Bestselling and celebrity authors and dynamic panel discussions.

Arts & Humanities Month Kick Off

Bring your lunch and enjoy the Arts & Humanities month kick off. At noon, the Eubie Blake Cultural Center will present a music performance and give away copies of the children’s book, Can a Coal Shuttle Fly?, by Camay Murphy and illustrated by acclaimed Baltimore artist, Tom Miller. Daydreams and Nightmares Aerial Theatre will appear in costume and showcase their ability to dance and perform acrobatics at 12:30pm. Throughout the event, Nana Projects will be on hand (actually on stilts!) to promote their upcoming stilt walking workshops offered during the month of October.

Love in Literature

A panel discussion with fiction authors whose books explore the many facets of love.  With Sarah Gardner Borden, Games to Play After Dark, Maria Murnane, Perfect on Paper and Charmaine Parker, The Next Phase of Life.  Part of Ladies' Night Out!

Ladies Night Out

Grab your girlfriends for a literary ladies' night out at the Baltimore Book Festival!  Featuring panels about love and relationships and a keynote address by Shirley Strawberry of the Steve Harvey Morning Show.

Special Thanks to:

Relationships by the Book

Get relationship advice - about your spouse, your BFF, or that latest fling - from a panel of expert authors: Andrea Syrtash, Cheat on Your Husband (With Your Husband): How to Date Your Spouse, Sarah Wendell, Everything I Know About Love I Learned from Romance Novels and Andrea Bonior, The Friendship Fix: The Complete Guide to Choosing, Losing, and Keeping Up With Your Friends.  Part of Ladies' Night Out!

Shirley Strawberry, The Strawberry Letter

Each morning Shirley Strawberry, co-host of the nationally syndicated Steve Harvey Morning Show, delivers no-nonsense, woman-to-woman straight talk to eight million listeners in the wildly popular radio segment The Strawberry Letter. Now they can find her advice on parenting, relationships, career decisions and more in The Strawberry Letter: Real Talk, Real Advice, Because Bitterness Isn’t Sexy.

Terry McMillan, Getting to Happy

Terry McMillan is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of Mama, Disappearing Acts, Waiting to Exhale, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, A Day Late and a Dollar Short, and The Interruption of Everything. She has been recognized with an NAACP Image Award and the Essence Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Literature. Getting to Happy is the long-awaited sequel to the beloved New York Times bestseller Waiting to Exhale.

Roland Martin, The First: President Barack Obama’s Road to the White House and Jacquie Hood Martin, Fulfilled!

Together for the Baltimore Book Festival, Roland and Jacquie Hood Martin share their combined experience with attendees. As a member of CNN’s “Best Political Team on Television” and political editor for the TV ONE Cable Network during the election campaigns, Roland Martin found himself in the catbird seat of one of the most momentous events in black history. His new book, The First, takes readers back down President Barack Obama’s campaign trail in a chronological journal of events that dates back to when then Senator Obama had yet to announce his candidacy and follows him on his journey to the presidency.  In her book, Fulfilled! The Art and Joy of Balanced Living, Jacquie Hood Martin inspires readers on how to ‘balance their purpose’, purge their past, and move into the arenas in which they are called and destined to shine.

Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Author, poet and screenwriter Sherman Alexie was named one of The New Yorker’s 20 top writers for the 21st century. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live. It is a 2007 National Book Award winner in Young People’s Literature and the 2011 One Maryland One Book. Presented by the Maryland Humanities Council.

Kimberla Lawson Roby, Secret Obsession

Kimberla Lawson Roby is the New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed Reverend Curtis Black Series. She reads from Secret Obsession, her 16th novel.

John Prendergast and Michael Mattocks, Unlikely Brothers

Peace activist and cofounder of the Enough Project, John Prendergast is known as a champion of human rights in Africa. But the not-so-public face of J.P. is the life he led as a Big Brother to Michael Mattocks as he grew up on the tough streets of Washington, D.C. This friendship continued for over twenty-five years as the two coped with varying degrees of violence, instability, and trauma in their own lives. Inspirational and deeply moving, Unlikely Brothers: Our Story of Adventure, Loss, and Redemption, beautifully showcases how life’s most random moments can often be the most profound.

Baltimore Histories

Presented by the Radical Bookfair Pavilion, a panel exploring the historical intersections of race and space in Baltimore City.

One Day It’ll All Make Sense: A Conversation with Common, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson and Dr. Mahalia Ann Hines

Rapper, actor, activist and author Common has earned a reputation in the hip hop world as a conscious artist by embracing themes of love and struggle in his songs, and by sharing his own search for knowledge with his listeners. In his new memoir, One Day It’ll All Make Sense, he invites the reader to go behind the spotlight to see him as he really is—not just as Common but as Lonnie Rashid Lynn. He is joined by his mother, Dr. Mahalia Ann Hines, and author and professor Dr. Michael Eric Dyson for a dynamic conversation.

Tavis Smiley, Fail Up: 20 Lessons on Building Success from Failure

As award-winning broadcaster and bestselling author Tavis Smiley reminds us in his new book, Fail Up: 20 Lessons on Building Success from Failure, failure is often the first step in a truly great success story. Reflecting on his 20-year anniversary in broadcasting, Smiley shows us—through stories and reflections on his own life—how opportunity is often hiding just beneath the surface of disappointment, despair, or disgrace.

Eddie Brown, Beating the Odds

Beating the Odds is the improbable, inspiring autobiography of financial guru Eddie C. Brown, one of the nation's top stock pickers and money managers. It details how Brown skillfully kept Brown Capital Management afloat through the dot-com bust, 9/11 and the Great Recession. Born to a 13-year-old unwed mother in the rural South, this African-American investment whiz created a Baltimore-based financial firm that amassed more than $6 Billion under management.

Writing About Crime and Justice

CityLit Project and Urbanite present a conversation with journalists and academics discussing how writing about crime and justice is a special discipline with its own approach, sensitivity, and urgency. Panel includes Michael Corbin, educator and freelancer whose series on such issues has appeared in Urbanite; Peter Hermann, crime reporter, Baltimore Sun; and Lester Spence, Johns Hopkins University political scientist and author of Stare in the Darkness: The Limits of Hip-Hop and Black Politics. Moderated by Marc Steiner, "The Marc Steiner Show," WEAA-FM.

Wise Women Project Panel

Author Dorothy Bailey discusses her book, In A Different Light: Reflections and Beauty of Wise Women of Color, with contributors to the work.

Novelists of Note Panel Discussion

Bestselling and award-winning authors Myla Goldberg, The False Friend; Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus; Jacquelyn Mitchard, Second Nature: A Love Story and Lisa Unger, Darkness, My Old Friend discuss their blockbuster hits.

Laura Lippman, The Most Dangerous Thing

Laura Lippman has been awarded every major prize in crime fiction. Since the publication of What The Dead Know, each of her hardcovers has hit the New York Times bestsellers list. A recent recipient of the first Mayor’s Prize, she lives in Baltimore, New York and New Orleans with her husband, David Simon, stepson, and daughter.