Events & Announcements

We're so looking forward to seeing you at Center for Literary Arts events!

9/15: The Swampy Gala: Reading and Celebration with Abigail Rorer and Barbara Hurd, Main Street Books, 7 PM 

9/19: Against Absence Contributors Reading at FSU Appalachian Festival, Explorations Tent, 3 PM

9/22: Thomas Dollbaum (Poetry and Music), Clatter, 7 PM 

9/24: SMPA Indie Lit Poetry Slam, Clatter, 7 PM 

9/25: Indie Lit Kickoff Reading featuring Stephen Haven, Clatter, 7 PM

9/26: Western Maryland Independent Literature Festival (Indie Lit)—readings, workshops, panels, and a small press book fair from 11-5; open mic at Clatter at 6 PM; concert by The Downstrokes at Main Street Pub at 8 PM 

10/1: Karen Sayler McElmurray Reading, Main Street Books, 7 PM 

10/3: Coffee with a Writer: C. Jonathan Anderson, Center for Literary Arts, Library 237, 10 AM 

10/15: Martin Dickinson Reading, Lewis J. Ort Library, 3rd Floor, 7 PM 

11/7: Coffee with a Writer: Amy Branam Armiento, Center for Literary Arts, 10 AM 

11/14: Frostburg One Act Play Fest, Palace Theatre, 7 PM 

Fuller event information and author bios follow.

9/15: The Swampy Gala: Reading and Celebration with Abigail Rorer and Barbara Hurd, Main Street Books, 7 PM 

Celebrate the publication of Swamp Impressions, featuring text by Barbara Hurd and engravings by Abigail Rorer, and the 25th anniversary of the publication of Barbara Hurd’s Stirring the Mud. The event will feature a reading, discussion, and light refreshments.

Abigail Rorer is a wood engraver, etcher, practitioner of the art of silverpoint, and the proprietor of The Lone Oak Press. Her award-winning books and prints are seen in numerous exhibitions and collections across North America and the UK. She has also done illustrations for trade and scholarly publishers such as Norton and Houghton-Mifflin; California, Massachusetts, and Harvard University Presses; The Folio Society; and a number of private presses.

Barbara Hurd is the author of The Epilogues (Standing Stone Books 2021), Listening to the Savage / River Notes and Half-Heard Melodies (University of Georgia Press 2016), Tidal Rhythms (with photographer Stephen Strom, George F. Thompson Publishing 2016), Walking the Wrack Line (University of Georgia Press 2008), Entering the Stone, a Library Journal Best Natural History Book of the Year (Houghton Mifflin 2003), and Stirring the Mud, a Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2001 (Beacon Press 2001).

The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship for Creative Nonfiction, winner of the Sierra Club’s National Nature Writing Award, three Pushcart Prizes, and five Maryland State Arts Council Awards, she is Professor Emeritus at Vermont College of Fine Arts and Frostburg State University.

9/19: Against Absence Contributors Reading at FSU Appalachian Festival, Explorations Tent, 3 PM

The Center for Literary Arts is pleased to be included in this Appalachian Festival session featuring readings of literary work by contributors to the Against Absence Project, a public literary arts project considering the rare, threatened, and endangered species of Allegany County, Maryland. 

Check out the entirety of the Appalachian Festival: https://www.frostburg.edu/annual-events/afestival/index.php

20th Annual Western Maryland Independent Literature Festival 

The Western Maryland Independent Literature Festival (Indie Lit) celebrates the readers, writers, and publishers of small press and independent publishing. If you’re a reader or writer—or want to be—join us!

9/22: Thomas Dollbaum (Poetry and Music), Clatter, 7 PM

Chip Midnight of The Big Takeover writes, "Thomas Dollbaum’s songs are intimate while carrying weight, drawing comparisons to artists like Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Damien Jurado, Richard Buckner, and Arthur Russell. A poet with an MFA from the University of New Orleans, Dollbaum brings the same careful attention to language into his music – quiet, understated, but deeply affecting.”

9/24: SMPA Indie Lit Poetry Slam, Clatter, 7 PM

Let's SLAM! It's time to watch the ultimate poetic smackdown as your favorite writers battle it out on stage for cold hard cash!

Come out to Clatter Cafe on September 24 at 7PM to see it all--or join in on the mayhem yourself (performer information below). $2 Suggested donation at the door. All funds are awarded to poetry slam winners.

This is event is put on in partnership between Savage Mountain Punk Arts, Frostburg State University Center for Literary Arts, Maryland State Arts Council, and the Allegany Arts Council.

