Emily Rich still gets a thrill when the newest Bay to Ocean Journal lands in her hands.

“It’s always exciting to see the finished book,” she said. “You see all that work, all those voices, come together. It feels like a community in print.”

Now in its seventh year, the annual literary collection from the Eastern Shore Writers Association (ESWA) brings together poets, essayists, and fiction writers from across Maryland and beyond. This year’s edition once again captures the range of creativity connected to the Shore—work that is personal, place-based, and deeply human.

Like any good story, the journal’s own beginnings are part of what makes it special.

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The journal was first published in 2018 under then-ESWA President Ron Sauder, who wanted to give local writers a dedicated outlet for their work. “Ron started the Bay to Ocean Journal, and I took it over the following year,” Rich said. “I’d already spent many years editing literary magazines like *Little Patuxent Review* and *Delmarva Review*, so I was excited by this new challenge.”

For Rich, who now serves as both editor and president of ESWA, the journal is about far more than publication. “We felt local writers really needed a space where they could all get together,” she said. “And it’s more than just being able to be published. It’s the community that forms by all being part of this journal.”

That sense of connection runs through the 2025 edition, which—without anyone planning it—ended up circling around the idea of time. “With each edition, a theme seems to rise,” Rich said. “They’re not chosen in advance.This year, a lot of people wrote about the concept of time and the way it blurs—when you lose someone, when you reconnect with someone, a lost child, or an elderly parent. Some people discovered secrets about their own heritage. Both the poems and the prose touched on that. It’s really interesting how, for whatever reason, themes will emerge. It wasn’t like the judges were looking for those pieces,” she said. “That’s just what we got.”

And what they got, she said, was strong. “Since we started the journal, the quality of submissions every year has gone up. That makes me feel really good,” Rich said. “When you have to look at pieces several times to decide if they make the cut—that’s a good feeling. It means the journal is really succeeding.”

Each year, she and a small team of volunteer editors read through dozens of submissions, looking for what she calls *the spark. “I hate to be a literary editor stereotype,” she said, “but it really is just something that strikes you. It’s got an emotional spark, a good story arc.”

To keep things fair, the editorial process is blind. “Everything comes to me, but when I send it to my staff, it’s all blind,” she said. “That really helps because we’re a small community. My poetry editor has even said, ‘I know who this is—they’re in my writing group.’ So reading blind helps you focus only on the work.”

Among this year’s standouts is the opening poem, On a Path Austere and Certain, by Diana Fusting.“She talks about how, in the process of going from a child to an adult, she’s learned to quantify everything—from her weight to her GPA—and how she’s longing to get back to that spark of not having to worry about those things,” said Rich. “It really set the theme.”

The poem is followed by a short story about “a man at the end of his life who’s lost his daughter and wife,” she said. “Instead of focusing on the loneliness of that, he finds a place of peace where he feels their presence. It’s really very heartwarming.”

Though the journal welcomes submissions from across the Mid-Atlantic, its roots stay close to home. “There’s no requirement that your piece be about the Shore,” Rich said. “But people love this place, so often their work reflects that love of place. You do have to be a member of the Eastern Shore Writers Association to submit, so everyone has some connection with the community.”

Even the cover stays true to that mission. This year’s artwork by Naomi Clark Turner depicts a view of Oxford. “We always look for local artists,” Rich said. “Naomi lives outside of Oxford, and it just felt right.”

Inside, readers will find everything from poignant essays to pure fun. “There’s one really sweet love story,” she said. “And one hilarious story that starts with a woman describing being on an academic quiz show. She grew up outside Cambridge and tells this story about how she and her teammates tried to get away with saying crazy things on air—like claiming she was a snake handler. It was just so funny to see that side of someone I know as a serious professional.”

For Rich, those discoveries are the best part. “Writing is such a vulnerable endeavor,” she said. “You’re putting yourself out there to be read and judged. That willingness to open up and be part of something—it binds you. It’s a common experience every writer has to go through.”

That shared vulnerability is what fuels the broader ESWA community, including the annual Bay to Ocean Writers Conference, held each March at Chesapeake College. Many contributors discover the journal through the conference and later return to submit their own work.

For those hesitant to take that leap, Rich keeps it simple. “You’re never going to find out unless you do,” she said. “Being a writer without getting rejections is like being a boxer and not wanting to get hit. That’s just part of the game.”

Of course, the writing has to be polished. Her advice to anyone thinking of submitting: “Always have someone else read it—someone who’s going to be honest with you.”

