City Sages: Baltimore

Brief Description: Anthology of Baltimore writers past and present. Publisher Marketing: "There is a saying in Baltimore," said the sage himself, H. L. Mencken, "that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are good." The same can be said of the different short pieces of prose collected in City Sages: Baltimore. Here are thirty-six ways to create literary art in Baltimore, and all of them are good. Edited by Jen Michalski, this first-ever anthology of some of Baltimore's best writers includes both famous and not-yet-famous scribes, both dead and alive. Michalski's objective was to represent an array of writers over a period of time who were born in Baltimore or lived in the city. The anthology includes pieces by seminal writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Gertrude Stein, Zora Neal Hurston, Frederick Douglass, and F. Scott Fitzgerald; contemporary writers such as Laura Lippman, Anne Tyler, Madison Smartt Bell, Michael Kimball, Alice McDermott, Jessica Anya Blau, and Rafael Alvarez; and emerging writers such as Rosalia Scalia, Caryn Coyle, Joe Young, and Adam Robinson.

Contributor Bio:  Michalski, Jen Jen Michalski's novel, The Tide King, was published by Black Lawrence Press (2013; winner of the Big Moose Prize). She is the author of two collections of fiction, Close Encounters (So New, 2007), and FROM HERE (Aqueous Books, 2013), as well as a collection of novellas, Could You Be With Her Now (Dzanc Books, 2013). In 2013, she was named one of "50 Women to Watch" by The Baltimore Sun and won a "Best of Baltimore" for "Best Writer" from Baltimore Magazine. Her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is the founding editor of the literary quarterly, jmww; co-host of the monthly reading series, The 510 Readings in Baltimore; and she interviews writers at The Nervous Breakdown.