In this textbook you will find a collection of poems, essays, stories, and more, excerpted our library collection. We don’t take the responsibility of building a library collection lightly. Like the form of a book, or the English language, the library form is viewed as an authority figure or monument, something to be cared for and attended to, and most importantly, as a center where people can gather freely around expressive, educational, or communal activities. For this reason, we asked for help from people we admire: our community members, who then selected individuals from their communities to suggest books, and so on.

Over the past year, we’ve been able to collect contributions and suggestions from over 40 individuals, organizations, and collectives in order to build this body of references. Throughout the year, as new texts would come in, we felt the culture of our space consistently being remolded and redirected. Throughout this fluctuation, we found overlaps and distinctions in book choices, we were both surprised and felt familiarity, and slowly our monument emerged. If anything, our collection acts as a monument to cooperation among strangers and the blurred collective authorship of a shared body of knowledge. This collection now anchors our practice, by acting as a guide for public programs and as references for the publications that are produced in our studio. The following pages include mere excerpts from texts representative of larger sections, that exist in full form at our studio in Downtown Baltimore.

We are thankful to the authors of these texts for allowing us to borrow and share excerpts from their writings, which we deeply admire. We hope this can act as a glimpse into our world, and that you can join us in person at the studio some time.