Editing, she admits, has changed her own writing. “The one thing I’ve learned is that you can always cut,” she said. “People think, ‘I can’t get rid of this,’ but you can. You don’t need all the backstory. Just jump right in and get people hooked. You can always fill things in later.”

Outside of the journal, Rich continues to write and teach. Lately, she’s been digging into her family’s history. “My great-grandfather was a gold miner in the 1870s,” she said. “He traveled all over the West—from Virginia City to Helena to Mazatlán. I found his grave—it’s just a metal plaque in the Masons’ cemetery, and he’s there by himself. So I’m trying to piece together that story.”

She also teaches memoir workshops. “Everybody has a story, and that’s what I love about it,” she said. “For memoir, you’re supposed to keep it real, but you can bring in dreams, musings, conjecture. There’s room to play with memory.”

If there’s a thread connecting all of it—editing, teaching, writing—it’s her belief that storytelling builds community. “This is really a labor of love for me,” she said. “It was important to me to work on something that gives space to local writers. I’d really like to encourage those writers out there—join ESWA and submit.”

This year’s Bay to Ocean Journal will officially launch with a book party in Berlin this December, followed by sales at the Bay to Ocean Writers Conference at Chesapeake College next spring. Copies are also available on Amazon and at ESWA events throughout the Shore.

Submissions for the 2026 edition will open in March 2026.

“When you see it all come together,” she said, “it feels like holding up a mirror to our community. You see the heart, the humor, the grief, the love—all of it. That’s what writing is for.”

For additional information, go to: https://www.easternshorewriters.org/

In 2011, more than thirty kids—participants in a summer camp run through the Academy Art Museum—came together to create a large mosaic mural on the side of a building then known as Eastern Market Square. The site, now home to Tiger Lily and Harrison’s Liquors, still displays the mural, which includes references to a marketplace that no longer exists.

The idea for a mural came from artist Jen Wagner, who by 2011 had already spent several years creating community mosaics across Dorchester and Talbot counties. In Easton alone, she’d led projects like the farm scene mosaic that now hangs at the public library (installed initially at the Red Hen), and the heron mosaic on the side of what used to be the blind store on Harrison Street.

What started as a conversation with Cathy Witte, who managed the Eastern Market Square building at the time, helped spark this particular project. “There was just a synergy,” Wagner said. “We started talking, and the project came together fast.” At the time, Easton didn’t even have a formal process for approving public art. “That had to be created for this project,” she said.

Fast forward 14 years, and even though the mural has held up well over time, Wagner says it’s due for a refresh. “Some of the panels are obsolete,” she said. “For one, it’s not called Eastern Market Square anymore.” So she is returning to the wall—this time teaming up with Lauren Dwyer, Early Childhood and Youth Education Coordinator at the Academy Art Museum (AAM), to bring in a new generation of young artists. Through a series of summer camps, kids will not only be learning the mosaic process—they’re actually designing and building the new panels themselves: drawing, cutting glass, placing tile, and grouting, just like the kids did back then.

But unlike the original, which unfolded as a full-on street production beside Route 50, this time the work will happen in the comfort of Wagner’s studio. “There’s a little disappointment that we won’t be outside,” she said. “That first one was a spectacle. We had 30 kids in each camp, the younger ones one week and the older ones the next. I’d show up on Saturdays during the farmer’s market, and people would stop and say, ‘Can I help?’ And they’d add a piece. It became a community thing.”

Dwyer is helping coordinate the 12 youth art camps AAM will run this summer, three of which are specifically focused on mural mosaics. “We’ve done one in June, and have one in July, and one in August,” she said. “Each camp has new registrants, so there’s potential for 36 different kids to be part of this.” The mosaic camps are open to children ages 8–12. “This is their moment. It’s been 14 years since the last one. I really don’t want this opportunity to slip by.”

The panel replacement will focus on the middle sections of the mural, with the flower and market scenes from the original preserved on either end. “We’re thinking about doing more of an Eastern Shore scene in the center,” Wagner said. “We’ve been discussing design ideas. It won’t be a carbon copy of what was there.”

She jokes about being a tough instructor, yet Wagner is clear about the value of what these young artists are gaining. The mural-making process is collaborative and fast-paced, which means kids learn more than just art techniques. “You have to make a lot of decisions quickly,” Wagner said. “And we’re on a deadline. That’s a valuable thing to go through—dreaming big, turning it into reality, sometimes reining it in based on the project. There’s a lot of creative problem-solving baked in.” There is also the responsibility she feels to the community. “We approach it as real work. These kids put in a full day’s work in a few hours.”

