Meet Our Grantee-Partner: CityLit Project
Members of the CityLit board with the executive director at the 2023 CityLit Festival: “Lifting As We Climb.” Pictured from left to right: Frances (Bunky) Markert, Tracy Dimond, Brian Lyles, Carla Du Pree, Aditya Desai, Chelsea Lemon-Fetzer, and Chair Dana Harris Trovato. Photo courtesy of Infinite Motion.
Mission: CityLit Project nurtures the culture of literature in Baltimore, the metropolitan region, and throughout Maryland. We create enthusiasm for the literary arts, connect a community of avid readers and writers, and design opportunities for diverse audiences to embrace the literary arts.
CityLit Project’s executive director, Carla Du Pree, was 13 years old before she discovered the work of significant Black poets, such as Nikki Giovanni, Lucille Clifton, and Sonia Sanchez. Encountering these poets inspired Du Pree to become a writer herself, and also impressed upon her the importance of representation in the literary arts.
CityLit Project (also known as “CityLit”) was born out of a desire to bring literature to the forefront of the arts community. It got its start in 2004 as a group of four literature lovers who were determined to bring the best writers to Baltimore for a literary festival. By 2007, CityLit had hosted renowned authors, including Mark Doty, Edward P. Jones, James McBride, Paul Rusesabagina, and George Saunders, and later, Elizabeth Acevedo, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Yrsa Daley-Ward, Claudia Rankine, and others. CityLit is now considered the leading literary arts organization in its region, presenting a variety of high-quality, accessible, artistically diverse, and inclusive literary events.
Poets and CityLit Project executive director, Carla Du Pree, with poet Patricia Smith at Unshuttered Poets, a poetry finale at the 20th CityLit Festival. Photo courtesy of Infinite Motion.
CityLit is committed to fostering a vibrant, multicultural literary experience for emerging and established writers. It supports writers who haven't had a platform to share their work by offering an array of curated programming to connect writers and readers. It has long addressed inequities in the publishing and creative industry by placing diverse panels of poets and writers before enthusiastic audiences. It also supports writers with classes, resources, and an active literary and book-buying community.
Poetry is central to the work of the CityLit Project because of its moving impact on audiences, especially those who are unfamiliar with poetry in performance. During one event, Dominique Christina performed her poem about Emmett Till, describing what kind of child he was, alongside Baltimore native Kondwani Fidel, who guided the audience through a childhood in the city. Having these poets and poems side by side resonated deeply with the local audience while invoking a painful national history. “We couldn’t do this work without our poets,” says Du Pree.
Receiving an Equity in Verse grant from the Poetry Foundation has allowed CityLit Project to further champion poets as performers, extend offers to noteworthy poets, engage singers and musicians, and hire American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters for events. The grant also assisted CityLit in securing much-needed festival assistance. CityLit Project has been reinvigorated to continue the work of bringing poets and writers before audiences in Baltimore.