The Tide King makes 2013 Top Ten Fiction at Baltimore City Paper

The Tide King made the 2013 Top Ten Fiction at Baltimore City Paper. So thrilled and honored to be included with Rachel Kushner, Karen Russell, George Saunders, and Laura van den Berg:

5. Tide King, by Jen Michalski (Black Lawrence Press) Michalski joined the big leagues with this stupendous novel whose magical realism is heavy on the realism as she follows her characters through war, love, and a cross-country country-music tour. Gorgeous. We’re lucky to have Michalski before the rest of the world discovers her. But they will.

4/11/13: 10th Annual CityLit Festival

The 10th Annual CityLit Festival in this Saturday, April 13th in Baltimore. George Saunders is the headline (yowsers!). Other readers include Leigh Newman, Tim Wendel, Terese Svoboda, Elisabeth Dahl, and myself (I'll be reading an excerpt from the soon-to-be released The Tide King).

In conjunction, Baltimore City Paper ran a nice piece yesterday about the CityLit Project's 10 years with the CityLit Festival (and also its myriad other accomplishments under Founder Gregg Willhelm, such as programming at the Baltimore Book Festival, CityLit Press, and the Baltimore Writers Conference). You can read it here.

"Baltimore has always been a collaborative place, but I think what CityLit, along with people like Jen Michalski and Michael Kimball (of 510 Reading Series) and [CP contributors ] Deb Rudacille and John Barry with the New Mercury series made sure that the literary arts are part of the mix."