From Dwyer’s perspective, the mural project isn’t just about art—it’s the kind of collaborative learning she believes leaves a lasting impact. “It’s true problem-solving,” she said. “Not on a worksheet—real collaboration. These kids are working with others who have different ideas and different backgrounds. That’s what sets them up to be successful adults. And they get to say, ‘I did this. I had a part in this.’”

Each of the three mural camps will run for five days, with the kids working together to complete as many panels as possible. “We don’t know how fast they’ll go,” Wagner said. “One group might get two panels done. Another might only finish part of one. But the most important thing is that the work is good. We’ll set a realistic goal and go from there.”

And if they don’t finish? That’s by design, too. The team plans to open the project to the broader community once the camps wrap up. “We’ll create some workshop opportunities where anyone can come in and add their mark,” said Dwyer.

It’s a fitting continuation of how the first mural came together, through layers of community involvement and connection that stuck. “Almost all of the kids from 2011 are still in touch,” Wagner said. “They’re all over the world now. They have families and careers. But we’ve been sharing stories. It’s been wild watching them grow up. They’ve taken their engagement photos in front of that mural. It’s been a part of their lives. And I get to be a little part of their lives too, which is fun.”

She’s hoping the next chapter adds a new layer. “It would be great if some of those original kids—now parents—bring their own children to be part of this one.”

And for Wagner’s stepping back into the process feels meaningful. “It feels good to come back and do another big one,” she said. “And I’ve matured a little too.”

To follow along with the project, updates will be posted on the Academy Art Museum’s social media channels and Jen Wagner Mosaics’ page. If the project runs past the August 8 camp deadline, opportunities for the community to join in will be announced there as well.

As for the final unveiling, it’s still a ways off—but there will definitely be one. “We’ll have a splash,” Wagner promised. “And maybe we’ll get some of the kids to come talk about it, too. They’ll blow your mind. They really will.”

Val Cavalheri is a writer and photographer. She has written for various publications, including The Washington Post.  Previously she served as the editor of several magazines, including Bliss and Virginia Woman. Although her camera is never far from her reach, Val retired her photography studio when she moved from Northern Virginia to the Eastern Shore a few years ago.. She and her husband, Wayne Gaiteri, have two children and one grandchild.

Filmmaker, author, artist, and cultural icon John Waters has spent more than five decades daring people to look at what they usually turn away from. Known for cult classics like Pink Flamingos, Polyester, and Hairspray, Waters made a career out of unsettling, challenging, and, ultimately, delighting audiences. On May 9, he brings his latest one-man show, The Naked Truth, to the Avalon Theatre in Easton.

As Waters describes it, the show is part stand-up, part cultural commentary, part confessional — and entirely new. “I rewrite it completely once every year,” he said. “It’s about everything — politics, fashion, movies, music, how to get on your parents’ nerves. All sorts of things.”

This year’s version salutes the “gender guerrilla generation” and the rapidly changing landscape of identity and sexuality. “It’s amazing how things have changed so quickly; it even startles me,” he said. “There is a whole new world out there. At the end of a date, you used to ask for a good night kiss. Now I read the young people strangle each other.”

Even for someone who made a name by pushing boundaries, the pace of social change today can feel dizzying. “There’s a whole new set of rules — and no trigger warnings anymore, because who are you going complain to?” he said.

But Waters made clear that The Naked Truth isn’t about shock for shock’s sake. “It’s easy to shock,” he said. “It’s much harder to surprise people and make them laugh. That’s what I do. All comedy is political. It’s protection. It’s how you fight back. It’s how you position yourself. Even fashion is political.” He added, “I’m not self-righteous. I make fun of the rules I live by.”

For some ticket holders at the Avalon show, there will also be a special stick-around for a post-show opportunity to take a selfie with the star and a “group therapy” session. As Waters explains, the therapy will be precisely what you might expect — and nothing like the real thing. “We have no shame here. We share different things,” he said. “Things they might not have been able to say in a regular Q&A. There are different neuroses and attractions, but they figure if anybody can understand, it’s me. And they’re generally right.”

When asked, Waters admitted he’s never attended real group therapy. “I always thought they’d tell others what I told them,” he said. “At my show’s group therapy, nothing is off limits. We say things you’re not supposed to say.” He added, “I’m the psychiatrist. I’m the defense lawyer. They’re the patients. They’re the filthiest people alive, not me.”

That perspective fits Waters’ lifelong fascination with outsiders — although, he said, even that definition has shifted. “I’m through with being an outsider. I want to be an insider now,” he said. “Everybody wants to be an outsider today. Instead, I want to screw things up from the inside — in a positive way.”

