INTERVIEW: Ashleigh Bryant Phillips and Joseph Grantham on Hidden Palace
Plus reflections from Hidden Palace readers
Hidden Palace will forever be one of the greatest reading series of all time. Anyone who has ever read there or attended knows this. The local Baltimore audience is enthusiastic and generous, the venue (Fadensonnen) is beautiful, the books are sold and championed by the amazing bookstore Greedy Reads, and its hosts, Ashleigh Bryant Philips and Joseph Grantham, have both impeccable taste and a gift for cultivating events with real connection and warmth.
But all good things must come to an end, so, after several years of Hidden Palace happening on the first Thursday of the month, the last reading was held on June 5, 2025. I emailed Joey and Ashleigh about doing a retrospective interview about Hidden Palace and sent them a few questions via a Google Doc. I also asked several people involved with the reading series (either as a reader, attendee, or bookseller, or some combination of the three) to share their own reflections, which are included at the end.
Kristen Felicetti: What’s the origin story of Hidden Palace? Why did you want to host a reading series?
Ashleigh Bryant Phillips: When me and Joey moved to Baltimore, I became a dishwasher at Fadensonnen. Then during the pandemic, Fadensonnen’s founder, Lane Harlan, opened up Angels Ate Lemons, a natural wine and sake shop, right next door and she hired me as the manager. Shortly after, I got published in The Paris Review and Lane was so thrilled. That Christmas she bought everyone at Fadensonnen and Angels Ate Lemons copies of my book. After reading my work, Lane encouraged me to start hosting readings in the upstairs tavern of Fadensonnen. I was honored. Fadensonnen’s named after a Paul Celan collection and Angels Ate Lemons is named after an Etel Adnan line so it felt natural to have a reading series in the space. And I’d ran a series in grad school, so I knew how to do it. But we were still kinda new to Baltimore so I had no idea if anybody would come out. Joey wasn’t gung-ho about the idea either. But after the first couple of installments, we knew we had something going on.
Joseph Grantham: Yeah, I told Ashleigh not to start a reading series. I just imagined her being hounded by writers she wasn’t interested in, or feeling obligated to invite people to read whose work she didn’t care for. And the hounding did happen for the first year and a half or so, but it eventually tapered off. But yeah, I had almost nothing to do with the series for the first few months, aside from suggesting a reader or two. Then Ashleigh took a teaching gig at Appalachian State and while she was out of town I decided to keep it going as long as I could, basically for as long as it wasn’t boring to me. I kept saying, “I think I’m gonna stop after this month,” but then some writer or translator whose work I loved would agree to come read in Baltimore. A funny thing about the name Hidden Palace. Ashleigh told me a while ago that it came from Eliot Weinberger’s book Angels and Saints (a book they used to keep on the tasting table in Angels Ate Lemons). I told the translator Esther Allen that the name came from that book and it turns out she’s good friends with Weinberger and let him know that there was a reading series that took its name from his writing. Weinberger wrote her back saying that nowhere in Angels and Saints does the phrase ‘Hidden Palace’ appear. Ashleigh shrugged when I told her that and said, “Well, it was inspired by the book.”
KF: Hidden Palace is a dream place for a writer to read. The series has a large, engaged audience that regularly shows up each month, no matter who is reading. How did you make that happen? Was it always that way, or did you have to build that community over time?
ABP: My only rules for Hidden Palace were four writers reading for ten to fifteen minutes each: a mix of local and out-of-towners, a mix of genres, with books for sale by Greedy Reads. And no one could read off their phone.
JG: There were like seven or eight people at the first Hidden Palace but then, after word spread about the series, it seemed like there were at least 30-50 at every single one, if not a lot more sometimes. We didn’t do a lot of publicity for the series. We didn’t start a website for it. I think we both knew that if it started to feel like we were working another job, that we would immediately stop doing it. We weren’t getting paid to run the series so it better not feel like a job. There was just kind of a blind trust that enough people would show up each time to make it worth everybody’s while. And they did show up.
What surprised me was that most of the people who attended the series weren’t necessarily writers. Often the audience was just full of people who like reading books. There was hardly any wheeling and dealing in that room. It wasn’t a place to meet a literary agent or to try and make a connection so you could get your story or poem published. It was just a place to go hear some people read their work. Every once in a while I’d be talking to someone during a break or after the readings and I’d realize “Oh shit, this person thinks I can do something for them.” At which point I’d try to find a way to go hide in the bathroom for a little while. As a kind of joke I came up with what I called the Three Minute Rule. And that’s where, after three minutes of interacting with someone at an event you can say, if you’re feeling cornered by them, or if you feel like something transactional is happening, “I’m sorry, but three minutes have passed and it’s nothing personal but there’s the three minute rule.”
