OPENING FESTIVAL SESSION
Praising the Mouth That Speaks: A spine for the world to listen. Turn up the volume.
Chesapeake Shakespeare Company
7 S Calvert Street
Baltimore, MD 21202
PARKING
Garages:
The Lombard Garage lot (204 East Lombard Street, Baltimore, 21202) or
Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel Parking (202 East Pratt Street, Baltimore, MD, 21202)
Street Parking:
On weekends and evenings, the meters are in effect on the main streets; read the meter and posted signs carefully. Most meters accept change ($2 an hour) or credit cards.
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FEATURED POET: MAHOGANY L. BROWNE
MUSICAL ARTIST: BLACK ASSETS
Reception to follow.
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The 21st CityLit Festival arrives this year with poetry at the center of the launch with this year’s theme, Dismantling the Culture of Silence. CityLit features performance poet, curator, MAHOGANY L. BROWNE, musical artist BLACK ASSETS, and an assembly of poets.The start of the three-day festival returns to Chesapeake Shakespeare Company for an evening of poetry, music, and connection. In the past, this standing-room-only event served as a finale but this year’s gathering begs for poets to reflect on the reality of this moment, where listening becomes a way of being. Mahogany’s recent works include Vinyl Moon, Chlorine Sky (optioned for Steppenwolf Theater), Black Girl Magic, and banned books: Woke: A Young Poets Call to Justice, and Woke Baby. She’s the Executive Director of JustMedia, an initiative designed to support the groundwork of criminal justice leaders and community members through an open-access archive. Queen of the soulful bounce, Ashley Lakayla Yates, aka Black Assets, originally from Itta Bena, Mississippi, is a Baltimore treasure. This queer international recording artist leaves you with an unforgettable musical experience.
Featured artists will be joined by the following creatives:
A’niya Taylor is a Spoken word artist, community advocate, and Baltimore’s (2022-23) Youth Poet Laureate. Through her poetry, she aims to highlight the intersection between art, individual healing, and community healing. Wordsmith is a proliferate creator in the world of performance, including songwriter, poet, actor, and playwright. He is an artistic partner with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and was selected by the Baltimore Sun as one of 25 Black Marylanders to watch in 2024. Nancy Murray is a poet, memoirist, playwright, and storyteller, who recently published her first collection of poetry, The Colors of Fear. Ryan Jafar Artes (he/she/they) is an activist, memoirist, and poet whose work calls for a re-imagination of culture via cultural renaissance from the perspective of lived experience as a transracial transnational South Asian Indian American adoptee. Poet and editor Matt Hohner has an international reach. In his new collection, At the Edge of a Thousand Years, winner of the 2023 Jacar Press Poetry Book Contest, poet Carolyn Forche, says “This is a poet unafraid of risk…” Amazon Kindle best-selling author Dr. Latorial Faison from Virginia, is the powerhouse author of over a dozen poetry books. She is well known for her poem, “What is Black History?” Vocalist and Cave Canem fellow Alexa Patrick, with a poetry collection called Remedies for Disappearing, whose stage production debut as Un/Sung in the opera We Shall Not Be Moved was directed by Bill T. Jones, will moderate. A reception will follow. Spirits will flow.
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MAHOGANY L. BROWNE, selected as Kennedy Center’s Next 50 and Wesleyan’s 2022-23 Distinguished Writer-in-Residence, is a writer, playwright, organizer, & educator. Browne has received fellowships from All Arts, Arts for Justice, Air Serenbe, Baldwin for the Arts, Cave Canem, Poets House, Mellon Research, & Rauschenberg. She is the author of recent works: Vinyl Moon, Chlorine Sky (optioned for Steppenwolf Theater), Black Girl Magic, and banned books: Woke: A Young Poets Call to Justice, and Woke Baby. Founder of the diverse lit initiative Woke Baby Book Fair, Browne is currently touring her latest poetry collection Chrome Valley which received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was highlighted in the New York Times. She is the first-ever poet-in-residence at the Lincoln Center and works on her first adult fiction in Brooklyn, NY.
