“Oh Baltimore, man it’s hard just to live …”
– Randy Newman, poet
Some of the biggest names in the Baltimore writing community – newspaperman Michael Olesker, steelworker’s daughter Deborah Rudacille and novelist Jen Michalski among them – will soon give readings of their work at a saloon in the Parkville neighborhood.
The first event – featuring a complimentary buffet – will be held at 7 p.m. on Monday, November 11th at Freddie’s Ale House, 7209 Harford Road in Northeast Baltimore. All readings are free and open to the public.
The White Marble Steps of Baltimore
“It’s like hanging out in the old neighborhood. The crowd isn’t a bunch of literary critics
Olesker – a former columnist for the News-American and the Sunpapers – will be joined by Dan Cuddy, poetry editor of the Loch Raven Review, Deborah Rudacille, whose most recent book is a history of Sparrows Point called “Roots of Steel,” and photographer Jennifer Bishop, who will exhibit street scenes from more than 30 year career wandering Crabtown with a camera.
“Fiction at Freddie’s” is the latest in a long tradition of barroom poetry and prose in Baltimore, which in the late 1980s took place at Miss Bonnie’s Elvis Bar at Fleet and Port Streets in Fells Point and last year appeared under the “Greektown Reading Series” banner, a feast of food and verse that traveled between restaurants near the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church on Ponca Street.
Michael Olesker
The events at Freddie’s will continue on Monday night, December 9 with a line-up headlined by award-winning fiction writer Jen Michalski (“Could You Be With Her Now, Dzanc Books, 2013) and Jen Grow, fiction editor of the Little Patuxent Review.
Also on the bill is veteran Baltimore essayist and satirist D.R. Belz, who published the collection “White Asparagus” in 2010. In December, Belz will be reading fiction. Grow’s first book – “My Life as a Mermaid and Other Stories” – is due out from Dzanc in 2015.
Olesker and other local writers and editors – many of them retired but still feisty, collectively known as the Aging Newspapermen of Baltimore – meet once a week for lunch at Roman’s Place, 2 South Decker Avenue near Patterson Park in East Baltimore.
As the 2013 Nobel Laureate Alice Munro said, “People are curious. A few people are. They will be driven to find things out, even trivial things. They will put things together, knowing all along that they may be mistaken.
“You see them going around with notebooks, scraping the dirt off gravestones, reading microfilm, just in the hope of seeing this trickle in time, making a connection, rescuing one thing from the rubbish.”
Come to Freddie’s on the upcoming cold winter nights to hear what has been rescued – found and preserved along the narrow streets of Baltimore – and presented for your consideration.