The Baltimore Book Festival is coming back to Waverly in 2025.
Organizers announced that the festival will be held Sept. 13 and 14, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. both days, and it will be free to attend.
The presenters are the City of Baltimore and Waverly Main Street. Programming partners include Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse; CityLit Project; Baltimore Read Aloud; Peabody Heights Brewery and the Waverly branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library. The location is East 32nd, East 31st and East 30th streets between Greenmount Avenue and Barclay Street.
“I am so excited to host the Baltimore Book Festival, highlighting the literary arts in our city,” City Council member Odette Ramos, who represents Waverly, said in her weekly video message to constituents. “We are a book and a writers’ town. There will be author talks, local and regional booksellers, and something for everyone.”
This will be the third year a book festival has been held in Waverly. In 2024, the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts (BOPA) worked with Waverly Main Street, Ramos and city agencies to put it on, ending a four-year stretch when it wasn’t held by BOPA.
The festival started in the Mount Vernon area more than two decades ago and migrated to the Inner Harbor before a former BOPA CEO, Donna Drew Sawyer, shut it down the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and never brought it back. Sawyer resigned at Mayor Brandon Scott’s request in 2023, after failing to put on the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade. Robyn Murphy is BOPA’s current CEO.
In 2023, frustrated that BOPA hadn’t organized a citywide book festival since 2019, community leaders and merchants in Waverly produced their own event, the Waverly Book Festival, to show that Waverly is a good location for a festival and to promote book stores in the district. That effort set the stage for the Baltimore Book Festival to be held there in 2024 and now in 2025.
In addition to booksellers, performers and refreshments, the lineup for 2025 includes writing workshops, prose and poetry readings, literary panels and youth-oriented events. A kickoff reception will be held on Sept. 12 at Peabody Heights Brewery.
Besides Red Emma’s, participating merchants include Normal’s Books and Records; Urban Reads Bookstore; Greedy Reads; Charm City Books; Snug Books and Bird in Hand café and book shop. Guest speakers and additional vendors are still being confirmed.
More information is available at www.baltimorebookfest.com
