City Sages Reading at Normal's, Wed. August 25th

On Wednesday, August 25th, Normal's took its turn celebrating CityLit's first publication - City Sages: Baltimore. The book came out a few months ago, but we wanted to wait until the new improved Red Room was done being spiffied up.


On hand to read were Michael Kimball, Susan McCallum-Smith, Joseph Young and myself. Plus Goodloe Byron to sing a few graveyard tunes and to ruminate on Poe's "The Black Cat" which appears in the anthology of legendary dead Baltimore writers, living ascending stars and those of us thrashing in literary limbo.

Jen Michalski who edited the book emceed the reading.

Goodloe Byron, author of The Abstract and Revisions Of bookended the readings with two songs of darkness.

Susan McCallum-Smith whose collecton of short stories Slipping The Moorings was published by Entasis Press in 2009 read from her piece "High Rise".

Professor Joseph Young, author of the wildly popular Easter Bunny assures the crowd that there is no improvisation involved in his reading, displaying to the audience his text.

Goodloe Byron started out doing a straight reading of Poe's story, but ended up having a conversaton with it.

Michael Kimball, whose novel Dear Everybody was excerpted in City Sages, said he'd been reading from that novel for three years and that this evening would be his last time doing so. He then read portions of an unnamed novel in progress he's currently working on, correcting typos with his pen as he did so. The strange blue around his right eye was not administered for theatrical effect for his engagement at The Red Room, but was caused somehow when I used the "Red Eye" feature in my photo library.

City Sages: Baltimore Reading At Normal's - Wednesday August 25th

City Sages: Baltimore, the first publication from CityLit, edited by hard working Jen Michalski, has won "Best Anthology" from this year's Baltimore Magazine's Best Of issue. The anthology collects pieces from dead and legendary Baltimore authors like Mencken, Poe and Gertrude Stein, the living and famous like Anne Tyler, Laura Lippman and Madison Smart Bell and the young and young(ish) turks like Michael Kimball and Adam Robinson.

To celebrate and publicize the release various bookstores around town have been holding readings and due to our honored Red Room getting a makeover from our proactive new landlord, Normal's is now ready to host ours.

The date is Wednesday, August 25th. The readers so far are Michael Kimball, Susan McCallum-Smith, Joe Young and myself. But perhaps we'll be able to lure our old customer John Astin back into town to read "The Black Cat" Poe selection. We'll see.....the reading starts at 8pm. Copies of the 316 page tome will be available for sale.