Rafael Alvarez is a 4th generation Baltimorean with grandfathers who worked at the Beth Steel shipyard and National Bohemian brewery. He is the son of a Fells Point tugboat engineer. The author of a dozen books, Alvarez is currently finishing a novel titled, The Velveteen Junkman.
Alvarez spent 20 years on the City Desk of the Baltimore Sun before writing for the TV shows Homicide and The Wire along with columns on the city for national publications*.* His life's work not only shadows the streets and alleys that he has traveled but those of his ancestors going back to the late 19th century waves of Polish and Italian immigration. Baltimore is his Paris, his Bilbao, his Jerusalem. He will tell tales from those streets.
