KHALIAH WILLIAMS (’13, ’15) & THE BALTIMORE RENAISSANCE

by Michal B. Tager

from What Weekly

Khaliah Williams and I meet on the Avenue in Hampden, where many young, artistic folk have moved in the past ten years, transforming a bastion of the working-class into a new artistic Mecca of Baltimore. She is early for our meeting, highly polite and very well-coiffed; we both order coffee and discuss punctuality and organization, a trait we both prize. We both live near the coffee shop, Spro, which is filled with professionals and artists. Not that long ago, this scene would have been unimaginable.

If anyone had told me fifteen years ago that Baltimore is where young, up-and-coming writers and artists were going to migrate, I would have told them they were dreaming. To me, Baltimore was where people either never left or wound up so they could commute easily to D.C. It wasn’t a destination of choice.

Now, however, young people and mavens of art flock to Baltimore, eager to join the flourishing scene. They come from writing programs and small theater companies, graduates of life and universities. Khaliah Williams came from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, one of the more prestigious MFA programs in the country. When I ask Khaliah why she—and other writers— come to Baltimore, she says, “Everyone from Iowa [Writers Workshop] moves here. Baltimore is having a Renaissance and people want to move here.”

Read the rest of the profile here:  KHALIAH WILLIAMS & THE BALTIMORE RENAISSANCE