Friday March 26th 7:00PM

Fresh from the trenches of the crime infested streets of Baltimore, emerges a new fictive voice from an unlikely source; award winning investigative reporter Stephen Janis. This Dream Called Death recasts the notion of crime and punishment in America, revealing the ugly corrosive underside of a dysfunctional justice system that aids and abets a destructive and nihilistic war on the poor. Janis cut his teeth covering the byways and the back alleys of Baltimore as a Senior Investigative Reporter for the now defunct Baltimore Examiner and more recently for Investigative Voice. His work on unsolved murders, police corruption, and government malfeasance lead to several major awards, including two Maryland DC Delware Press Association awards, one in the investigative category for his work on the high number of unsolved murders in Baltimore, the second for a series recounting a rash of unsolved strangulations of prostitutes.

As he delved deeper into pathos of a city that arrested over 100,000 people a year many illegally, the large number of suspicious deaths that remain unclassified, and the stubbornly high murder rate, Janis realized that he needed to do more than simply report what he saw. Thus the novel This Dream Called Death was born, a surreal tale of a city called Balaise beset by crime. A post-industrial wasteland ruled by an ambitious so-called “Deputy Major” who creates a Bureau of Dreams in an effort to control the unconscious thoughts of the residents.

Janis is also the founder of the watchdog journalism website Investigative Voice.  The site has received national attention for its innovative look and hard nose investigative journalism. More info: http://www.gelfmagazine.com/archives/the_voice_of_baltimore.php