Open Mic following the Featured Readers — feel free to share one poem, one page.
At Casey Community Center, 810 S Frederick Ave, Gaithersburg, MD 20877
Sam Schmidt
Sam Schmidt’s books include Suburban Myths (Beothuk Books, 2012) and Dark Bird (Galileo Press, 2024). He is also a copy editor specializing in creative works. For more than a decade, he edited and published WordHouse, a newsletter for Maryland writers, and hosted the reading series WordHouse at the Minás Gallery. His poems have been published in Passager, Free State Review, and Gargoyle. He is a two-time recipient of the Maryland State Individual Artist Grant and holds a master’s degree in Comparative Literature from Johns Hopkins University. His wife, poet Virginia Crawford, is the author of Questions for Water (Apprentice House Press, 2021). Schmidt lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.
Virginia Crawford
Virginia Crawford, a Baltimore native, earned a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College in Boston and a Master of Letters from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. She has published individual poems in journals such as Gargoyle and has taught as a Maryland State Arts Council Artist in Education for more than twenty years. She is married to fellow poet Sam Schmidt. Her books include Touch (2013) and Questions for Water (2021).
DiVerse Gaithersburg 