Join us at Charm City Books on August 25 at 3 p.m. for an interactive reading with local author, artist, and actor Teresa Spencer. The evening will begin with a short reading featuring Teresa and another actor from Taffety Punk Theatre Company, culminating with handing out mad-lib love poems to catcallers, so the audience can create their own and share it if they'd like! We will finish the evening with an author Q&A and signing.

Teresa Spencer's Too Like the Lightning: Prose Poems to My Almost Loves is an illustrated collection of love poems to catcallers, followers home, online trolls, and other sundry unsavory types. Flipping the power dynamic between target and harasser, each poem in Too Like the Lightning is a bitingly funny takedown of the harasser's gaslight: "I was just paying you a compliment." So what if it were a compliment? Too Like the Lightning imagines love stories whose first sparks are those too-brief missed connections on the street.

Teresa Spencer writes and makes theatre in Baltimore, Maryland. She is a company member with Taffety Punk Theatre Company and teaches acting at Towson University. She lives with her superlative husband and son, so rest assured that it’s not necessary to remind her that #notallmen, but if you would like to, she does accept feedback shouted at her on the street.