This is a program created to give our youth the opportunity and space to discuss relevant topics and issues such as non-violence, peace, decision-making skills, and resilience.

One Book Baltimore’s broad group of local community-oriented organizations will connect students and community members to increase student discourse to develop actions toward peace and anti-violence through schools, libraries, and other community spaces, with the dual goals of promoting literacy and enriching our community.

This initiative is made possible through the efforts and contributions of Baltimore City Public Schools, Baltimore Ceasefire, the Enoch Pratt Free Library, the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, Johns Hopkins University, Arts & Minds Labs, Maryland Humanities, and the T. Rowe Price Foundation. These efforts are further supported and amplified by the partnerships with Barnes and Nobel, the Maryland Book Bank, CityLit Project, and others.

Amber McBride

Amber McBride is currently a professor at the University of Virginia. She received her BA in English from James Madison University in 2010 and acquired her MFA in Poetry from Emerson College in 2012. She is a National Book Award Finalist and a Coretta Scott King John Steptoe Award Winner. 

Amber is the former media assistant at The Furious Flower Poetry Center where she worked putting together programs and readings to honor African American poets and writers including Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison and Nikki Giovanni.

Amber is also a poet. Her poetry has appeared in various literary magazines including Ploughshares, Provincetown Arts, DecomP, The Cincinnati Review, The Rumpus and others. She writes Middle Grade, Adult and Young Adult fiction.​

Originally from everywhere, Amber was born in Heidelberg, Germany. She moved to the Charlottesville area in 2018 and loves calling Albemarle County home.