Gregg Wilhelm

Work samples

HOTEL COVID_Baltimore Magazine_Wilhelm.pdf

Baltimore magazine piece (Dec 2020) describing my family's stay in a penthouse above the Lord Baltimore Hotel Triage, Respite, and Isolation Center during the summer of 2020. Below us, "hot floors" with quarantining residents and "cold floors" with medical professionals and hotel staff were part of the frontlines of Baltimore's COVID response effort. Then, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis, which occurred just weeks after the fifth anniversary of Freddie Gray’s death while in the custody of the Baltimore Police Department, protesters flooded the streets around the hotel. The fuse to the powder keg that Baltimore can be seemed primed to be lit.
WILHELM_Works in Progress_2024.pdf

Hotel COVID (novel)
Wilhelm Sample POETRY

Five poems published in Beltway Poetry Quarterly. I've written and been published in multiple genres: fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. In teaching, I promote working across disciplines as studying poetry--fiction, rhyme, prosody, economy, etc.--can inform prose on the sentence level; studying character and scene can bring new life to poems; conducting research and examining the self be it memoir or essay lends itself to fiction and poetry.
Backbeat the Waves_EXCERPT

The summer of 1977 is going to rock thirteen-year-old Mercury Widdershins’s world. Over the course of a month, his Elvis-infatuated single mother struggles to keep the family, his strung-out sister drifts away from what remains of the family, his transit authority uncle stresses over kickbacks and corners cut with the new toll bridge that completes the city’s beltway circuit, the King of Rock and Roll dies, and Voyager 2 blasts into outer space. And foul-mouthed Nixie Fossgrim, Merck’s ill young cousin from Appalachia, arrives for one last hope at a cure. Together, Merck and Nixie discover their own liberating music, their unique sexual identities, and their separate solutions to what the future holds.

About Gregg

Gregg Wilhelm is a literary artist, educator, community builder, and arts advocate.

His fiction, poems, and essays have appeared in Baltimore Magazine, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Gargoyle, Smile, Hon, You’re in Baltimore, Broadkill Review, Tampa Review Online, Baltimore City Paper, Johns Hopkins Magazine, and elsewhere. He is co-editor of Clash by Night, a poetry… more

View Gregg's Resume

Book Covers

This image depicts a selection of titles that Gregg Wilhelm has shepherded to publication as an editor, designer, production manager, marketer, and/or publisher; these are some of more than 300 book projects he has been honored to be involved with during his career in independent publishing.

WILHELM Select Covers BOOKS PUBLISHED

This image depicts a selection of titles that Gregg Wilhelm has shepherded to publication as an editor, designer, production manager, marketer, and/or publisher; these are some of more than 175 book projects he has been honored to be involved with during his career in independent publishing.

Baltimore Ekphrasis Project

A collaboration between The Light Ekphrastic journal (edited by Jenny O'Grady) and the Baltimore LED Project, visual artists paired with literary artists to create an original artwork based on a orginal poem, and in turn a new poem was written based on a new piece by the visual artist. Poet Gregg Wilhelm partnered with painter Dayna Carpenter.

Baltimore Ekphrasis Project CARPENTER WILHELM.jpg

Poem excerpt from Baltimore Ekphrasis Project on LED Billboard by Penn Station
Baltimore Ekphrasis Project_Wilhelm and Carpenter.png

The complete Baltimore Ekphrasis Project with Wilhelm's poems and Carpenter's artwork.

Clash By Night POETRY ANTHOLOGY

Co-edited by Gerry LaFemina and Gregg Wilhelm, Clash By Night inspired by The Clash's seminal London Calling album was the first title in CityLit Press's Lo-fi Poetry series where "poets cover your record collection." Forty poets from across the United States contributed to the anthology, which found its way into the hands of the three surviving band members and other musicians, such as Alejandro Escovedo.

For a long time, lyric poetry and song lyrics have lived parallel lives, but so many poets love music and rock-and-roll. Clash by Night attempts to enter the space between those parallel lines, and engage a dialogue between other poems and the songs of London Calling. It is an artistically anachronistic book: it asked poets to “cover” songs, which led to a variety of questions (What does it mean to cover a song vis-à-vis a poem? What do these songs say today? What does the process of writing the poems discover?) that could only be answered through the making of the poems themselves.

Clash By Night Cover

Clash By Night Cover (Left: back cover / Spine / Right: front cover) mimics the album sleeve to The Clash's LONDON CALLING. Contributing poets list on back cover. Design by Gregg Wilhelm. Publisher: CityLit Press.
ZENITH from Clash By Night

Poem by Gregg Wilhelm in the Lo-fi Poetry series anthology CLASH BY NIGHT.
Do You Remember? (Smith Center, 1984)

Poem by Gregg Wilhelm in the Lo-fi Poetry series anthology CLASH BY NIGHT.

Wilhelm at Writers Reading @ AACC

Gregg Wilhelm was a featured author at Anne Arundel Community College's Writers Reading @ AACC series.

Writers Reading @ AACC

Writers Reading @ AACC series (Anne Arundel Community College)

CityLit Festival Highlights

Gregg Wilhelm's work as a literary arts administrator includes developing the popular annual CityLit Festival. This video represents some of the free events highlights over the years.

CityLit Festival Highlights

Highlights from the free literary program CityLit Festival.

Geo-Poe: A Literary Geo-Caching Adventure

“Geo-Poe” was a city-wide literary geo-caching adventure dreamed up and coordinated by Gregg Wilhelm in the Fall 2014. Fifteen writers (from established authors to emerging voices) penned short short stories surrounding the mysterious death of Edgar Allan Poe or stories written in a Poe-esque style. These stories were hidden around Baltimore in spots relevant to the narrative, and readers-seekers used mobile devices to find-and-read the story caches. Clues to each stashed cache were posted via social media. The project took on extra life as a reading was staged at Westminster Hall, Eight Stone Press published a chapbook, and a culminating event celebrating the publication of the chapbook took place at Atomic Books. Participants stated that the experience was a highlight of their year, and stories produced by the writers were uniformly excellent.