It’s an unexpected, if fitting, turn for someone whose early work was once banned, condemned, and reviled. Today, Waters is celebrated by some institutions that once shunned him. “I’m so respectable, I could puke,” he said. “Who would have ever thought the Academy Award museum would give me a 12-room show? Not to mention all these awards I’m getting — the Writers Guild Award, an editing award. It’s amazing to me.” 

It’s so amazing that Waters said he’s now addicted to receiving awards. “I miss the day when I was condemned by the Catholic Church, and they gave me all the bad reviews that I used in the ads,” he said. “Same movies, but people just take them a different way.”

Through all the shifts in reputation and audience, Waters said the core of his creative life remains the same. “I’ve written all my movies. I write my stand-up shows. I write books. I photograph,” he said. “Basically, though, I’m a writer. So, every day, Monday to Friday, I get up, think up weird things, and write between 8 am and noon. In the afternoon, I sell it. That’s what I do for a living.”

His latest novel, Liarmouth, came out of that same discipline. “I’m always in airports because I tour all the time,” he said. “So I wrote about a woman who steals suitcases. No, I never saw it happen — but it’s easy to do. And if you get caught, you pretend you picked up the wrong one.”

As for new undertakings, Waters says he constantly collects new material, jotting down ideas and observations in what he calls different “cubby holes” for future projects. “I’m never bored. I don’t understand how anybody can be bored. Just go watch people. There’s no reason to be bored. You only get one life. Pay attention.”

That attitude extends to how he stays plugged into contemporary culture. “I have youth spies that tell me new stuff that’s going on,” he said. “I hate people my age who say, ‘It was much better back in the day.’ No — it wasn’t. You’re just an old fart. They’re having just as much fun now. You’ve got to figure out what that fun is.”

Waters speaks about aging with the same defiance he once reserved for battling censors and critics. “Old chickens make good soup,” he said. (I had to remove the comment that followed this, but in true Waters fashion, you can probably guess it wasn’t Hallmark card material.)

Then again, if material ever runs short, Waters joked, there’s always hospice humor.
“Old queens, wrinkle queens — we’re all still telling stories.”

Asked if Baltimore continues to be a muse even though his fame has grown beyond his native home, Waters said. “Baltimore’s still my favorite city. It’s still the coolest city because it’s cheap — you can still have Bohemia there,” he said. “I think I give Baltimore pride. We humanize the city. We make it popular, he said, crediting other Baltimore storytellers, from Barry Levinson to The Wire creators, with continuing to frame the city through the lives of its citizens. “We all made it about the peculiar people,” he said. “That’s why people connect to it.”

With a body of work that has been dissected by critics, celebrated by institutions, and embraced by younger generations, I asked if he ever felt misunderstood. “No,” he said. I’ve been understood right from the beginning,” And as for misgivings, he said there was only one. “The only regret I have is smoking. I haven’t had a cigarette in 8,149 days. I write it down every day.”

This ability to track regrets while continuing to push limits is at the core of who Waters is. Asked if there was anything he turns away from, he didn’t hesitate. “Sure — racism, stupidity, homophobia, transphobia,” he said. “But at the same time, I try to figure out what causes that and make that person laugh so they’ll listen and maybe change their mind.”

For first-timers attending The Naked Truth, Waters offered a simple piece of advice:
“Don’t call the police,” he said. Still, he said most audiences know exactly what they’re getting into. “I do ask, ‘Are you on a first date? Good luck.’ It will either resolve in marriage, or it will be the worst date ever.” For me 45 years ago, it resolved in marriage. Thanks, John.

John Waters brings The Naked Truth to the Avalon Theatre on May 9. Tickets are available at avalonfoundation.org. And for those attending the post-show group therapy passes, bring your camera– and maybe an issue or two.

Long Reach Farm by Larry Horowitz

What if the earth could sing—and we stopped to listen?

That’s the idea behind Earth Music, a new exhibit opening April 4 at Spiralis Gallery in Easton. It combines the work of Dane Tilghman and Larry Horowitz—two painters with very different styles and backgrounds but with something in common—a shared connection to land, memory, and story.

Tilghman’s paintings often focus on the African American experience, pulling from the visual language of the Harlem Renaissance, blues and jazz, and old black-and-white photos. Horowitz paints landscapes—vivid, textured, and full of feeling. Spiralis Gallery owner Gail Patterson saw a kind of thread running through their work: not the same stories, but the same quiet force.