“Out of necessity, Mahogany L. Browne has become her own revolution: she is one of those people who sees things in the world that need to change and actually makes real moves to change them. While there can only ever really be one Mahogany L. Browne, we’d be very lucky to have more poets/humans who are as fiercely visionary, hardworking, and resourceful as her.” —Ploughshares
“A searing voice that commands attention.” —Dhonielle Clayton
www.mobrowne.com
Twitter:@mobrowne
Instagram:@mobrowne
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Ashley Lakayla Yates, also known by the stage name of ‘BLACK ASSETS’, the queen of the soulful bounce; is a dynamic queer vocalist/singer-songwriter from Baltimore, Maryland by way of Itta Bena, Mississippi, whose art is committed to reflecting the experience of Black people in the United States. She is an international recording artist and singer-songwriter bringing soulful vibes to over 20 different countries around the world most recently Algiers, Taghit, and Bechar. She is the creator of The Living Room Social (TLRS), a platform for musicians and music lovers in the Maryland area to make and experience music together. For the past 3 years, TLRS has curated over 75 shows boasting loyal audiences of over 200 people per show. A natural leader, Ashley’s music is directly rooted within her community, love, and life as she knows it the good the bad, and the indifferent. Black Assets is surely a dynamic artist on the rise. Be sure to follow her on Spotify and support her works on all digital music streaming platforms everywhere! Check out Black’s latest release OTR(OAD) on all digital streaming platforms now!
Twitter: @Black_assets
Instagram: @BlackAssetswith
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A’NIYA TAYLOR (DewMore Youth Poet Laureate) is a Spoken word artist, community advocate, horse enthusiast, and author of her debut book, The Space Between: The Hurting The Healing The Loving. She is the (2022-23) Youth Poet Laureate of Baltimore and has also served as a Youth Poet Ambassador in 2020 and 2021. She graduated from Baltimore City College in 2021 and has been the captain of the Baltimore City Youth Poetry Team in both 2021 and 2023. She won 1st place in the individual poetry slam at the 2021 Brave New Voices event and was nominated for Marylander of the Year in 2020 for her activism work. She was also interviewed for Duke University’s Archive in 2021. Through her poetry, A’niya aims to highlight the intersection between art, individual healing, and community healing. aniyataylor.com
Instagram: @_aniyataylor
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WORDSMITH is a songwriter, poet, recording artist, actor, playwright, entrepreneur, and philanthropist from Baltimore. He is a Grammy Voting Member, a finalist for the 2023 Baker Artist Awards, selected as one of 25 Black Marylanders to Watch in 2024 by the Baltimore Sun, 5-time ASCAPLUS Award winner, and winner of Best Rap/Hip Album for Perspective Jukebox at the 16th Independent Music Awards. His music and jingles are featured on prominent networks and shows like WWE, ESPN Sportscenter, Kawasaki, Russian Doll (Netflix), Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix), Preacher (AMC), and many more! He was hired to write a new narration for Carnival of the Animals with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and hosted the 2018 BSO Gala with special guest Cynthia Erivo before officially becoming an Artistic Partner with the BSO in 2020. He also founded a nonprofit Rise with a Purpose, Inc. Putting his Theater degree to work, he wrote and directed an original play his theater students performed in called “The Purple Tape” to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Hip Hop in
2023. He is currently working on a House music EP called “Free House” and teaming up for a jazz poetry album called “Blossom Black Rose” with Grammy-winning pianist and composer Alex Brown. Wordsmithmusic.com
Twitter: @Wordsmith
Instagram: @Wordsmith
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NANCY MURRAY is the author of two memoirs, One Child for Another, with 11th Hour Press and No Experience Necessary with Wayword Books. Her first collection of poetry, The Colors of Fear, was recently published by Cyberwit Press. Nancy teaches memoir, poetry, and compositional writing at Community College of Baltimore County in Essex and she facilitates the monthly Words on the Thirds, a poetry workshop with the South County Art’s Lab in Deale MD.
