shop online, as the site allows you to “find” your favorite indie bookstore and shop from its site. “The profit margins for the shop are smaller, but it's a game changer for those small indies that can't afford huge e-commerce sites on their own. The rise in usership on the site also adds more data and analytics for the publishing companies,” she says. Bookshop.org is offering free shipping on all orders Black Friday through Cyber Monday this year.

Editor's Note: The Eastern Shore has a bounty of fantastic used bookstores, which I don’t include in this list. With holiday shopping and gift-giving in mind, all the shops mentioned here specialize in new titles, are able to place special orders for books not in stock, and take advance orders online and/or via phone or email for pick-up in store. Word to the wise: as COVID continues to disrupt supply chains, booksellers are suggesting you shop early this season.

Also, though too far away to be included in this particular round-up, I want to make a special mention of the fantastic Ivy Bookshop in Baltimore, which is reimagining the traditional bookstore as a cultural center and inclusive public space with extensive outdoor gardens, open seven days a week. Shore Lit has been very fortunate to partner with them on book sales for our author events when our local shops haven’t had the bandwidth to participate.

Front Porch Orchestra's Bluegrass Nutcracker returns for three local shows this year

What Else I'm Looking Forward to on the Shore this Month:

Bluegrass Nutcracker

7:00 Friday, December 2 @ Oxford Community Center, Oxford, $20
7:30 Saturday, December 10 @ Cult Classic, Kent Island, $25
7:00 Friday December 23 @ Art Bar 2.0, Cambridge, $12

Front Porch Orchestra’s arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s score swaps traditional instruments for banjos, fiddles, mandolins, and guitars. It was my favorite holiday-season event last year and it’s back for three local performances.

Book Talk: Maureen Corrigan So We Read On: How the Great Gatsby Came To Be and Why It Endures @ Zelda’s Speakeasy, Chestertown
2:00 Saturday, December 3
Free
Hosted by The Bookplate, NPR’s Fresh Air book critic will discuss her take on Gatsby as part of Chestertown’s annual Dickens of a Christmas weekend festival.

Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka @ The Avalon Theatre, Easton
Thursday, December 8–Sunday, December 18
$20-$30
A character so good, he literally stole Charlie’s show. While you wait for Timothee Chalamet(!) in next year’s big-screen prequel, enjoy this local ode to literature’s most famous chocolatier.

The Hours @ The Avalon Theatre, Easton
1:00 Saturday, December 10
$30
The Metropolitan Opera’s adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s acclaimed novel brings three powerhouse female leads to a single stage. The Met’s Live in HD stream means you don’t have to travel to New York to see it.

New Year’s Eve Party @ The Buzzed Word, Ocean City
5:00 to midnight Saturday, December 31
Free
A queer- and BIPOC-focused book store that’s also a natural wine shop—I love this spot. The night’s theme is “disco-glam." Dress up and ring in the new year with your fellow INTJs.

Support Shore Lit's Programs:

One of our core values is building inclusive community. For that reason, Shore Lit events are always free. To keep them that way, we are grateful to newsletter subscribers like you who help fund our programs. If you have the means and you value our mission of bringing literary authors to the Eastern Shore, please consider a $25 gift to support our programs. If you have more or less to offer, we are grateful for your generosity; no gift is too big or too small. If you aren’t in a position to offer monetary support, you remain a crucial part of this community, and we thank all of you for your consideration.

Donate Now

]]><![CDATA[Shore Lit Newsletter November 2022]]>Wed, 02 Nov 2022 19:38:10 GMThttps://www.shorelit.org/newsletter-archive/shore-lit-november-newsletter

What We’re Up To This Month:

As I write this, I’m still buzzing from last week’s event with the brilliant Maud Casey. Maud’s writing challenges and rewards me, and I feel so lucky that we had the privilege of hosting her on the Shore. Afterwards, Maud commented on what a terrific audience we had, and I agree. Thanks to everyone who read City of Incurable Women with your book club, or on your own, or who didn’t read it but showed up at the Academy Art Museum with a curious mind and joined our conversation about mad women, mental health, Victorian-era photography, and feminism. You make me so grateful to be a part of this incredible community.

