Baltimore Book Festival

Held annually in the Inner Harbor since 1995, Baltimore Book Festival is a hot spot for national, celebrity, and local authors and booksellers. Run by the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts (BOPA), a nonprofit organization that strives to make Baltimore a more vibrant and creative city, the event hosts over 100 exhibitors and lasts for three days. The Book Festival runs on support from different organizations and companies, most of which are Maryland-based, operated, and owned. Maryland Humanities, Maryland Romance Writers, and the National Aquarium are just three of their programming partners who run booths and presentations on a variety of topics and authors.

Marylanders are avid attendees at the variety of panels offered at the festival, and have been for years, as prolific writers on both a Maryland and national level have hosted talks. Laura Lippman, a Baltimore-based author, showcased her newest publication After I’m Gone in 2013, and in 2015, Senator John McCain exhibited his anthology of short stories, Thirteen Soldiers. In 2016, winner of the American Book Award Susan Muaddi Darraj appeared at the festival in honor of her anthology, A Curious Land: Stories from Home. Darraj is an English professor at Harford Community College in Bel Air, Maryland, and lives just outside Baltimore in Phoenix, Baltimore County.

However, authors and book readings aren’t the only things to be found at this festival. Visitors can see cooking demonstrations, hear live music, and drink the best beer and wine in Baltimore. The event is intended for all ages, including an interactive center for young children by the Enoch Pratt Free Library. Families are encouraged to bring their children and teens for readings and games.

Community organizations and businesses can also have tents at the event, where particular genres of books are sold and exhibited. Red Emma’s, a bookstore/coffeehouse in Station North, Baltimore, holds a Radical Bookfair Pavilion every year that features local activist-authors. The Chesapeake Shakespeare company have performed at their booth for 3 seasons, as of 2016. National organizations such as the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America have also held booths to exhibit their genres. The Ivy Bookshop has remained the Book Festival’s largest contributor of books since it first began and now hosts its own stage. The festival works with various Maryland institutions such as Penguin Random House, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Johns Hopkins University Press, Arcadia/History Press, and Towson University, in order to fill its schedule with poetry readings, publisher presentations, and writing program events.

The 2017 Baltimore Book Festival will be held in the Inner Harbor from September 22nd to 24th. Authors currently slated to attend include Ada Calhoun (Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give) and Red Rohl (Heavy Sketches Volume III). Charles Bock (Oliver & Alice) and Leslie Jamison (The Empathy Exams), will headline the CityLit booth, an event where local creative writers can receive feedback on their pieces. Completely free to the public and staffed mostly by volunteers, the Baltimore Book Festival is a celebration of reading and literature that upholds Baltimore’s legacy as a historical literary hotspot.

Click here to view the 2016 Official Baltimore Book Festival Video, created by the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts.

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Special thanks to students in Professor Onitveros' ENGL142 class (Saint Mary's group).
Image sources: Festival.