Mayor Brandon Scott announced Monday that the Baltimore Book Festival is returning in September after a four-year hiatus, a sign that the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts (BOPA) likely will work with the city past June 30.
Scott said at City Hall on Monday that the festival will take place Sept. 27 to 29 in Waverly. It will include book sellers, literary salons, panel discussions, writing workshops, poetry readings, author talks, book signings, children’s activities, live podcast recordings and more. The location was announced as “in and around Waverly Main Street.”
“We are coming back better than ever,” the mayor said. “This is a special event for everyone in Baltimore…. There is going to be something for everyone.”
He noted that the Orioles and Ravens both once played at Memorial Stadium in Waverly/Ednor Gardens, so “we know the neighborhood is accustomed to holding big events.”
The Baltimore Book Festival was last held in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, and it was produced by BOPA and located at the Inner Harbor. Last year, frustrated that former BOPA CEO Donna Drew Sawyer hadn’t brought it back, merchants and other stakeholders in Waverly put on a Waverly Book Festival in April.
The 2024 book festival marks a return to the fall, when it was traditionally held. It’s also the 25th anniversary for the event. Council member Odette Ramos, who represents Waverly, said the festival is being shifted to the fall because that’s what booksellers from across the city preferred.
Ramos said she expects the festival will include not only booksellers from Waverly but businesses such as Greedy Reads in Remington and Atomic Books in Hampden.
“I am so excited about being able to host the Baltimore Book Festival in the 14th District, and particularly Waverly,” she said. “I am so honored to represent over 11 book stores in my district, and so many booksellers live in my district that are selling elsewhere. This makes sense to be able to bring the Baltimore Book Festival to a neighborhood that is dedicated to books. We also have the Waverly library…. This is going to be a true partnership…. This is the city’s book festival, and we’re super happy to host it in Waverly.”
BOPA is an independent organization that has a contract to serve as the city’s events producer, film office and arts council. Its contract with the city is due to expire on June 30, before the book festival takes place but presumably after initial planning for the festival is well underway.
Sawyer resigned in January 2023 after Scott said he lost confidence in her ability to lead the agency. Besides not producing a book festival after 2019, Sawyer failed to produce Artscape festivals in 2020, 2021 and 2022 even though the city allocated funds for those events. She also didn’t put on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Parade in 2023 – an event the Mayor’s Office stepped in at the last minute to produce.
Sawyer was replaced in June 2023 by interim CEO Todd Yuhanick, who brought back Artscape in 2023 and told the BOPA board last year that he wanted to bring back the book festival as a citywide event in 2024. In January, the BOPA board voted to replace him with Rachel Graham, who starts as BOPA’s new CEO on March 15. Yuhanick is serving as interim CEO until then.
In tandem with the press conference, BOPA issued a news release saying it will present the book festival “in partnership with the City of Baltimore, Waverly Main Street, Red Emma’s and Peabody Heights Brewery.” The press release spelled the mayor’s name Brandom and spelled Waverly Main Street ‘Wavery” – the sort of carelessness that caused Scott to lose confidence in Sawyer.
Scott, who is up for reelection, has made it clear that he wants to see Baltimore during his tenure put on festivals and other large-scale gatherings, as a way of bringing back to the city a sense of “normalcy” after the shutdowns during the pandemic.
Asked on Monday about BOPA’s status after June 30, Scott stopped short of saying whether his book festival announcement means that BOPA’s contract with the city will be extended, and an extension has not been approved by Baltimore’s spending panel, the Board of Estimates.
Scott did say that his office continues to work with the organization and that “BOPA will lead the charge in organizing this” festival. With regard to the contract extension, “we’ll be talking about that in the future,” he said.
Ramos, who was instrumental in the creation of the Waverly Book Festival last year, mentioned BOPA as one of the partners that are needed to make the event a success. “We cannot do it without a full range of partners,” she said.