KF: The lineup every month was always such an eclectic mix too—writers from different generations, or local Baltimore writers alongside ones on tour. How did you select the readers for each event?
ABP: It started with who of our friends can we convince to come to Baltimore for free and sleep on our couch?
JG: People always asked us this question. How do you choose who reads at the series? And usually they followed that up with, “Because I’d love to read at it,” or “My friend has a book coming out.” The best answer I can give is that we invited people who we actually wanted to hear read. I think for a reading series to be good you have to recognize that there are many readings in the city (in this case the city was Baltimore), and that you’re not going to have to worry about speaking for the city of Baltimore or for the entire literary community. We were just one little corner of the literary scene. If you’re curating a reading series, really curate it! It sounds weird, but you kind of have to be selfish about it. Who do I want to hear read? It’s kind of like any good piece of art. You can’t be thinking about the audience all the time. If you make choices that you believe in and care about, well, then the audience will probably be on board for them. If you start wondering, “Well, I want to make sure everybody in the room is happy, so I’m going to invite this person and this person and this person.” Or, “Well, I owe this person a favor.” No! It’s awful when you go to a reading series where you feel like the host doesn’t care about who’s on the bill. Like, “Hello, welcome, here’s a bunch of readers.” No! You better be interested in who you invite to read at your reading series or else it’s just not going to be good. There’s something intuitive about it too. Like, “I don’t know why, but these four people reading together on the same bill somehow makes sense to me.” Or, “This lineup of readers doesn’t quite make sense to me but it’s definitely not going to be boring.” That’s another thing we thought about a lot. How do we make this not boring? There was a whole thing on Zona Motel recently about how “nobody likes readings” and I thought that was kind of ridiculous. The world already hates literature enough. Sure, some readings are boring, in fact, probably most of them are boring. But the same goes for anything. Most books are bad, most movies, most albums, but when they’re good, they can be really fucking good.
Another thing that made a huge difference was having the bookstore Greedy Reads on board. Because aside from some very small travel funds here and there, we couldn’t offer to pay anyone to come read. But we could always have their books for sale at the venue. And that makes a difference. And Greedy Reads wasn’t shy about ordering in books either. If you are an author with five books and all five books are in print, when you show up to read, Greedy Reads is going to have all five books for sale at the reading, even if four of them were published a decade or two ago or if they’re on a micropress that doesn’t exist anymore. Greedy Reads showed up and sold books. So a big shoutout has to go to Emily Miller (who was managing Greedy Reads when Ashleigh started the series) and Julia Fleischaker (the owner of Greedy Reads).
KF: You also had really great posters for every reading. What was the process for finding the artists and coordinating the artwork?
JG: Ashleigh did such a great job finding artists for the posters. At a certain point we had a nice pool of artists that we’d worked with and we’d just go back to them over and over. They were usually friends or friends of friends and we’d only be able to pay a small amount for the artwork. Without those posters the series wouldn’t have been the same. Also, they worked with us on such short deadlines! Because it was a monthly series, we needed a new poster every month and sometimes it would take a few weeks to get a lineup confirmed. Artists like Savannah Patterson and Jason Wallace would knock out a poster in a matter of days for us.
ABP: I’d give artistic direction every once in a while. But also, we just trusted the folks we were working with.
KF: Any favorite memories from the reading series over the years?
ABP: Jeannie Vanasco reading poems she’d written as a teen that she’d never read before. Madison Smartt Bell saying that he’d give a copy of his book to the most beautiful person in the room. Liesl Schillinger reading from Ines Cagnati’s Free Day in public for the very first time (years after her translation was published.) Brian Robert Moore choosing to read an Edgar Allan Poe-esque selection from Michele Mari because we’re in Baltimore and Poe’s buried there. Taking Scott McClanahan and Juliet Escoria to see Poe’s grave. Joyelle McSweeney conjuring. Brian Allan Carr rapping. My former student, Dallas Campos, taking the train up from Charlotte for the last Hidden Palace and then getting thrown on the bill at the last minute (because a reader cancelled) and owning his work like a fucking boss. Hanif Abdurraquib not reading any of his own work. Eileen Myles taking a nap on our couch. Looking at language tablets with Babak Lakghomi at the Walters Art Museum. Rebecca Bengal bringing sloth toys for our cats. Me and Edy Modica watching a bird slow to a hover midflight to eat a bug right in front of us. Joey asking the audience to raise their hands if they believed in God a la Nathan Fielder. Having to shit in a cardboard box in the laundry room of our apartment because there’s only one bathroom and I really had to go and the writer staying with us was taking a long shower. Watching people who had no idea what Hidden Palace was wander into Fadensonnen and stay, listen to the readers, buy their books, get them signed and ask “When’s the next reading happening?”
