April 20 @ 10:00 am - 11:00 am

Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance presents Baker Artist Awards Literary Finalists at the CityLit Festival

10:00 am – 11:00 am
Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall
Auditorium

PARKING
https://www.bsomusic.org/visit-joseph-meyerhoff-hall/

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Working with the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund established the Baker Artist Awards in 2008 to support artists and promote Greater Baltimore as a strong creative community. The Baker Artists Awards confer $90,000 in prizes annually on six area artists across each artistic discipline– Visual Arts, Film/ Video, Interdisciplinary, Literary Arts, Performance, and Music. In addition, awardees receive showcase and exhibition opportunities at major Baltimore institutions and a feature on Maryland Public Television Artworks. The awards are adjudicated from artists on the Baker Artist Portfolios website.

ELIZABETH EVITTS DICKINSON, the 2023 Mary Sawyer Imboden Prize winner, is the first literary artist to win the prestigious prize. Her work encompasses cultural criticism, narrative nonfiction, investigative journalism, short fiction, and memoir. She sets the tone for this session with a discussion about her prize-winning work and how the Baker recognition affected her professional life as a writer. She will introduce the following 2024 Literary Finalists who will read and discuss their work.

A recipient of Guggenheim, NEA, and Fulbright Fellowships, five Pushcart Prizes, as well as a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for her essays On Looking, LIA PURPURA, the author of All the Fierce Tethers, her work has been defined as “fiercely elegant yet filled to the brim with guilty pleasures.” (The Journal) MICHAEL DOWNS is the author of three books and has served as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar to Poland. PATRICK SMITHWICK new memoir War’s Over, Come Home, A Father’s Search for His Son, Two-Tour Marine Veteran of the Iraq War, is a call to action, vaulting the author onto the national stage, placing him on podcasts and radio shows across the country, as well as the front page of NGUYÊN KHÔI NGUYỄN is the cartoonist of the Ignatz nominated comic series, The Gulf, which includes original drawings, music, and animation. Writer and musician KRISTINA R. GADDY is the author of Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo’s Hidden History, at the crossroads of slavery, religion, and music. JEANNIE VANASCO’s third book, A Silent Treatment, is forthcoming in 2025. The author of two memoirs, Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl and The Glass Eye, which Poets & Writers called one of the five best literary nonfiction debuts of 2017.