News Release

Poet Adele Holden Will Read at Hopkins

Poet Adele V. Holden will present observations and readings during a performance titled "Sharings From Life on Maryland’s Eastern Shore: A Memoir of Growing Up Black During the Depression" at noon on Wednesday, March 15, in Shriver Hall on The Johns Hopkins University’s Homewood campus, 3400 N. Charles St. in Baltimore.

Holden, author of Down on the Shore: The Family and Place that Forged a Poet’s Voice, will take her audience on a trip to a 1930s segregated world known simply as "The Shore" – that isolated patchwork of Maryland counties wedged between the Chesapeake and the Atlantic. Mixed in with hatred, prejudice and sometimes the threat of death are joyful Christmases, peaceful Sunday afternoons, church revivals, first crushes and the budding of a young poet.

Holden, a noted poet and teacher, is a graduate of Morgan State University and The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. She taught at Dunbar Senior High School and the Community College of Baltimore, from which she retired in 1982. Her collection Figurine and Other Poems (1961) was highly praised by poets Langston Hughes and Josephine Jacobsen and by entertainers Ruby Dee and Pearl Bailey. Nikki Giovanni called Down on the Shore (1999) "a moving testament to the human spirit."

This performance is part of the Wednesday Noon Series presented by The Johns Hopkins University Office of Special Events. Admission is free. For information, call the Office of Special Events at 410-516-7157.

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