Who we are
Clarinda Harriss became the editor and director of New Poets Series (BrickHouse Books’ previous incarnation) after her predecessor left that position. An accomplished poet in her own right, Harriss is a professor emerita and former chair of the English department at Towson University. In addition to editing some of BrickHouse’s most successful books, she is the author of Forms of Verse: British and American; The Night Parrot; License Renewal for the Blind; Dirty Blue Voice, Air Travel, and Mortmain, as well as co-translator of THE PEARL from Middle English to modern English. With poet Moira Egan, she is co-editor of Hot Sonnets: an anthology of erotic sonnets of the 20th and 21st centuries. The Harriss Poetry Prize, awarded annually by Baltimore’s City Lit Project, was named in her honor. Her many-decades long work with prison writers continues.
Staff & Author Stories
Doritt Carroll, Poetry Editor
Clarinda Harriss, Director and Editor-in-Chief
At Brickhouse Books, each of our employees has a unique background that ultimately led them to where they are today. All answer one fundamental question: How did I get here? Here are just a few of our stories, plus some from other fantastic writers! What is yours?
Doritt Carroll is an attorney living and working in Washington, DC. Her collection of poems, In Caves, was published by BrickHouse Books in 2010. Her poems have appeared in Coal City Review, Poet Lore, Nimrod, Slipstream, Rattle, Plainsongs, Poetry Depth Quarterly, Maryland Poetry Review, Explorations, Negative Capability, Poet’s Canvas, Illuminations, The Baltimore Review, Journal of Formal Poetry, and Harlequin Creature.
Learn more about Doritt at her website, dorittcarroll.com, or head over to her BrickHouse Books’ author page.
Emily, Former Assitant Editor
It’s a Start
In January I read the cover piece in New York Magazine chronicling seed moments of great careers. Beginnings: The Breakthrough Moment. The first joke that Seth Rogan thought was funny. Kevin Smith’s convenience store job that led to the movie Clerks. George Clooney, Martha Stewart, Shaun White, Yo-Yo Ma—you get the idea. It was a brilliant piece, because it sawed down the pedestal. It was more proof that everyone starts somewhere and often that start feels like nothing out of the ordinary.
My writing has flared up again lately. Yes, it sounds like a disease. It can feel like one. For the first time, I am taking it seriously. Often the sheer volume of the garbage ideas disgusts me. I start a new document, type type type. Another new document, a few more words. Repeat until I have to rush off to work. I do not have writer’s block. I have completion block.
Playing with words is one in a series of career changes for me. How did I get here? When left to my own devices I chose to read. When I tired of that I chose to walk. When I returned my head was full of beauty and I had to preserve it. My mason jar is a piece of paper, my peaches only petty schemes. The most brilliant works are often simple, and one day I hope to master that simplicity. I won’t let you know how it goes—too much pressure. However, a little of the right sort of encouragement will be accepted. Here’s to hoping for a breakthrough for you and me: the idea that gets both of us to the top of our hypothetical mountains.
Until then I’ll be I’ll be editing here at BrickHouse, helping other writers make their dreams come true. It feels like my biggest breakthrough yet.
Monica, Former IOS Online Editor
On My Way
As long as I can remember, I have been in love with reading. From carrying three books with me just so I wouldn’t get caught without a story, books have been an integral part of my life.
My passion soon turned into a dream for a future career, initially as a high school librarian, but has now shifted into a focus on book publishing. Due to the kindness of Harper Collins and my fellow book blogger John Jacobson, I expanded my horizons to starting a website of my own: Monica the Novelista.
Working on a book reviewing website has taught me so much about social media and the world of literature, not to mention opening doors to opportunities I never before believed would be possible. Not only have I been inspired to start a charity that provides gently used books to hospital patients, it also led me to Brickhouse Books.
While my dreams of working on book press tours are relatively far away, nothing is more exciting than getting a little taste of a world I can’t wait to fully become submerged in. Books have always been my lifeline, stories and characters my escape from the mundane.
I believe that no matter who you are, there is a book out there that can reach you on a deeper level. My dream is to help get you there.
Adrian Koesters, Author of Many Parishes
Doritt Carroll
I was born in Bon Secours Hospital in Southwest Baltimore, and most of my childhood was spent back and forth living either with my grandmother in her house on South Stricker, just off Lemmon in the Union Square neighborhood, or with other relatives. At sixteen I moved to Washington State, and then at 19 to Nebraska where I have lived most of my adult life. Nebraska is now my home, but “Home” is Union Square, also the title of my first novel (not yet published). I also lived in the Govens area and on Roland Avenue.
My first book of poems, which I was delighted to have published in 2013 by BrickHouseBooks, details the Many Parishes of my childhood and adult life, and features a number of Baltimore locations and experiences, with a section of persona poems called “The Nuns Who Never Existed.” My second book, also under consideration at BrickHouse, is titled Three Days with the Long Moon. Both volumes are often poems of place, and how place has shaped my perhaps more than unusually odd and mixed perspective as a poet. In that sense, I feel I am still a true daughter of Baltimore, where everything always looks the same, and nothing seems the same way twice.