Navigating Words: Literary Arts Centers and Tumultuous Times
Session Description:
When your art is literally words, how do writers and literary arts organizations navigate times when words are under siege? When your focus (myopic) has been breadth (diversity) for very important and authentic reasons, how do you respond to times when both the understanding and nuances of language are at the foreground of artistic and political concern? Join members of literary arts organizations across the State of Maryland who work at the intersection of words and free speech, funding and directives, mission and mitigation. How do literary arts organizations build community around their programming and support literary artists in these challenging, perhaps existential, times?
Presenter: Carla Du Pree
Carla Du Pree is a fiction writer, a state and national arts advocate, a literary consultant, and the executive director of CityLit Project, which holds an award-winning CityLit Festival in Baltimore. She is the co-founder of Scribente Maternum (Write Like A Mother Retreat). Carla is a Rubys and Maryland State Arts Council grantee and was awarded the 2025 Cultural Innovator Award by Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance.
Presenter: Tara Elliott
Tara A. Elliott’s poems have appeared in 32 Poems, Ninth Letter, Cumberland River Review, Cimarron Review, and Birmingham Poetry Review, among others. An award-winning poet and public-school educator, she also serves as Executive Director of the Eastern Shore Writers Association, advisor to the Bay to Ocean Writers Conference, and host of the weekly creative writing Zoomcast, “Thursdays with ESWA.”
Presenter: Stephen Huff
Born in Texas and currently residing in Chesapeake Beach, Maryland, Stephen Donald Huff is President of the Maryland Writers’ Association. He is an author of fiction novels, short stories, and poetry. He is also a published scientist with expertise in bioinformatics (computational biology) and machine learning.
Presenter: Zach Powers
Zach Powers is the author of the forthcoming novel The Migraine Diaries (JackLeg 2026), the novel First Cosmic Velocity (Putnam 2019), and the story collection Gravity Changes (BOA Editions 2017). He has served on the Board of Directors for the Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home, taught youth creative writing workshops for Deep Center, and co-founded the literary arts organization Seersucker Live, Inc. He is Artistic Director at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda.
Presenter: Gregg Wilhelm (moderator)
Gregg Wilhelm is Director of Mason Creative Writing, a community that includes BFA and MFA in Creative Writing programs at George Mason University. He co-founded Watershed Lit: Center for Literary Engagement and Publishing Practice at Mason in 2020 and founded CityLit Project in Baltimore in 2004. Gregg is a newly appointed commissioner for the Baltimore County Commission on Arts and Sciences.
Date, Time, and Location
Wednesday, June 18th
Closing Plenary: 4:15 – 5 PM
Room: Black Box