James Allen Hall, author of several books of poems, a collection of essays, and host of the Breaking Form podcast, will open The University of Baltimore's MFA Fall Reading Series on Tuesday, Sept. 16 at 7 p.m. The event, free and open to the public, will take place in the Bogomolny Room on the 5th floor of the UBalt Student Center, 21 W. Mt. Royal Ave.
James Allen Hall is a nonbinary, queer author of two books of poems and a book of lyric essays. Their most recent book, Romantic Comedy, won the 2020 Levis Prize selected by Diane Seuss and was published by Four Way Books in 2023. Their first book of poems is Now You're the Enemy (University of Arkansas Press, 2008). They are also the author of a book of lyric personal essays, I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well, selected by Chris Kraus for the Essay Collection Award and published by Cleveland State University Poetry Center Press in 2017.
Hall has won awards from the Lambda Literary Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Texas Institute of Letters, the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the National Endowment of the Arts (in 2025 and 2011, both in poetry). In 2024, Hall was the Paul Otremba Returning Fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Their poems and essays have appeared widely, including in two editions of Best American Poetry. They direct the Rose O'Neill Literary House at Washington College in Chestertown, Md., and co-hosts, with poet Aaron Smith, Breaking Form: A Podcast of Poetry and Culture.
The series is sponsored by the Hearst Visiting Scholars Fund and the Klein Family Fund.
Learn more about the MFA Fall Reading Series.