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Monthly Newsletter


Shore Lit December Newsletter

11/26/2022

 
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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):
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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.
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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.
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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

Shore Lit Newsletter, November 2022

11/2/2022

 
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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! 

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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:  
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“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.”

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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.

Shore Lit Newsletter, October 2022

10/1/2022

 
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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!

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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.

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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.

Shore Lit Newsletter, September 2022

9/1/2022

 
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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. 

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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

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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.

Shore Lit Newsletter, August 2022

8/13/2022

 
What We’re Up To This Month:

​
It’s been a busy summer of planning and today I’m thrilled to announce Shore Lit’s Fall 2022 line-up, featuring three outstanding fiction writers: Helon Habila, Maud Casey, and Christopher Tilghman. Each of these acclaimed authors approaches the novel from a unique and stringently intelligent perspective. I can’t wait to talk to them about their work.

Additionally, I’m especially thrilled to invite Shore Lit newsletter subscribers (you!) to a reception with Helon Habila and Maud Casey preceding their author talks. Enjoy a drink, get your book signed, and gather with other lit-minded neighbors at the Academy Art Museum. All Shore Lit newsletter subscribers are welcome, so collect your friends and family and roll up with your whole squad (they can subscribe here). 

In the meantime, read on for more about this fall's line-up...
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Helon Habila, Travelers 
6:00 Friday September 9 @ Academy Art Museum
Free

This book had me up reading until 2:00 am on a school night. Travelers focuses on a Nigerian scholar who travels to Berlin with his American wife, but ends up on a precarious journey spanning multiple continents. Helon Habila will be in conversation with Matt Davis, founding director of the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center. A spotlight tour of Nigerian-American artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s self-portrait in AAM’s Fickle Mirror exhibition will follow the talk. 
RSVP to the Helon Habila Reception
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Maud Casey, City of Incurable Women
6:00 Friday October 28 @ Academy Art Museum
Free

Maud Casey’s latest book pushes the boundaries of what a novel can do. This gorgeously written hybrid text, which is braided with period photographs and medical documents, reimagines the “hysterical” women of Paris’s famed nineteenth-century Salpêtrière mental asylum in shimmering, lyrical prose. Her talk will include a slideshow featuring medical photographs and artistic renderings from the period. I’ll be moderating the conversation.
RSVP to the Maud Casey Reception
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Christopher Tilghman, The Mason Family Series
6:00 Monday November 14 @ Talbot County Free Library, Easton Branch
Free

Ten years ago, I brought a paperback copy of The Right-Hand Shore with me on a bike trip from Rehoboth Beach to Chincoteague, and I’m sure Tilghman’s lush descriptions of the Shore are one of the reasons I ultimately left New York City to move here. The three published novels in the Mason family series tell the multigenerational story of a farm on the Eastern Shore modeled after his own. His fourth novel, due out in 2023, brings the Mason family into the present over the course of a single day: July 4th, 2019. He'll be speaking as part of Crossroads, a series of programs discussing rural life on the Eastern Shore organized by the Oxford Museum. Thank you to the Talbot County Free Library for making this event possible!

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Now this is what summer should look like... [via @Shore_Lit on Instagram]
What Else I’m Reading:
On a recent weekend, I turned off my phone and indulged in an Emily St. John Mandel double-header, starting Friday afternoon with Station Eleven and wrapping up on Sunday evening with Sea of Tranquility. Mandel writes apocalyptic sci-fi for people who don’t typically like apocalyptic sci-fi. My favorite insight: When a character, who is a writer, is asked why she thinks apocalyptic novels have recently become so popular, she suggests it’s because we subconsciously long for an end to the unceasing technology that rules our lives. Hmmm… 

I finally broke down and tackled Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens, which has been on the best-seller list for what feels like forever. It’s an entertaining read, if you can suspend a certain amount of disbelief: Set in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, this is the story of an abused orphan who raises herself on boiled grits and fish bait to become a renowned naturalist. There’s also a love triangle and a murder mystery, but I think the best parts are the intimate observations of wildlife.

