Spoken word artist Barrett Warner returns to Baltimore to host a night of story / poetry at Bird in Hand with poet and bassist Jennifer Keith. The show will open with Sheleen McElhinney from Philadelphia, Ashley Cowger from Harrisburg, and Baltimore's jaunty Sam Schmidt. All poets are connected to the wonderful Galileo Press.
The show will be followed by an open mic. Come early. Sign up. Stay late. You can dance if you want to!
Sheleen McElhinney's work has appeared, or is forthcoming in Abandon Journal, West Trade Review, Lily Poetry Review, Sepia Quarterly, and others. Her debut book, Every Little Vanishing, was the winner of the 2021 Write Bloody Publishing book award.
Ashley Cowger (she/they) is the award-winning author of two short story collections: On the Plus Side (Galileo Press) and Peter Never Came (Autumn House Press). Their fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in several literary journals, and they work as an Associate Teaching Professor at Penn State Harrisburg.
Sam Schmidt is the author of Dark Bird (Galileo Press 2024) and Suburban Myths (Beothuk Books 2012). For more than a decade he published WordHouse, a newsletter for Maryland writers, and hosted WordHouse at the Minas Gallery, a monthly reading series. He is a two-time recipient of the Maryland State Individual Artist Grant and has a Master's Degree in Comparative Literature from the Johns Hopkins University.
Host Barrett Warner is the editor of Free State Review and Galileo Press. He is the author of Why Is It So Hard to Kill You? (Somondoco) and My Friend Ken Harvey (Publishing Genius). Co-Host Jenny Keith is the author of Teminarch (Able Muse, forthcoming) and rocks a post punk groove with Batworth Stone.