JG: One moment that comes to mind is when the poet Josef Kaplan read. He read this poem that I think is called “Preface” and it starts like, “I’m an idiot. I’m a real idiot. A dang ol’ idiot. I’m the big dumb idiot.” And it goes on for about ten minutes like that and becomes beautifully, grotesquely descriptive at times, like, “I’m a pile of horse-eaten crud left to dry on the perpetual underside of the lives of geniuses.” And every time you think he’s about to stop, the poem keeps chugging along. Well, I was having a great time listening to that poem. And then we took a break after Kaplan finished reading. And when we returned after the break, quite a few people had left. And I found out that Kaplan’s poem made some people in the audience upset. A friend of mine was disgusted by it. I think she even said to me, “That’s not poetry.” Well, we stopped doing intermissions not long after that. Figured we might as well keep everyone trapped in the room with us for the whole reading.
Rod Smith reading Doug Lang’s poem “Things to Do In DC.” Lang had recently died and Rod had just published a book of his. Luckily I recorded Rod’s entire reading and you can listen to it on Pennsound: https://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Hidden-Palace.php.
Not a favorite memory, but something else to note. At least two people passed out and hit the floor at two different readings. Either because it was so hot in the room or the reading was so good, or both, you be the judge.
Anything else you want to say about Hidden Palace that hasn’t been covered or anything you want to shoutout?
ABP/JG: Lane Harlan, Colin Zweifel, Ben Piwowar, Landon McKinley, all of the bartenders at Fadensonnen and the servers and cooks at Chachi’s (and all of the food at Chachi’s), the Ulysses Hotel, Carr Kizzier and Heather Harris at CCBC, all of our Baltimore pals who came out to support the series and of course the city of Baltimore itself… and all our readers:
Hanif Abdurraqib ‘Pemi Aguda Laura Albert Esther Allen Ahmad Almallah Steve Anwyll Jonathan Aprea Brendan Shay Basham Madison Smartt Bell Rachel Bell Rebecca Bengal Steve Benson Donald Berger Lindsay Bernal Michael Bible Raegan Bird Jazz Boothby Barbara Bourland Megan Boyle Thea Brown Leslie Bumstead Blake Butler Jimmy Cajoleas Dallas Campos Jack Carneal Brian Allen Carr Sebastian Castillo Izzy Casey Samuel Cheney Richard Chiem Will Mountain Cox Michael Earl Craig Marian Crotty Daniel Coudriet Susan Muaddi Darraj Oscar D'Artois Armen Davoudian Zan de Parry Athena Dixon Buck Downs Nathan Dragon Tafisha Edwards Emma Ensley Juliet Escoria Jalen Eutsey Danielle Evans Kristen Felicetti Robert Fitterman Jackson Frons Heather Fuller Joshua Garcia Juliet Gelfman-Randazzo Sarah Gerard Ben Gordon K. Lorraine Graham Mik Grantham Joseph Grantham Evan Gray Emily Hall Jalynn Harris Leslie Harrison Halle Hill Chelsea Hodson Ralph Hubbell Paolo Iacovelli Nash Jenkins Tania James Sylvia Jones Josef Kaplan Vincent Katz Wayne Koestenbaum Edgar Kunz Grey Wolfe Lajoie Babak Lakghomi Victoria Lancelotta Nora Lange Chin-Sun Lee Nancy Lemann Steve Levine Johannes Lichtman Warren Longmire Ben Loory Annell López Madelaine Lucas Dora Malech Paul Maliszewski Kevin Maloney Mesha Maren Lily Meyer Scott McClanahan Jean McGarry Thomas McGonigle Landon Mckinley Joyelle McSweeney Edy Modica Brian Robert Moore Katie Moulton Eileen Myles Kayla Jean Vishal Narang Elinor Nauen Kelsey Norris Ashleigh Bryant Phillips Alina Pleskova Willis Plummer Priscilla Posada Caroline Preziosi Rhea Ramakrishnan Caroline Rayner Leila Register Geoff Rickly Matthew Rohrer Bob Rosenthal Arnisha Royston Lyle Jeremy Rubin Alexander Sammartino Shannon Sanders Liesl Schillinger Simon Schuchat Colette Shade Dash Shaw Daisuke Shen Jeremy Sigler Emily Simon Alex Siquig Bud Smith Rod Smith Liza St. James Mary Alice Stewart Alexandra Tanner Lysley Tenorio Robert Travieso Nicole Treska Stephanie Ullmann Andres Vaamonde Jeannie Vanasco Devon Welsh Kathleen Wallish Fiona Warnick Shy Watson Andrew Weatherhead Cynthia Weiner Caroline White Colin Winnette Austyn Wohlers Rupert Wondolowski Ariel Yelen Jung Yun
What is next for you both? Do you want to continue organize IRL events, or do you plan to focus on your writing and other projects?
