Saturday, Nancy and I reached the literary summit (no additional oxygen required). We were invited to the Baltimore Metro Literary Arts Summit -- quite a high-powered title for a soft-spoken, unassuming bunch of poets, writers and editors. The idea: find new ways to take advantage of the area's literary richness, and foster cooperation among the many individuals and groups that love the written/spoken word. Christine Stewart of the Maryland State Arts Council and Gregg Wilhelm of the CityLit Project threw the party.

There's already a lot going on -- just look at Read Street's calendar -- and folks at the summit are responsilble for most of those events, including the annual CityLit Festival at the Enoch Pratt (shown here). The summit also included editors of local journals such as Smartish Pace, jmww and the Little Patuxent Review. 

Still, there was a sense that more could be done. Group members worry about issues such as advertising, funding and recruiting artists. As a first step, the group will work on sharing resources and coordinating publicity for events. That should lead to a stronger literary arts community.

So what do you think literary Baltimore is missing?

Sun staff photo