The theme for The Baltimore Review’s summer contest is "How To." Why? Because I'm an old dog that can--and likes to--learn new tricks. Because--lucky me--I get to pick the contest theme. Because I know that a lot of writers, like me, spend way too much time in research activities because we're…
Read more » 0 CommentsThe editors of The Baltimore Review are pleased to announce the winners of our winter contest. Brett Foster, 1st place, for “On the Numbness That Will Be Our Future” Clay Matthews 2nd place, for “An Angel Gets Her Wings” Roy Bentley, 3rd place, for “O, Kindergarten” The final…
Read more » 0 CommentsI am currently enrolled in a nine-month certification course related to my job, so the chapbook format is the perfect fit for my highly compressed reading-for-pleasure time. Chapbooks are like potato chips: it’s impossible to consume just one—and who would want to!? Easy on the wallet and highly…
Read more » 0 CommentsEdward P. Jones: Lost in the City; All Aunt Hagar's Children. Stunning evocation of place, community, and time. Lost in the City had been on my must-read-but-haven't-yet for a long time, so when I did read it, I ran out and tracked down a copy of his second collection of short stories, All Aunt…
Read more » 0 CommentsEast of Eden by John Steinbeck A few times a year, perhaps out of sheer guilt, I read a classic or two, and I'm always glad when I do. Right now I am reading East of Eden. From the first sentence I was reminded of Steinbeck's keen sense of place—a trait that I love in writing, whether it be…
Read more » 0 CommentsI am presently reading Gary Shteyngart's very funny memoir Little Failure about the relocation and dislocation of his younger self and mother and father from Russia to Queens; I can relate to all of it, having made a similar journey from Czechoslovakia to Brooklyn some years before. Within the…
Read more » 0 CommentsThe Tide King by Jen Michalski Michalski’s The Tide King is the story of burnette saxifrage, an herb rumored in Polish folklore to provide those who eat it with immortality, and its effects on three generations of a Polish family over two continents beginning in nineteenth-century Poland through…
Read more » 0 CommentsEvery now and then a story comes in to Baltimore Review containing an element of the supernatural and when I see one, my eyes widen a little. I don’t mean supernatural as in Mars or rocket-ships from 2114 or really any kind of full-on fantasy. What I mean is stories in which one thing is off but…
Read more » 0 CommentsThe Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman Andrzej Szczypiorski’s The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman centers around Irma Seidenman, a young Jewish widow living in Nazi-occupied Warsaw in 1943, who lives in constant fear of being discovered: She has blond hair and blue eyes. Passing means life and avoiding what…
Read more » 0 CommentsI developed a ritual where every weekend I’d drop by Greg’s Bagels for coffee on my way to The Book Thing of Baltimore. I tried to donate as much as I took from their selection of free books but, for me, books represent an experience that I prefer to hang on to like photographs. One rainy Sunday…
Read more » 1 Comments