ABP: I’m done organizing another monthly reading series for the foreseeable future.
JG: I don’t want to start another reading series anytime soon (unless it’s a job I’m being paid to do). But silly old AWP is in Baltimore in 2026, so there will be a Hidden Palace on that Thursday, March 5th.
ABP: So y’all stay tuned!
Some reflections on Hidden Palace from writers, attendees, and booksellers:
Sylvia Jones, read at the first Hidden Palace: Thinking back to that first Hidden Palace reading in April 2022 still feels like stepping into a moment that quietly shifted something. Mesha, Josh, and I—all writers raised in the South—shared that night as a kind of reimagining of the Bible Belt and the Mason-Dixon line, not as fixed divides but as histories we carry and reshape.
Ashleigh was the first southern expat I met in Baltimore, together she and Joey hosted with a kind of effortless care that made the series feel like a refuge amid the city’s dogged art scene and its relentless attention economy. With them they brought a certain grounded rigor to the room, a shared ethos that quietly reshaped what a reading series could be here.
Mesha’s reading that evening, from her debut novel —set a tone that still resonates: understated but electric, a quiet claim on what it means to gather and listen when the world rarely makes space for either. Hidden Palace wasn’t about spectacle or networking; it was about the work, the words, and the rare kind of listening that feels like an act of solidarity. I’m grateful to have been part of it.
In hindsight, thinking back to that night April 2022, I just remember the mix of excitement and the practical realities—like luckily it was April so the humidity felt mild, and we were all a little green-eyed, due to the fact that unbeknownst to us — the upstairs ventilation at Fadensonnen was, at best, oftentimes oppressive. Spring, Winter, rain, or shine —the elements will always be a small price to pay for a space like that — so alive with possibility.
Rebecca Bengal: When I first started getting to know Ashleigh and Joey several years ago, we had this instant common ground. Here were two people who also understood writing and language and place and humor and voice as sound. Beyond being brilliant writers themselves, they have phenomenally good taste in books and writers. I trust them implicitly, whether it's a gift of a book by a writer who never got their true due when their books were still in print or a story Ashleigh edited for Joyland or a poem or story Joey edited for R&R Journal. I have so much admiration for all the work they continually put into supporting other writers, into creating a community of writers and readers, especially through Hidden Palace, which was such a tremendously cool series made infinitely and refreshingly cooler for its rare lack of ego. It was just about creating a space for an exciting, fun, packed room of people who truly give a shit about writing — a semisecret portal for all of us. It was for me the perfect place to do a public reading of a new short story and see how it was received, and it was an honor to read it there. I wanted to go back every month. It made me wish I lived in Baltimore. I'll miss it but am so excited to see what they'll do next.
Juliet Escoria: I read at HP in August 2023 with Scott McClanahan, Chelsea Hodson, and Geoff Rickly. I get incredibly nervous at readings and I was especially nervous at this one and felt like I was being an awkward loser in my conversations with people beforehand and all I remember thinking was, "oh god, why did I agree to this, I want to get out of here." Which are basically my thoughts at every reading, ever. But then Megan Boyle showed up, and Penina Roth, and their presence made me feel more calm. And then Geoff and Chelsea and Scott were so good, and the crowd was so receptive and kind, that by the end of it, I felt really proud to be a part of this reading. It felt like we'd created something together, even though it only lasted a few hours. I also felt a lot of admiration for Ashleigh and Joey. They'd made this special thing in this special city. Hidden Palace was really a gem.
