By Ciarese De Torres

From bacon to books to bright lights, it seems that there are a lot of things for Baltimore to celebrate.

The city has been very festive as of late, with not one, nor two, but three festivals occurring at the same time.

In a show of unique solidarity, both the Baltimore Book Festival and the Baltimore City of Lights festival are collaborating together.

This special, week-long event, is called Brilliant Baltimore.

Here, both festivals hold a myriad of special events that celebrate Baltimore pride.
The Baltimore Book Festival itself had a great head start, showing what’s lit in their literature themed events around the first day of the month.

Among those booked sessions were open discussion panels that address important issues surrounding literature and other media, such as diversity in stories and censorship of works.

From great book deals to book signings, the success in attendance of these open and free events goes to show that writing stories, comics, and poetry should not just be left to the prose.

The festival is all about encouraging and educating everyone on writing the wrongs of many classic works and supporting more diverse authors and their textually healing works.

Not only will many attendees leave the festival “Thoreau”-ly impressed, but, hopefully, they will be inspired to open up and share their own creative outlet to the world.
The celebration, however, did not end there. It might seem hogwash to think that there would be a festival dedicated to bacon, but that did occur.

For all the bacon-lovers out there, the Baltimore Bacon Fest came to Power Plant Live! during the same weekend as the Book Festival and Light City.

Alongside the fifteen food and retail vendors there were lots of bacon-themed events included several bacon eating contests and a Kevin Bacon Dance-Off.

With ticket prices starting as low as $12, attendees were encouraged to go ham with bacon-based dishes guaranteed to taste so porking good.

Not to be outshined by the other festivals, this year’s Light City has pulled off a show of diverse exhibits come-to-light for many visitors.

This free, accessible ,and family friendly festival glowed up the Inner Harbor’s brick-lined promenade beyond anyone’s wildest gleams.

Some of these wired and wonderful exhibits involved interactive water art-graffiti, a forest full of huge shrooms with a flash of color, an immersive playground containing light and sound sculptures, and so much more!

For watt it’s worth, numerous visitors were able to admire how much laser sharp work and effort was done by the many artists that helped amp up the night.

The last eve of the week ended the festival with a bang in series of flashing fireworks.
If there was anything to learn from all three awe-inspiring, fun-filled festivities, it was that Baltimore really is Charm City.

These charming events continually push to celebrate the hidden gem that is Baltimore’s art culture for many more generations to come.