Speaking of murder mysteries, if you’re a fan of the genre, like I am, try out veteran writer Gigi Pandian’s new series, the Secret Staircase Mysteries. Firey heroine Tempest Raj is an unemployed magician who’s recently moved back to her charming family compound and now works in the family business—constructing secret staircases for rich people. Book One, Under Lock and Skeleton Key, was my favorite beach read of summer.

On long walks and car rides I’ve been listening to Margaret Atwood’s latest collection of essays, Burning Questions, a curated selection of her many, many articles and occasional pieces from the past twenty years. In it is one of the best defenses of the humanities I have ever heard: “The arts, as we have come to term them, are not a frill. They are the heart of the matter, because they are about our hearts, and our technological inventiveness is generated by our emotions, not just by our minds.” May she live forever.  


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What I’m Watching:

Typically in this newsletter I avoid talking about screens and stick to the written word, but this summer has brought such a glorious return to the movies after two years of pandemic protocols that I can’t help myself. Top Gun: Maverick was the action flick I didn’t know I needed in my life. Nope was as much fun to dissect over dinner afterwards as it was to watch. And Elvis was Baz Luhrman at his best: Full. Sensory. Overload. All three of these films are made for the big screen; I highly recommend seeing them in theater if you get the chance.

Also of note: I have confirmed with the powers that be that the Encore Cinema Series, which shows indie and art films once a week at the Easton and Cambridge movie theaters, will be returning for their 17th year this fall! Stay tuned for announcements on their line-up.

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From Nancy Floyd's photo series Weathering Time, on view at the Academy Art Museum
What Else I’m Looking Forward to in August:​
Groove Theatre presents Dog Sees God @ Dorchester Center for the Arts, Cambridge
Thursday August 11—Sunday August 14
$15
Groove Theatre’s first Student Lab production, put together entirely by high-school students, follows a few terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days in the life of teenage boy CB. 

Artist Talk with Photographer Nancy Floyd @ Academy Art Museum, Easton
6:00 Thursday, August 18   
Free
Floyd has taken a portrait of herself every day for the past forty years. She’ll be at AAM to discuss the project, which is part of the Fickle Mirror portraiture exhibition.

Shovels & Rope @ The Avalon Theater, Easton
8:00 Wednesday, August 24
$40+
Their 2019 Avalon show is one of my all-time favorites. In August, the husband and wife duo return with a new album and set list. 


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Shore Lit Newsletter, July 2022

7/19/2022

 
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Writer Rion Scott reads from his short story collection The World Doesn't Require You at the Academy Art Museum in Easton, MD, on June 3, 2022.
Photo by Jenn Chrzanowski.


What We’re Up To This Month:
It was wonderful to see so many of you at our kick-off event last month! More than eighty people gathered at the Academy Art Museum in June to hear fiction writer Rion Scott and historic preservationist Dale Green speak about their work. The presentations were illuminating and invigorating, and the Q&A got into some interesting questions regarding preservation vs. gentrification and the value of stories about ordinary African Americans. As Carlene Phoenix, one of the leaders of The Hill Community Project, put it to me, “I always knew about heroes like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, but when I heard about the free blacks living in Easton, just going about their daily business, I could relate that to my own life.” If you missed it, the Chesapeake Heartland African American Humanities Truck exhibition also offered some incredible vintage photos of the old Vita Foods pickle factory in Chestertown, which you can also browse on their website.
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I’m planning two more events at the Academy Art Museum for the fall and will have more to announce on that front soon. In the meantime, I’m hoping to connect with readers like you in the community. Are you in a book club? What kinds of books do you enjoy? What kinds of author events would you like to see more of on the Shore? Do you have any thoughts or feedback on our last event? As I’m considering various authors to invite to Easton, I’m eager to hear your perspective on which writers and books will resonate. If you have any feedback (or just want to say hi!), I’d love to hear from you via the “contact us” page of the Shore Lit website.​

What I’m Reading:
In honor of Juneteenth last week and Independence Day next week, I’m handing over the “What I’m Reading” section of this month’s newsletter to our June presenters, all of whom know a whole lot more about American history and independence than I do. (If you really want to know what I'm reading each week, follow along @shore_lit on Instagram.) I asked each presenter to recommend one book about America everyone should read. Here’s what they said: 

