2026 Joshua Ringel Memorial Poetry Reading

The Joshua Ringel Memorial Reading honors CTY alumnus and avid poetry lover Joshua Ringel and his parents, Mel and Barbara. The event supports the arts in Baltimore by bringing a distinguished poet to the city each year for a free public poetry reading. Register below!

Cornelius Eady is the author of eight poetry collections, including Hardheaded Weather, Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, The Gathering of My Name, and The War Against the Obvious. A Pulitzer Prize finalist, he is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a cofounder of Cave Canem, a national organization for African American poets. Currently, Eady is the Chair of Excellence in the English Department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Josh's teacher, the renowned poet Kenneth Koch, gave the inaugural Joshua Ringel Memorial Reading in 1998. Since then, many other distinguished poets have lent their voices to this remarkable series, including Rita Dove, Richard Blanco, Terrance Hayes, Naomi Shihab Nye, Natasha Tretheway, Billy Collins, John Ashbery, and Sharon Olds. A gift from Josh's father in 2004 created an endowment at Johns Hopkins, intending to sustain the reading in perpetuity.

Event Schedule

2:00 p.m. – Doors open
2:30 p.m. – Reading starts
3:30 p.m. – Book signing