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March 29, 2024

Students engage with Baltimore community at annual book festival

By ANNA GORDON | September 28, 2017

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LOUIE HOFFENBERG/PHOTOGRAPHY STAFF Structural repairs to Krieger and the Colonnade are almost complete.

Thousands of people flocked to the Inner Harbor for the 22nd annual Baltimore Book Festival, which took place from Sept. 22 to Sept. 24. The festival brings authors to Baltimore each year to promote new publications, speak on panels and sign books. Local vendors and performances are also featured.

A range of programming was available to participants during the festival. Panelists gathered to speak about topics ranging from cookbooks to an event entitled “Black Existentialism Lends to Dystopian Afrofuturism,” which linked literature to current social issues like police brutality and mass incarceration.

Some panels aimed to create a workshop space for aspiring writers, such as “Worldbuilding for Writers,” while others catered to fans of a genre, such as “Dinosaurs, Diseases & Dwarf Stars: Actual Science in Science Fiction.”

Junior Hailey Williams wrote in an email to The News-Letter that she went to the festival with her friends to find used books from local booksellers. She added that she works at the JHU Press and wanted to see her bosses at the JHU Press booth.

“It is important to buy from local and independent bookstores, not just because it supports the Baltimore economy but also because a lot of the books for sale in these venues are being given a second life through the efforts of private business owners and book enthusiasts,” she wrote. “Your experience as a customer has that richness of history and passion that you sometimes just don’t get at a chain bookstore.”

Sophomore Sumera Yego said that she enjoyed the festival because it made her appreciate Baltimore more.

“There were lots of stalls to find cute little books, and there were also opportunities to make connections,” Yego said. “I feel like I understand my part of the city as a student and as somebody who interacts with a lot of people from Baltimore.”

Williams wrote that while a range of bookstores, restaurants and other businesses are represented at the festival, there are other ways for students to engage with the community.

“For anyone who wants to see a slice of cultural Baltimore and experience the literary underground that has been built here, I’d highly recommend visiting the Baltimore Book Festival in the years to come,” Williams wrote. “If you really want to be part of and enjoy the Baltimore community, though, the best way is through volunteering. ”

Junior Sarah Linton said that she enjoyed the festival but agreed that it doesn’t accurately represent Baltimore.

“I always feel with events like this it’s always people who don’t really engage with the city and just come out for that because it feels like a safer way to engage,” Linton said.

However, she believes that it is important to support the local community and she felt the festival was an opportunity to support independent bookstores.

“I know book festivals have good deals, which is better than ordering from Amazon and driving indie bookstores out of business,” Linton said. “For me going to bookstores and buying books from an actual store as opposed to just an online retailer was an important part of my life growing up. There’s a lot more investment in literature and creating a positive reading experience.”

Many students remarked on the range of speakers and panels that they attended, including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who received her Master’s degree in creative writing from Hopkins. Adichie is the author of Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah, among other novels and essays.

She spoke at the festival to promote her 2003 novel Purple Hibiscus, the story of a girl growing up in postcolonial Nigeria, which was recently named the One Maryland One Book winner.

The One Maryland One Book award is given by Maryland Humanities, an organization that promotes a dialogue about Maryland’s culture and history through the arts.

Other speakers included Matthew Crenson, a scholar of Baltimore politics and professor emeritus of the Hopkins political science department, and Susan Muaddi-Darraj, a prominent Arab-American writer who is also a guest lecturer for the Master’s in Writing program at Hopkins.

The festival incited controversy earlier this year when organizers announced that Rachel Doležal had been invited to speak as a featured author following the release of her recent book, In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World.

Doležal is a white woman widely known for lying about her race and claiming to be black. Many Baltimore residents reacted negatively to the news that the festival would host Doležal, and the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts cancelled her appearance soon afterwards.

Many called into question Doležal’s freedom of speech, a subject that has earned national attention after the recent protests against a group of far-right speakers who were invited to the University of California, Berkeley.

Williams stated that she recognizes the impact of verbal abuse, but she added that people should be receptive to controversial speakers.

“My view on most free-speech issues is that anyone is welcome to say what they feel or think as long as it doesn’t endanger or threaten or coerce another person,” she wrote.


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