Showcasing 2026 Baker Literary Finalists with Aaron Henkin,
Bry Reed, Don Lee, Michael Downs, Edgar Kunz, Ashley Elizabeth, and Justin Sirois
Carey Center
Maryland Center for History and Culture
610 Park Avenue
Baltimore, MD 21201
Saturday, April 11, 2026
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
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Working with the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund established the Baker Artist Awards in 2008 to support artists and promote Greater Baltimore as a strong creative community. The Baker Artists Awards confer $90,000 in prizes annually on six area artists across each artistic discipline. Awardees receive showcase and exhibition opportunities at major Baltimore institutions. This year’s literary finalists convene for the first time with moderator Aaron Henkin as host, who currently works at the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins University. Previously, Aaron spent 22 years creating and producing original radio programs and podcasts for Baltimore’s NPR affiliate, WYPR. Bry Reed (she/they) is a Baltimore-born and based writer committed to the legacy of “The City That Reads.” She’s a regular contributor to the Baltimore Beat. Michael Downs works in literary fiction and nonfiction and is the author of three books. He also serves on the boards of the Baltimore Review and The Good Contrivance Farm Writer’s Retreat. Edgar Kunz is the author of Fixer (Ecco, 2023), a New York Times Editors’ Choice book, and Tap Out. He has been a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, and a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Additional Baker Artist Literary finalists include Justin Sirois, Don Lee, and Ashley Elizabeth.
Bry Reed is a Baltimore-born and bred artist passionate about cultivating her local artistic community. She’s a Rubys Artist Grant awardee, a board member for Writers in Baltimore Schools, and a Fellowship Advisor with New Generations Scholars Youth Archival Fellowship. Her work has appeared in The Baltimore Beat and The Washington Post, and she co-edited the essay collection Surviving The Future: Abolitionist Queer Strategies with Raven Hudson and Shuli Branson for PM Press. Additionally, she enjoys engaging with other artists, community members, and thinkers in public forums. She has been featured on panels in collaboration with CityLit Project, Greedy Reads, Red Emma’s, The Clifton House, and other local art organizations.
Instagram: @thebryreed
Michael Downs is the author of three books, including most recently the novel The Strange and True Tale of Horace Wells, Surgeon Dentist. His awards include a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Fulbright Scholar Award through which he wrote and taught creative writing in Kraków, Poland. He also serves on the boards of the Baltimore Review and The Good Contrivance Farm Writer’s Retreat.
michael-downs.net
Instagram: @michaeldownswriter
Edgar Kunz is the author of two books: Fixer, a New York Times Editors’ Choice book, and Tap Out. He has been an NEA Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, and a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Recent poems appear in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, and American Poetry Review. He splits his time between Baltimore and Richmond, where he teaches in the English Department and MFA program at VCU. His next book is about growing up in a medieval anachronistic society.
Aaron Henkin currently works as a Content Strategist at the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins University. He also teaches in the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars program. Previously, Aaron spent 22 years creating and producing original radio programs and podcasts for Baltimore’s NPR affiliate, WYPR. Aaron’s neighborhood documentary series, Out of the Blocks, earned a national Edward R Murrow Award. His other past programs include the audience-inspired podcast, The Maryland Curiosity Bureau, the long-running weekly cultural show, The Signal, and the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings series, Tapestry of the Times. Aaron’s work has aired nationally on NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered.
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CityLit Project in partnership with Maryland Center for History and Culture present Bearing Witness: Literature as a Revolutionary Act. This celebration of the arts showcases a bevy of leading poets and writers on April 11, 2026. We’re talking fiction, nonfiction, poetry galore, and ways to up the ante on your craft.
Download the CityLit Festival: Bearing Witness flyer with the schedule.
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