If you don’t know Justin Sirois by now, you certainly should. Not least because he’s a friend of the blog and a Baker Artist Award winner. We’ve already told you about his novel Falcons on the Floor and were especially interested in his serial, app centric follow-up So Say the Waiters, which cut a new path in digital publishing while telling the story of Baltimore punk life in a unique and authentic language.
Justin also founded Narrow House Press when back when. But he lives in a narrow house no longer. These days you can find him out at the western edge of the city in Gywnn Oak, where the biggest distraction a writer may face is a few pesky crickets, and not crackhead neighbors yelling and sirens wailing all night like you still see in our fair city’s arts districts. He’s even got land and trees and outbuildings and a fire pit by which to sit and contemplate the world about us.
But to come to the point- Justin would like to share all of this with you. He’s begun a monthly reading series right in his own backyard (literally!) called Cabin//Fire, the next edition of which takes place tomorrow and features Mark Wallace, Laura Van Den Berg, and Mark Cugini.
You can check out their résumés on the Cabin//Fire website, or you can just take it from us that they are smart people who write interesting things that you would be happy to listen to. In fact, we’ve been out of town so long that this is one of those great things we missed out on that we didn’t even know we were missing out on. Until now. That little cabin has been a veritable powerhouse of literary talent for some months now, and we trust it will be well into the future.
Baltimore hasn’t had a high quality reading series to boast of for some years now, but it’s a credit to our city and especially to Justin that he’d put together one worth waiting for: one that’s at once of University quality and DIY ethos. This is a reading series where you don’t just hear high caliber literary talent read… you make friends with them and have a weenie roast and drink grappa and Natty Boh and enjoy the elemental pleasures of wood and fire in God’s green creation etc etc etc.
Bottom line: A series like this has the potential to be Baltimore’s own Algonquin Round Table or Exquisite Corpse. It’s just the right mix of academia, avant-garde, literary tradition and genuine hometown charm. Get in on the ground floor, before the cabin’s full.