Best-selling Baltimore author of ‘Beast Side’ gives Ridington Lecture

D. Watkins, best-selling New York Times author and editor-at-large for Salon.com, speaks at McDaniel’s annual Ridington Lecture Feb. 27 at 7 p.m. in McDaniel Lounge. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Watkins’ talk, “Beyond the Internet: Why Quantifiable Goals Trump Hashtags,” explores how skill sharing can create true change. Social media has been the single greatest tool for starting and connecting movements and raising awareness, according to Watkins.

However, social media has also created numerous pseudo-leaders, says Watkins, who play revolutionary without any experience organizing, grassroots work or human relationships in general. Using the personal narrative of everyday people, Watkins discusses change created via sharing skills.

Founder of the BMORE Writers Project, Watkins is the author of two books focused on Baltimore’s urban war zones, “The Cook Up: A Crack Rock Memoir” (2016) and “The Beast Side: Living (And Dying) While Black in America.” “The Cook Up” takes an insider’s look at Baltimore’s drug trade through Watkins’ memoir of his days on the street dealing and using crack. In “The Beast Side” Watkins writes about his hometown, a first person account of growing up a black man on the east side or “beast side” of a city held captive by drugs and violence.

Watkins is from and lives in East Baltimore. He is a professor at the University of Baltimore, whose work has been published in the New York Times, the Guardian, Rolling Stone and other publications. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including Ford’s Men of Courage and a BME Fellowship.  

Watkins holds a master’s in Education from Johns Hopkins University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Baltimore.

The annual Ridington lecture honors two long-time faculty at McDaniel, William Robbins Ridington and Edith Farr Ridington. After the Ridingtons’ deaths, their family endowed this annual lectureship, which began in 1991.