In this first year of Baltimore’s mash-up of eclectic and electric art festival Light City and the annual book festival—a hybrid called Brilliant Baltimore—UMBC shone brightly.

Several UMBC authors took to the stage, including our very own President Freeman Hrabowski, to promote the launch of his newest book. The Empowered University, co-authored with Provost Philip Rous and Peter Henderson, details how the UMBC community has come together to tackle some of higher education’s most intractable challenges and become a national model for inclusive excellence along the way.

Another literary panel included the editors of Baltimore Revisited: Stories of Inequality and Resistance in a U.S. City, a book of essays that reflects Baltimore’s complex history and efforts to address the city’s pervasive inequalities. In a panel with the editors—Nicole King, associate professor and chair of the Department of American Studies; Kate Drabinksi, lecturer in Gender, Women’s, + Sexuality Studies; along with Joshua Clark Davis, an assistant professor of history at the University of Baltimore—discussion ranged from community health, to the history of development, and protests throughout the years.

Other UMBC light and literary work was on display at the SPARK Gallery. Curated by UMBC’s Catherine Borg, a Baltimore artist tracing shifting narratives in American culture in photo and video based artworks and installations, the exhibit featured UMBC and Towson artists. A luminous, surreal puppet show, several musical scores, animated short films, and more populated this creative space that encouraged participants to interact with the installations.

Additional UMBC events included a conversation with artists and writers who’ve collaborated with each other in the past 10 years of The Light Ekphrastic (TLE), a zine published by UMBC Magazine‘s own editor, Jenny O’Grady. Co-hosted with Timothy Nohe, professor visual arts at UMBC, the group discussed the method of responding to existing art to create something new, which is the mission of TLE.