On April 6, 2025, The Tidewater Initiative was pleased to participate in a memorial for John Barth, groundbreaking and prolific author, revered teacher, and professor emeritus in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. Sponsored by the Writing Seminars, the event included remarks by Jennifer Finney Boylan (President of PEN America & New York Times Bestselling author), Harris Feinsod (Research Professor & Director, Tidewater Initiative), Dora Malech  (Professor, The Writing Seminars & Editor in Chief of The Hopkins Review), Eric Puchner (Associate Professor & Chair, The Writing Seminars), and Daniel Weiss  (Homewood Professor & President Emeritus, Metropolitan Museum of Art). Full details are here.

Barth was one of the inspired figures of Chesapeake storytelling whose legacy informs the Tidewater Initiative and its relation to Johns Hopkins. From The Floating Opera to the Tidewater Tales and his introduction to William Warner’s classic Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs, and the Chesapeake Bay, Barth insistently named and championed the Chesapeake region and its marine cultures as a proper subject of art.