January 19 marked the official launch of the Winter 2020 issue of the Little Patuxent Review. Contributors to the issue shared their work in front of a packed room at Oliver’s Carriage House in Columbia, Maryland.
Enjoy photos from the launch, and don’t forget to pick up an issue for yourself!
Issue guest editor Lisa Biggar welcomed everyone to the reading. 
The launch of the new issue marked the last day on staff for LPR‘s publisher, Desirée Magney. We’re so grateful to Desirée for all the hard work and love she has put into the journal, and will miss her dearly! 
Featured artist Ben Cricchi showed several of his photographs, most taken in and around Baltimore. Cricche said that never photographs someone without asking their permission, but he also never poses his subjects – he just shoots the image. The easiest subjects to photograph? Children, because “there’s more information flowing through them.” 
Alyson Mosquera Dutemple kicked off the reading with an excerpt from her short story “Herps.” 
Susan Okie read three poems, including “The Rains Begin in Western Kenya,” which is featured in the new issue of LPR. The poem is inspired by the years her family spent living in Kenya in the 1990s. 
Marcella Hunyadi read from an essay about her mother, who refused to join the Communist Party in Hungary in the 1980s and paid a very high price. 
Kailah Peters joined us from DePaul University, where she writes with on-demand poetry group Poems While You Wait. Her poem “In the Glow of the Aftermath” brought some audience members to tears. 
Before reading his poem “Doomsday Dog,” Jay Udall quipped that his dog’s fur was all over his jacket, so he was there in spirit. 
Holly Karapetkova also took us to Eastern Europe with her poem “Vlak,” about her husband’s hometown in Bulgaria, and read another poem inspired by a student of hers who walked to the United States from Guatemala. 
Gary Stein’s poem “Kayak” was inspired by the hobby that he and his wife share. 
Meg Eden shared poems from her upcoming collection Drowning in a Floating World, about the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Fukushima, Japan. 
Arden York’s story “The Expression of the Emotions in Girl and Animals” was written “in a fit of existential dread,” but Arden confessed that she’s also “vulnerable to optimism.” 
LPR Editor Steven Leyva closed out the reading by thanking all the contributors and staff who brought the issue to life.
Many thanks to Donald Tsusaki for photographing the event.
Little Patuxent Review 
annequinn51
Wish I could have been there! Thanks for the great pics.
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