Speaking of, if you haven’t read last Sunday’s profile of the Academy Art Museum in the Washington Post Magazine, check it out. Shore Lit quite literally exists because of the support of AAM Director Sarah Jesse, who is reimagining what a community museum can do and be. It’s thrilling to see that work recognized on a national scale.

Coming up on November 14, I’ll be moderating a conversation with author Christopher Tilghman at the Talbot County Free Library as part of the Crossroads: Change in Rural America series.This event is TCFL’s baby, and I am so honored they asked me to be a part of it, as Chris’s writing is one of the reasons I moved from Brooklyn to the Shore. In 2012, I took a solo bike trip down the peninsula and brought a copy of The Right-Hand Shore along with me. I was traveling (very slowly; I’m a terrible cyclist) and camping in this landscape at the same time I was reading his descriptions of the Shore and its history. I fell in love.

Few writers have thought as deeply about this place over time as Chris Tilghman has. The Mason family, the subject of his last three novels, is modeled on his own, which arrived on the Shore in 1645, and he has spent decades researching local history. The final novel in the series, On the Tobacco Coast, will be published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in late 2023 or early 2024 and brings the story into the present. The action takes place mostly on a single day, July 4, 2019, with a look into a future of climate change and sea level rise. As Chris tells me, “It portrays the Masons’ attempt to confront their family history and the history of America from 1607 to the confusions and disagreements of the present day.” We’ll be diving into this and more in our talk. I hope to see many of you there!

Event prep... [via @Shore_Lit on Instagram]

What Else I’m Reading:In preparation for our talk, I asked Chris which books about the Shore (besides Chesapeake) he recommends. Here’s what he said:

“John Barths’s Sotweed Factor, of course, the funniest and wisest novel ever written about the Eastern Shore; Gilbert Byron and The Lord’s Oysters; Earl Swift’s Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island, the most recent and, to my mind, by far the best discussion of climate change and cultural loss on the Bay; Helen Rountree and and Thomas E. Davidson’s Eastern Shore Indians of Virginia and Maryland, the part of the story that is almost never told, a story that must literally be unearthed, here summarized in remarkable depth and detail; and finally, the true eye opener, Barbara Jeane Fields’ Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland During the Nineteenth Century, which first alerted me to the fact that Maryland, for all its purported border-state neutrality, is Deep South in its cultural heritage.”

What Else I’m Looking Forward to on the Shore this month:
Film Screening: Nowhere @ Academy Art Museum, Easton
6:00 Friday, November 4
Free
A Columbian couple must decide whether to face queer persecution at home or immigration battles in the U.S. Directors David and Francisco Salazar will be at AAM to present this modern love story, nominated for multiple Columbian Academy Awards. Presented in Partnership with Delmarva Pride Center.

Book Launch: You’re Tearing Me Apart Lisa! @ The Buzzed Word, Ocean City
7:00 Friday, November 11
Free
A new critical anthology from Indiana University Press deconstructs the worst movie ever made, Tommy Wiseau’s stupendously awful The Room—now a cult classic. Join editor Adam M. Rosen at OC hot spot The Buzzed Word for a reading, partial screening, and several glasses of natural wine. Co-hosted by Shore Lit.

Ghost Forest Opening Reception @ Adkins Arboretum, Ridgely
2:00 Saturday, November 12
Free
Photographer Geoff Delanoy will be at Adkins to present his inky black-and-white landscapes, which document climate change in the Chesapeake Bay watershed—particularly the costal forest diebacks known as ghost forests.

Crossroads: Change in Rural America @ St. Paul’s Church, Oxford
Through December 16
Free
This traveling Museum on Main Street exhibition, sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and Maryland Humanities Trust, engages in discussions about changes to rural America over the past several decades. While you’re there, check out the Oxford Museum’s companion photo exhibit, Rooted in the Land: A Tribute to Eastern Shore Farmers.

