🚫BURNING OF THE BOOKS: Long live the republic of imagination!
Thursday, March 5, 2026 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM EST
Poe Room, Floor 9, Indigo, Baltimore
AWP Offsite, March 5, 2026, Poe Room, 9th Floor Indigo Hotel, Baltimore
Fiction is an antidote, a reminder of the power of individual choice.
- Azar Nafisi's The Republic of Imagination, 2014
The Republic of Imagination is under threat. To protect it we need to work together. Join us in honoring and celebrating writers, artists, publishers, librarians and curators who are committed to defending freedom of expression – here in the U.S. and around the world. We will gather in the Edgar Allan “Poe Room” at Hotel Indigo for short readings and discussion, and audience participation. Afterwards, the gathering will migrate downstairs to Poets Cafe for further conversation.
Akram Aylisli’s books were burned in 2013, and he continues to be persecuted by his own government in Azerbaijan. Russian missiles destroyed one of Ukraine’s largest book-printing factories in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Katya Kazirimova saved some of the books and carries them as talismans of a country pummeled by Russia’s war. Amy Sherald moved her exhibition from the Smithsonian to the Baltimore Museum of Art so she would not be censored. The brave artists, writers and their publishers, translators, curators and the museums, libraries, bookstores and spaces that share their work, work together to hold together our republic of imagination. Come hear their voices and celebrate the human spirit.
Participants: Coming Soon!
Event Hosts & Sponsors: Full Bleed, the Maryland Institute College of Art, the Cheuse Center, Poetry Daily, Watershed Lit, the MFA at George Mason
Cover photo credit: Full Bleed journal, Issue 08: https://www.full-bleed.org/issue-8-censorship