https://www.NancyMurray.net
Instagram: @nancymurray7
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RYAN JAFAR ARTES (he/she/they) is an activist, memoirist, and poet. Ryan’s work calls for a re-imagination of culture via cultural renaissance from the lived experience perspective as a transracial transnational South Asian Indian American adoptee. Ryan is the host of The Adoptee Open Mic, and hosts letter-writing classes to support their activism and creative work, most of which is self-published, including their inaugural chapbook After Midnight. Ryan’s work appears in Panorama: The Journal of Travel Place and Nature, and anthologies published by Querencia Press, Moonstone Arts Center, and Capturing Fire Press. Ryan’s poem “8,049 Miles,” was a finalist in the 2021 Prometheus Unbound Competition and is featured in the accompanying anthology published by Prometheus Dreaming. Ryan participated in a DIY MFA program of their own design and implementation featured in an interview with The MFA Series.
https://linktr.ee/ryanartes
Instagram: @ryanartespoet
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An editor with Loch Raven Review, MATT HOHNER (MFA, Naropa University) has published two full-length collections, At the Edge of a Thousand Years, winner of the 2023 Jacar Press Poetry Book Contest, and Thresholds and Other Poems (Apprentice House 2018), and one chapbook, States (Third Ear Books 1999). Hohner has won or placed in numerous national and international poetry competitions, with publication credits in literary journals in seven countries on five continents. He has been nominated for a Best of the Net and a Pushcart prize. Hohner has held two residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, with one forthcoming at Anam Cara Retreat in Ireland. His publications include Prairie Fire, Rattle: Poets Respond, Takahē, New Contrast, Narrative Magazine, Poetry Ireland, Prairie Schooner, The Baltimore Review, and elsewhere.
https://matthohner.wordpress.com.
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DR. LATORIAL FAISON is a Virginia-born and raised poet, author, English professor, 28-year veteran military spouse, and mother. She is the author of historical research, The Missed Education of the Negro: An Examination of the Black Segregated Education Experience in Southampton County, and over a dozen poetry books, including Mother to Son, the 28 Days of Poetry Celebrating Black History trilogy collection, I AM WOMAN, flesh, and LOVE POEMS. Faison has been published in Obsidian, Prairie Schooner, AUNT CHLOE, Artemis Journal, Solstice, Southern Women’s Review, About Place Journal, Penumbra, West Trestle Review, Deep South Magazine, Stonecoast Review, and elsewhere. She is a Pushcart nominee, recipient of the Tom Howard Poetry Prize, a Furious Flower, AWP, and VA Humanities Fellow. Faison is a graduate of UVA, VA TECH, and Virginia State University. Her forthcoming book with the University of Alaska Press, Nursery Rhymes in Black, won the 2023 Permafrost Poetry Prize.
www.latorialfaison.com
Twitter: @latorialfaison
Instagram: @latorial30
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ALEXA PATRICK, Mistress of Ceremonies, (she/her) is a vocalist and poet from Connecticut. She is the author of Remedies for Disappearing (Haymarket Books, 2023) and holds fellowships from Cave Canem, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and more. Previous artistic partnerships of Alexa’s
include Meta, Microsoft, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts. In spring 2023, Alexa made her stage production debut as Un/Sung in the opera We Shall Not Be Moved, (dire. Bill T. Jones). You may find her work in publications including Adroit, CRWN Magazine, and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic.
alexapatrick.com
Twitter: @getfreealexap
Instagram: @alexalaurel
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CityLit Project and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in partnership with Chesapeake Shakespeare Company present CityLit Festival: Dismantling the Culture of Silence. This celebration of the arts showcases a bevy of leading poets and writers on April 20, 2024. We’re talking fiction, nonfiction, poetry galore, and ways to up the ante on your craft.
Download the CityLit Festival: Dismantling the Culture of Silence flyer.