Support Shore Lit's Programs:

One of our core values is building inclusive community. For that reason, Shore Lit events are always free. To keep them that way, we are grateful to newsletter subscribers like you who help fund our programs. If you have the means and you value our mission of bringing literary authors to the Eastern Shore, please consider a $25 gift to support our programs. If you have more or less to offer, we are grateful for your generosity; no gift is too big or too small. If you aren’t in a position to offer monetary support, you remain a crucial part of this community, and we thank all of you for your consideration.

Donate Now

Shore Lit aims to enhance cultural offerings on the Eastern Shore with free community author events. This newsletter is written by Shore Lit Founder and Director Kerry Folan.

]]><![CDATA[Shore Lit Newsletter, October 2022]]>Sat, 01 Oct 2022 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.shorelit.org/newsletter-archive/shore-lit-october-newsletter

What We’re Up To This Month:

When I recently mentioned to writer Tania James that Maud Casey will be reading in Easton this month, she said in response, “Ah, amazing, Maud’s so brilliant.” The exchange made me wonder what “brilliant” means, exactly, when the term is applied to writing and to writers, particularly by other writers. But I've spent the last few weeks reading through Maud’s oeuvre in preparation for the event, and I think I understand what Tania meant.

There are books where the plot is the engine—the kind of novel that keeps you up all night reading, dying to know what happens next. But plot isn't the point of Maud’s fiction. Instead, she’s interested in atmosphere, and in interiority. You can see her thinking on the page about the shape of a story and the texture of consciousness. Not only is her writing beautiful, it pushes the boundaries of what a novel can do.

Her latest, City of Incurable Women, reimagines the “hysterical” women of Paris’s famed nineteenth-century Salpêtrière mental asylum. It plays with different perspectives and voices. It weaves medical photographs and documents (some real, some fictionalized) into the narrative. In Maud’s words, it “runs parallel” to the historical record, rather than attempting to correct it. Read it the way you eat chocolate—slowly, one piece at a time, letting it melt on your tongue.

City of Incurable Women is a Talbot County Free Library Book of the Month, with eight print copies ready for check out, plus e-book and audio book available on demand (no waiting, no charge) on Hoopla for anyone who has a library card from an Eastern Shore Library. It’s also available for sale via the Academy Art Museum (special thanks to our friends at the Ivy Bookshop in Baltimore for making copies available). Maud’s talk will begin at 6:00 on October 28, with a reception beforehand at 5:00—enjoy a drink, get your book signed, and gather with other lit-minded neighbors. I hope to see many of you there!

What Else I’m Reading:

This time of year, the semester kicks into high gear and reading time gives way to grading time. Here are the recently released books piling up on my coffee table—the ones I can’t wait to read (by the fire, glass of wine in hand…sigh) in a month or so when things ease up:

Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan
This slim volume (officially called a “novel,” but based on a series of interviews and told in first person, like an oral history) came out on my birthday last month and was my present to myself. Kick the Latch illuminates the strange world of horse racing through the gritty, violent, joyous life of a horse trainer named Sonia. I haven’t read Scanlan’s previous work, but if Leslie Jamison’s New Yorker review is any indication, her’s is exactly the kind of lyric storytelling I love best.

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng
Among her many literary talents, Ng has a special genius for deploying cool, understated prose to narrate wildly dramatic events. In her previous novel, the hugely successful Little Fires Everywhere, this style emphasized an eerie detachment from the pain of others. Her latest work continues that experiment. Our Missing Hearts follows twelve-year-old Bird, a Chinese American boy living in a dystopian America that operates under PACT (the Preserving American Culture and Tradition Act) who goes in search of his mother, a writer whose subversive poem has forced her into hiding. Stephen King’s review in the Times called the book “authentically horrifying”— which, coming from him, is saying something.