“I think the show—Earth Music—speaks volumes about how and what the earth could tell us if we listened,” said Patterson. “Joys and sorrows, beauty and horrors, history both known and silent, from both of their perspectives and brushes.”

When asked what Earth Music meant to him, Tilghman said. “I believe the earth definitely has a rhythm. “It’s a spiritual rhythm, I believe, also a very cultural rhythm, for sure.”

Horowitz came at it from another angle but landed in a similar place. “I’m very sensitive to the tides, the wind, the earth, nature, animals, birds—everything influences me when I’m out there and doing my painting,” he said. “So for me, ‘rhythm of the land’ is sort of my mantra. You might say it’s what I’m after when I paint.”

Patterson called the pairing “serendipitous… kind of ‘spiralis’-like,”—referring to the gallery’s name and the idea of things moving in a spiral formation. “Sometimes we’re close, and sometimes we collide in ways we don’t see,” she said.

That concept is alive in this exhibit and the artists, but, as Tilghman noted, both are rooted in something deeper. “I’m painting people,” he said. “Larry’s painting landscapes. But those people—I’m sure, have passed through those same landscapes. That’s the bridge, right there. I’m working from old black-and-white photos, and a lot of those folks are long gone. But they were there.”

Horowitz looked at it from the painter’s side. “A painting is made up of wooden stretchers, bars, linen canvas, hemp paint—all inanimate objects,” he said. “We take these physical things, and we manipulate them with shapes, tones, colors, and we make this inanimate art have a heartbeat. It becomes something much greater than the sum of its parts. And I think that’s what connects both of us.”

3 Boys and a Wagon Dane by Dane Tilghman

For Patterson, it wasn’t about finding two artists who do the same thing—it was about finding two who evoke the same response. “There was a commonality in the work for me as a collector and as a gallerist,” she said. “Both Dane and Larry’s work are highly evocative for me. I look at the landscapes Larry paints, and I can close my eyes and imagine the light changing, the leaves falling, and the breeze. I can feel who and what might have passed—person, raccoon, deer—through that landscape. Who might have been on that boat?”

Of one of Tilghman’s pieces, the Oyster Tonger, she said. “I look at him and wonder: is he out there because he wants to be, or because he has to be?”

“There’s a story in both of their work,” she said of the artists. “That’s what pulled me in.”

Horowitz talked about how painting, for him, isn’t just about a moment—it’s about the accumulation of moments. “I think of the Impressionists,” he said. “They tried to go after a moment in time. I paint the passage of time. While the painting is being painted—let’s say en plein air—the sky changes. A bird flies by. Someone walks into my picture plane. I put them in. Dane also is painting, in a way, the passage of time.”

Tilghman agreed that his work often highlights people history tends to overlook. “My philosophy is that these particular people might not be important in life now, but they were important to somebody,” he said. “So I want to honor their existence on earth.”

That presence shows in the work and in Patterson’s description of Tilghman’s Two in a Field. “It has almost a vague impressionist quality. It’s not exactly strictly figurative, like photographic. On the first pass, I think, my Lord, this is just beautiful. The colors speak to me,” she said. “And then I look deeper, and I realize it’s two Black Americans in times of enslavement, picking cotton with the cotton sacks trailing out behind them. I had to pause when I looked at that piece because it made me think—why was I experiencing such a beautiful feeling from something that was such a horror for our country?”

But that’s what makes interesting art, she said—the fact that it is story-driven, for instance, in Horowitz’s painting South Carolina Sunrise. “There are boats. And I wonder—did they just go out? Are they coming back? Who’s on board? What’s the story?”

Horowitz agreed. A painting is almost like an onion,” he said. “You look at it, and you might get that first facial reaction. Hopefully you fall in love—you separate yourself from the distresses of life. But then you bring it home, or you go back to look at it again in the museum or the gallery, and your mood changes. The world changes. We keep peeling those layers of the onion off.”

He added, “And I think it’s very true in Dane’s work, especially. Yes, he’s painting something from the past. Someone might see it as beautiful, decorative shapes and colors. But there’s just so much to it. There’s so much that Dane has put into it and so much that the viewer can bring to it. It’s not what you put in a painting—it’s what you leave out that’s so important.”

Tilghman said he hopes his paintings keep telling their own story long after they’re hung on a wall. “It should make me smile,” he said. “So it’s an eternal piece.”

Earth Music, then, is about stories. Not just art you look at, but art that asks you to stop—and listen.

The show opens with a meet-the-artists reception on April 4 and 5, from 5 to 7 p.m., at Spiralis Gallery in Easton. It runs through the end of April. Spiralis is located at 35 Dover St in Easton.