CONTESTANT INFORMATION: Bring 3 Poems to read. Time limit 3 minutes per poem. Sign up at the door day of the event.

9/25: Indie Lit Kickoff Reading featuring Stephen Haven, Clatter, 7 PM 

Stephen Haven’s The Flight from Meaning (Slant Books, 2025) was a finalist for the International Beverly Prize for Literature. He has three earlier poetry collections: The Last Sacred Place in North America, selected by T.R. Hummer as winner of the New American Poetry Prize; Dust and Bread, winner of the Ohio Poet of the Year award; and The Long Silence of the Mohawk Carpet Smokestacks, runner-up for the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry in the last year Levine served as judge. Together with Wang Shouyi, Li Yongyi, and Jin Zhong, he published the 300-page, dual language (Mandarin and English) anthology of collaborative translations, Trees Grow Lively on Snowy Fields: Poems from Contemporary China (Twelve Winters Press, 2021). His memoir about childhood in New York's industrial Mohawk Valley, The River Lock: One Boy’s Life Along the Mohawk, was published by Syracuse University Press in 2008.

9/26: Western Maryland Independent Literature Festival (Indie Lit) 

It’s a full day of Indie Lit! More details at https://www.frostburg.edu/center-for-literary-arts/Festivals/indie-lit-festival.php

Small and Independent Press Bookfair, 11-5, City Place 

Panels, Workshops, and Readings, 11-5 Frostburg Public Library, Mountain City Traditional Arts, and City Place Conference Room 

Open Mic, 6 PM, Clatter 

Indie Lit Concert: The Downstrokes with Subtastics at Main Street Pub, 8 PM 

10/1: Karen Sayler McElmurray Reading, Main Street Books, 7 PM

Karen Salyer McElmurray is the author of I Could Name God in Twelve Ways and Wanting Radiance: A Novel. Her memoir Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother's Journey is a National Book Critics Circle Notable Book and winner of the AWP Award Series for Creative Nonfiction. She has received numerous awards, including the Annie Dillard Prize, the New Southerner Literary Prize, the Orison Anthology Award, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and multiple notable mentions in Best American Essays. She is a visiting writer and lecturer at various programs and reading series across the United States.

10/3: Coffee with a Writer: C. Jonathan Anderson, Center for Literary Arts, Library 237, 10 AM 

C. Jonathan Anderson is a poet and a literary-arts organizer. Born in Washington DC, he has worked in social service delivery, ministry, martial arts, personal protection and bounty hunting. 

10/15: Martin Dickinson Reading, Lewis J. Ort Library, 3rd Floor, 7 PM 

Dickinson is the author of I Am That Road, Life List Notes, What a Windstorm Teaches, and My Concept of Time. 

“Dickinson’s road is an assembly of lines, of geometries and definitive materials in search of eternity, built to withstand time — prefabricated lines stretched across the plane, awaiting a wanderer. The immigrant walks among the verses and scrap metal. At this point, language intersects, and Dickinson’s Spanish opens a slit for introspection — for circular memories like slices of lemon, and divine journeys that end in floral flames. The relentless path remains; the lines lead forward, but also upward — a poetic pilgrimage that drags the asphalt and fuses it with a jacaranda tree in a bilingual space.” --Daniela Hernádez Rodríguez, Johns Hopkins Department of Modern Languages and Literatures.

11/7: Coffee with a Writer: Amy Branam Armiento, Center for Literary Arts, 10 AM 

Amy Branam Armiento is professor of English at Frostburg State University and immediate past president of the Poe Studies Association. She holds a PhD in English from Marquette University. Many of her publications and invited lectures focus on the treatment of women in nineteenth-century literary works, including her coedited book POE AND WOMEN: RECOGNITION AND REVISION. 

11/14: Frostburg One Act Play Fest, Palace Theatre, 7 PM 

The One Act Play Fest features staged readings and production of three new one-act plays, the winning plays of our One-Act Playwriting Competition; a talkback with writers, actors, and directors.

Center for Literary Arts events are supported by the Allegany Arts Council, the Community Trust Foundation, the City of Frostburg, MD, the Lewis J. Ort Library, and several offices at Frostburg State University, including the Dean of the College of Humanities, Arts, & Sciences and the Department of Communication and Literature.

FSU is committed to making all of its programs, services, and activities accessible to persons with disabilities. You may request accommodation through the Americans with Disabilities Act Compliance Office, 301.687.3035, TDD 301.687.7955.

FSU's campus parking lots are open to all in the evening, no permit required.

Some past Center for Literary Arts Events have been archived on YouTube.