Dale Glenwood Green, Historic Preservationist and Morgan State University Professor: 
How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith*

“In light of America’s crisis to confront Critical Race Theory nationally, coupled with the ongoing paradox of navigating the history that made America versus the history that America made up, everyone should read Clint Smith’s book How the Word Is Passed. The author’s quote best sums it up: ‘The history of slavery is the history of the United States. It was not peripheral to our founding; it was central to it. It is not irrelevant to our contemporary society; it created it. This history is in our soil, it is in our policies, and it must, too, be in our memories.’”

*Editor’s note: Check out Clint Smith’s 2020 essay on Easton’s Frederick Douglass monument in the Atlantic.


Rion Scott, Writer and University of Maryland Professor: 
A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination by Clay Risen 

“Clay Risen’s book connects the dots to show how much of our country’s present-day problems are just a logical continuation of all our original sins. It’s cinematically written and it’s a masterpiece.”

Pat Nugent, Historian and Deputy Director of the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College:
Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground by Barbara Jeanne Fields 
Civil War on Race Street by Peter Levy 
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates 
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler 

“So hard to choose*, but if I were to focus on books that bring unique and important perspectives to bear on the history of the Eastern Shore, I'd recommend Fields for a data-rich history on the complexities of slavery and freedom in 19th century Maryland (searchable by town and county). Published in 1984, it still stands up today. Read Levy for a rare twentieth-century history of the Eastern Shore with particular attention to the role that local African American communities played in the larger civil rights movement. Read Coates for a fictional (and magically surreal) account of the Underground Railroad that crosses Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, based on William Still's firsthand accounts of the Underground Railroad published in 1872 (or check out the 2019 reprint of Still's Underground Railroad with an introduction by Coates). And read Butler for a fictional account of slavery on the Eastern Shore that traces its impacts across time and geography.”

*Editor’s Note: Never ask an academic to pick just one book rec…

What Else I’m Looking Forward to in July:
Short Attention Span Theater @ Garfield Center for the Arts, Chestertown
Through July 10
$20 General Admission, $10 Students
Ten-minute plays by local playwrights. Stop for a vermouth at Casa Carmen on the way.


Fine Art Book Exhibition & Sale @ Vintage Books, Easton 
Friday July 15–Sunday July 24
Free
In conjunction with Plein Air Easton, Vintage Books is curating a sale of second-hand art books: Frankenthaler, Hopper, Dali, Picasso, Degas, etc.


Twenty-Four Hour Video Race Screening @ Academy Art Museum, Easton
Friday, July 29, 6:00
Free
Sponsored by AAM and the Chesapeake Film Festival, participants will have twenty-four hours to create a short film based on a single word; the results will be on view at this screening. 

Shore Lit Newsletter, June 2022

6/1/2022

 
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What We’re Up To This Month:
I’m saying “we,” but Shore Lit is really just me, Kerry Folan—a reader, writer, and teacher passionate about literature in all its shapes and forms. My goal is to engage our community in conversation around a shared love of books. Eventually, I’m hoping Shore Lit will grow to be a resource for young adult literacy. Welcome! I’m so glad you are here for this journey. 

Over the past month I have spent most of my time prepping for Shore Lit’s first official event: a conversation with author Rion Amilcar Scott and historic preservationist Dale Glenwood Green at Easton’s Academy Art Museum this Friday, June 3. 

I’ve been following Rion’s work since I ran into him at the 2016 AWP Conference, just before his fantastic first story collection, Insurrections, was published to enormous acclaim. At that conference, I attended a panel he moderated titled “The Literary Genius of Kendrick Lamar” which examined Lamar’s storytelling at the intersection of hip-hop and literature. It was the most exciting and insightful panel I attended that year.
I had a weird sense of recognition when I saw Rion on the stage, and eventually I realized that I already knew him: We attended elementary school together more than thirty years ago. (It turns out we also attended the same MFA program at George Mason University, too, though at different times.) It was trippy and wonderful to re-meet that little boy, now grown into a father, husband, teacher, and exceptionally beautiful writer.