Solito by Javiar Zamora
Memoir is my genre, the one I most love to write, read, and teach, and I am always especially eager to read the work of poets who cross over into this nonfiction realm. Poets tend to prioritize language and image over narrative, and the results can be sublime (think Mary Karr, Doreann Ni Ghriofa, Tracy K. Smith, Sherman Alexie, etc.). Zamora’s personal story is extraordinary—at the age of nine, he migrated alone from Guatemala to Arizona—but it’s his prose I’m most excited to lose myself in. Check out this excerpt to see what I mean.

See How They Run @ Easton Cinema
Through October 5
$6.50-$10.75
Saoirse Ronan steals the show in this extremely entertaining Agatha Christie spoof. (Bonus for Christie fans: the Cambridge Cozies Book Club is having a Christie-themed meeting this month.)

I Refuse To Be Invisible: An Improvisational Concert by Kentavius Jones, Jordan Stanley, and Ian Trusheim @ Academy Art Museum, Easton
6:00 Saturday, October 08
Free
As the closing act for AAM’s fantastic Fickle Mirror self-portraiture exhibition, local musicians will offer a soulful improvisational musical response to Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s monumental work I Refuse to Be Invisible.

David Sedaris @ Avalon Theater, Easton
7:00 Sunday, October 16
$75-$100
Sedaris’s reading is officially sold out, but a limited number of tickets will be released day of; call or stop by the Avalon on 10/15 or 10/16 if you’re hoping for a last-minute seat.

Book Talk: Kathryn Schulz in Conversation with Casey Cep @ North Caroline High School, Ridgely
7:00 Wednesday, October 26
Free
The Pulitzer-prize winner and New Yorker staff writer will be discussing Lost & Found, her 2022 memoir about losing her father and finding her wife.

Stage Fright @ Avalon Theater, Easton
Wednesday, October 26-Sunday, October 30
$35
Stage Fright is the Shore’s answer to Sleep No More—an original, immersive theater experience based on the local legend of Margeurite, the showgirl ghost who has haunted the Avalon for a century.

Support Shore Lit's Programs:

One of our core values is building inclusive community. For that reason, Shore Lit events are always free. To keep them that way, we are grateful to newsletter subscribers like you who help fund our programs. If you have the means and you value our mission of bringing literary authors to the Eastern Shore, please consider a $25 gift to support the Fall 2022 program. If you have more or less to offer, we are grateful for your generosity; no gift is too big or too small. If you aren’t in a position to offer monetary support, you remain a crucial part of this community, and we thank all of you for your consideration.

Donate Now

Shore Lit aims to enhance cultural offerings on the Eastern Shore with free community author events. This newsletter is written by Shore Lit Founder and Director Kerry Folan.

]]><![CDATA[Shore Lit Newsletter, September 2022]]>Thu, 01 Sep 2022 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.shorelit.org/newsletter-archive/shore-lit-september-newsletter

What We’re Up To This Month:In my first semester of graduate school, nearly a decade ago now, I signed up for Helon Habila’s Writers in Non-Native Places literature class. Though I didn’t know it at the time, Helon had just returned from a year in Berlin on a prestigious DAAD fellowship and was at work on what would become the novel Travelers. The book, which was published in 2019 to enormous acclaim, focuses on a Nigerian scholar who moves to Berlin with his American wife, an artist, in the hopes of saving his marriage. Through his encounters with the African immigrants his wife paints, and later through his own precarious, multi-continent journey, he becomes increasingly alienated—from his marriage, from his sense of home and identity, from humanity writ large. Travelers is beautiful, disorienting, hopeful.

Like many writers who also teach for a living, Helon designs his courses around the ideas he’s currently grappling with in his own work. In our lit class back in 2014, we read eight books, all of them wrestling with themes of exile and nostalgia, all of them excellent. The popular “global lit” novels I had read up until then—Rushdie, Roy, Hosseini, etc.—were essentially epic morality tales, but Helon taught our class to consider a subtler perspective. Migration is more bewildering than epic for his characters, who, like rag dolls, are pushed and pulled by enormous, invisible forces into uncanny futures.