Bud Smith: Joey and Ashleigh did something special in Baltimore. They’ve got excellent taste in movies and music and of course literature. Sure, they’re great writers themselves but more importantly they’re eternal searchers. They care about what other artists are up to and want to help the good work be known to their neighbors and beyond. With Hidden Palace they used all their enthusiasm and knowledge to curate a show. Not a readings series where people mumbled into a mic. They put on a show—or rather a showcase—worth traveling to see. I live three hours away and went to three Hidden Palaces I wasn’t reading at. That’s eighteen hours of driving. Why? Well it’s because great curators are rare and sure, they entertain you, but that’s just the start. They can teach you things. They startle and surprise. They inspire and confound. Whenever I meet people who say they are bummed there isn’t enough happening in their town, I always say that they’re the exact people who should be putting on a show. Sometimes they do.
Lindsay Bernal: Hidden Palace is a Baltimore gem that I will miss deeply. The highlight of the month for the writers and readers of Charm City and beyond. Some favorite HP memories: Hanif Abdurraquib reading work by Palestinian poets, Joyelle McSweeney haunting us with her necropastoral series, Liza St. James's meditation on baths, Tafisha A. Edwards, my former undergrad, transporting us. And I loved meeting and reading with you, Kristen, and discovering our shared love of Fiona Apple and shared adolescent angst in Rochester.
What Joey and Ashleigh created and sustained for three years is rare, magical, a testament to their expert curation, generosity, and belief in literary community and real commitment to literary stewardship. They filled Fadensonnen to the brim every single month and amplified so many voices.
Emily Miller, bookseller: Reading series come and go in Baltimore but there was never any doubt that this one had staying power — if they’d stayed in town it could have lasted forever. But that’s the thing that was so special about it, too. It was inextricably linked to them as people and as writers. It’s not the kind of series someone could possibly take over. Joey and Ashleigh are the fabric of it.
Month after month sitting in that very dark (and usually overly warm) room there was always a moment, usually around the halfway point of the reading, where I thought “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.” What a rare and special thing.
The sheer volume of writers that came through is hard to wrap my mind around — especially because a lot of them traveled a long way and, in a lot of cases, slept on Joey and Ashleigh’s couch. I’ve never known anyone else to do that. But it’s a testament to their love for the series and the writers they invited.
It was a real privilege to sit at that table.
Jimmy Cajoleas, read at the last Hidden Palace: Ashleigh and Joey are two of my favorite people in the world, and they’re always up to something good. Wherever they’re headed, I’ll follow. So it was a real honor to get to read at the last Hidden Palace. I lucked out because Bud Smith and his wife Rae wanted to go as well, so I just hitched a ride with them from Jersey, saving me a bus trip. Anyway, it’s always nice to have pals around. The other readers—Brian Allen Carr, Dallas Campos, and Edy Modica—were all brilliant and sad and funny. Real readers too, the kind who don’t just stand there and mumble something off a sheet of paper, but who try to connect, who want that weird spark between reader and listener, where you feel like you’re doing something together.
And that’s really the best thing I can say about the series. There was this one moment towards the end of my reading, when I had gotten past most of the funny parts and was taking a turn into the heart of the story, when it opens up a little, and I got a little nervous. The crowd had been very generous with me, laughing, but I wasn't sure whether or not they’d follow me all the way through to the end. Right at the saddest part of the story, I risked a look up at the crowd.
Everyone was paying attention. I couldn't believe it. And not in that New York “I’m giving you 1/8 of my brain” kind of way. They were rapt, hanging on to every word. It’s not that my story was some masterpiece (though I think it was pretty good), it’s that the crowd were there to hear the stories, to have an experience with literature. Maybe it was a social scene too, I don’t know, but I’ve never been in front of a more attentive, more generous audience in my life. And that all has to do with the hosts, with the kind of people Ashleigh and Joey are, the sort of folks they attract to themselves and the community they helped to build around the series.
We all partied afterwards and had a blast. I slept on an air mattress at Ashleigh and Joey’s place. Had a cat nestled there with me right by my pillow. About as good a night as you could ask for.
I love this for several reasons and here are a few of them:
1. This is peak Kristen Felicetti (going out of her way to make something great when it could have just been good)
2. Anyone who ever organises a reading or series can use this as research
3. It's an important historical document
4. This is what Zona Motel is for!
Everyone needs to put March 5 on their calendar (including myself, including myself) to be delighted during AWP.