Both of Rion’s story collections, Insurrections (winner of the 2017 PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2017 Hillsdale Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers) and The World Doesn’t Require You (a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and a “Best Books of the Year” per the Washington Post, NPR, Buzzfeed and Entropy) are set in the fictional town of Cross River, Maryland—a free black settlement founded in 1807 after the only successful slave revolt in the United States. Each short story is told from the point-of-view of a different citizen, creating a dazzling kaleidoscope of perspectives and personalities. The lives Rion conjures are frustrated, hopeful, humorous, absurd, sublime, and very human. Even when the narrator is a robot. “Shape-Ups at Delilahs,” published in the New Yorker, will give you an idea of what I mean.

When Rion agreed to read here in Easton, I felt that the occasion was also an important opportunity to celebrate the non-fictional lives of the museum's neighbors in the Hill Community, which is one of the oldest free African American neighborhoods in the country. Dale Green, in partnership with local historians and Hill Community residents, has done incredible work over the past decade (literally) unearthing artifacts from backyards and preserving private documents that shed light on the lives of the free African American families who have lived here for more than two centuries. 

Washington College’s Chesapeake Heartland Project will have their African American Humanities Truck on site starting around 5:00 pm. The formal talk will go from about 6:00-7:00. Rion will be signing books afterwards and Dale Green will lead a walking tour of the Hill Community around 7:30. Shore Lit events are always free and open to the public (reservations encouraged). I hope you will join us! 

What I’m Reading:
I’ve read a string of great books this month. Johnny Sun’s touching book of essays Goodbye, again is about anxiety, tenderness, and house plants (perhaps my favorite thing about well-rendered nonfiction is that it can make even house plants riveting). Sun suggests a way of moving through the world with gentle attention for our loved ones, our objects, and ourselves. I walked away from this book a better human. 

Deeshaw Philyaw’s The Secret Life of Church Ladies came out in 2020, but I didn’t discover it until just a few weeks ago when I saw Deeshaw read her startling flash essay “Milk for Free” at this year’s AWP conference. She said her first draft of this piece was 20-pages long. Her final is just 750 words, and yet somehow contains a whole complex lifetime. The short stories in this collection do the same.

I expected comedian Hannah Gadsby’s Ten Steps to Nanette to be a typical celebrity memoir about the path to fame and fortune. Instead, she has written a complex, experimental, essayistic autobiography that plays bravely and effectively with structure and form, and which—poignantly, humorously, shamelessly—expresses the workings of her autistic brain. Though I bought the hardcopy, I also ended up downloading the audiobook so I could listen on my commute. I loved hearing her story in her own voice. 

Also: David Sedaris on the return to book-touring in the New Yorker (head’s up: he’s coming to the Avalon in October!); Courtney Brkic on family secrets in The Offing; Louise Erdrich on the creative life in T Magazine; Emily Lee Luan’s “I Put Tasks I Do for Free into a Folder Titled ‘Jobs’” in American Poetry Review (via Poetry Daily).


What Else I’m Looking Forward to on the Shore:
Guided Sculpture Walk with Howard & Mary McCoy @ Adkins Arboretum
Saturday, June 4, 2:00-4:00
Free 
 
The artists behind the gorgeous, ephemeral sculptures scattered throughout the Arboretum are offering a guided walk and artist talk. There will also be a reception for artist Kit-Keung Kan, whose landscapes are currently on view in the gallery.

Delmarva Pride Party @ Hummingbird Inn
Friday, June 17, 7:00
Tickets Required

Drag show and dance party – yes please! 

Juneteenth Celebration @ Academy Art Museum & Ashbury 
Saturday, June 18, 12:00-4:00
Free

The folks at AAM, Building African American Minds (BAAM), Frederick Douglass Honor Society, and Talbot County Free Library are joining forces to host what looks to be a great afternoon of music, food, and art. Musicians Dat Feel Good and Julie Outrage will be performing. 

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