It’s through generous funding from Alice Walton’s Art Bridges Foundation, which brings major art works to rural communities, that Helon will visit Easton on Friday, September 9, to discuss Travelers with the wonderful Matt Davis, Founding Director of the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center. Helon’s talk is presented in conjunction with the Academy Art Museum’s Fickle Mirror self-portraiture exhibition, which features the work “I Refuse To Be Invisible” by Nigerian American artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby. Of this work, Helon says:

“I see a lot of similarities between Crosby’s work and that of the third generation Nigerian writers, a group to which I belong. Both of us came of age decades after Nigerian independence in 1960, and our work mostly centers on travel and identity—particularly on the hybrid nature of our cultural experiences. Crosby embraces her Nigerian culture, as well as her colonial, Western influences. The very title of this work, I Refuse To Be Invisible, is a bold statement against the more tradition-minded critics, who would reject anything Western, and a comment against the modernists, who see nothing beautiful in tradition. My most current novel, Travelers, tries to do the same thing in so many ways.”

You can listen to Helon's full-length reflection on Crosby's portrait by clicking here.

Helon’s talk begins at 6:00. AAM Curator Mehves Lelic will give a spotlight tour of Crosby’s portrait afterwards, and there is a reception for Shore Lit subscribers beforehand, beginning at 5:00—enjoy a drink, get your book signed, and gather with other lit-minded neighbors. Special thanks to our friends at the Ivy Bookshop in Baltimore for providing book sales. I hope to see many of you there!

What Else I’m Reading:

Instead of sharing my own picks this month, I’m passing on the book list from Helon’s Writers in Non-Native Places course. If you’re interested in a deep dive into the themes of migration, alienation, travel, and/or transcendental homelessness, this list is a great place to start:

Ignorance, Milan Kundera
Lost in Translation, Eva Hoffman
The Lonely Londoners, Samuel Selvon
The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
Home, Marilynne Robinson
The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, Dinaw Mengestu
A Movable Feast, Ernest Hemingway
I Saw Ramallah, Mourid Barghouti

What Else I’m Looking Forward to in August:
Shore Shakespeare @ Adkins Arboretum, Ridgely
2:00 Saturday & Sunday, September 2 & 3
$15
After two years of pandemic hiatus, the plein air Shakespeare company is back with Measure To Measure.

Radiant Material Opening Reception @ Kohl Gallery, Washington College, Chestertown
4:30-6:30 Thursday, September 15
Free
The Kohl Gallery’s fall exhibition features several regional artists who are working with light.

Book Discussion: What’s Mine and Yours by Naima Coster @ Talbot County Free Library Easton Branch
6:00 Wednesday, September 26
Free
Gather with our local community of readers to discuss this year’s One Maryland One Book selection.

Chesapeake Film Festival Environmental Films Showcase @ Avalon Theater, Easton
6:20 Friday, September 30
$25
The screening will feature three short documentary films addressing the current state of local waterways and a panel discussion with the filmmakers.

Support Shore Lit's Programs:
One of our core values is building inclusive community. For that reason, Shore Lit events are always free. To keep them that way, we are grateful to newsletter subscribers like you who help fund our programs. If you have the means and you value our mission of bringing literary authors to the Eastern Shore, please consider a $25 gift to support the Fall 2022 program. If you have more or less to offer, we are grateful for your generosity; no gift is too big or too small. If you aren’t in a position to offer monetary support, you remain a crucial part of this community, and we thank all of you for your consideration.

Donate Now

Shore Lit aims to enhance cultural offerings on the Eastern Shore with free community author events. This newsletter is written by Shore Lit Founder and Director Kerry Folan.

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Reserve Your Seat for Jung Yun @ AAM!

Bookstores vs. Amazon: Does it really matter where you buy your holiday gifts?

What Else I'm Looking Forward to on the Shore this Month:

Support Shore Lit's Programs:

Bookstores vs. Amazon:
Does it really matter where you buy your holiday gifts?