Lit House Salon on June 19
06/12/2018
Poets, fiction writers, essayists, local musicians—time for the 2018 Rose O’Neill Literary House Summer Literary Salon!
The Rose O’Neill Literary House’s Summer Literary Salon will feature readings by H.G.
Carrillo, David MacLean, Lynn Melnick, and the Literary House’s 2018 Cave Canem Fellow,
Lauren Russell, as well as music from The Pam Ortiz Band. This free, public event
on June 19, starting at 4:30, will be followed by a book signing and light refreshments.
H.G. Carrillo is the author of Loosing My Espanish, a novel. His short stories have appeared in Kenyon Review, Conjunctions, The Iowa Review, Glimmer Train, Ninth Letter, Slice and other journals and publications. He is the 2018 Writer in Residence for The Kratz
Center for Creative Writing at Goucher College, and sits on the executive board of
directors of The PEN/Faulkner Foundation.
David Stuart MacLean is a PEN/American award-winning essayist. His essays and stories
have been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian UK, Newsweek, Ploughshares, Guernica, The Bennington Review, Quarterly West, and on the radio program, This American Life. He is the author of the memoir The Answer to the Riddle Is Me, named by Kirkus Reviews as one of the Best Books of 2014.
Lynn Melnick is the author of the poetry collections Landscape with Sex and Violence and If I Should Say I Have Hope, and the co-editor of Please Excuse This Poem: 100 Poets for the Next Generation. Her poetry has appeared in APR, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, A Public Space, and elsewhere, and she has written essays and book reviews for Boston Review, LA Review of Books, and Poetry Daily, among others. A 2017-2018 fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center
for Scholars and Writers, she also serves on the executive board of VIDA: Women in
Literary Arts. Born in Indianapolis, she grew up in Los Angeles and currently lives
in Brooklyn.
Lauren Russell is the author of What’s Hanging on the Hush (Ahsahta, 2017). A Cave Canem graduate fellow, she was the 2014-2015 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry
Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the 2016 VIDA Fellow to the
Home School, and a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow in
poetry. She is a research assistant professor and is assistant director of the Center
for African American Poetry and Poetics at the University of Pittsburgh.
Pam Ortiz is that rare songwriter who can touch people where they feel deeply, where
they laugh and where they cry. She did this for ten years with the group Terra Nova
in the ’90s, playing to packed coffee houses in the Baltimore-Washington area. Her
songs were showcased in the three albums that the group recorded. She released a fourth
album, Rattle Them Chains, in 2012. Since then, she has performed solo, with her five-piece
group the Pam Ortiz Band, and also with her husband, percussionist Bob Ortiz. Her
signature clear voice, coupled with her turn of phrase and melody, enhance a catalogue
of original songs that speak of who we are, what we’ve won and lost, how we love and
live. The Pam Ortiz Band also includes Pam’s husband, Bob Ortiz, on percussion and
guitar, Ford Schumann on guitar, Nevin Dawson on viola and violin, and Philip Dutton
on piano and keyboards.