Joyce Littelmay have lost her late-night "Quiet Storm" gig at V-103 three years ago but her signature annual event "Passion & Poetry" is alive and well. Actor Malcolm Jamal Warner ("The Cosby Show," "Malcolm & Eddie," "Reed Between the Lines") is the lead poet for a third time at Center Stage, Saturday March 16.

Actor Omari Hardwick (who hosts TV One's "Verses and Flow"), former Arrested Development member Eshe and former V-103 host Miss Sophia will be there as well. (UPDATE: 3/8/13 10:56 a.m. Hardwick tweeted me to say due to his schedule, he can't make it.)

There are two shows, one at 8 p.m. and one at midnight. Tickets are $35 ($42.75 with fees on Ticketmaster.)

Littel usually has held the show around Valentine's Day but felt this year there was too much competition, including a Keith Sweat concert at the Civic Center. and Laila Hathaway at the Variety Playhouse. So she moved it back a month.  She said she was flooded with emails and Facebook messages worried it wasn't going to happen at all. "It's a brand," she said. "People expect it."

Warner heard about the event and asked to be in it again. "It's not a hard well for these poets or the musicians," she said. She's also added a dance element.

And thematics were easy: don't let love fade away now that Valentine's Day is over. Spring into love!

She is advertising on V-103 where much of her target audience is. "I still have a solid relationship with them," she said. "I never leave a home I can't come back to."

V-103 dropped Littel as the host of Quiet Storm more than three years ago. It has chosen to go jockless during that time period ever since, with no major erosion in listeners, giving them little incentive to bring in a new DJ.

Warner has spent plenty of time in Atlanta recently taping the second season of a revamped "Reed Between the Lines" minus Tracee Ellis Ross.

Past stories I've written about Littel and Passion & Poetry:

1/27/10: Exclusive interview with Joyce Littel after V-103 cut her job.

2/16/10 A talk with Malcolm Jamal Warner in 2010 at the last Passion & Poetry he took part in.

2/12/12: Joyce Littel talks about the 14th annual Passion & Poetry.