Baltimore has always had a bit of a literary community, but it feels concentrated in and associated with university departments--Hopkins writing seminars or MICA's poets, for example. Since January 2008, Baltimore-based Michael Kimball has helped foster a literary pocket that isn't as academically ingrained through the 510 Reading Series, which he curates with Jen Michalski, and has brought a wide variety of fiction writers to Baltimore to read, as well as spotlighting local writers. And since his 2008 novel Dear Everybody was published, Kimball has become a critically lauded, inventive local novelist who isn't bogged down with adjunct professor duties. This freedom allows Kimball to also work on his ongoing "Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story on a Postcard" project and his movie collaboration, I Will Smash You, which debuts this fall.
