In terms of character names, A Poet in Center City cross-references precisely to Equations and Letters to Dead Masters. Trish Webber, Tobi Simon, Heather Mullen, Jade Racino, Emma Pasternak, Kathy Meckenwell, Jena Strayner, and more are reprised. Larsen Spurn, based on Gaetan Spurgin, in A Poet in Center City, recurs as Larsen in Letters to Dead Masters, as well. Ted Gissman and Niven Cammett (N) appear in Chimes.

The action span of A Poet in Center City covers roughly eleven years- 1999 to 2010. The book was first drafted and placed online in 2012-2013, from Conshohocken.

The Highwire Gallery, where the primary Philly Free School shows were held, occupied the Gilbert Building on the PAFA (Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts) campus until 2007, when the Gilbert Building was razed. The Highwire Gallery then moved to a ground-floor location Kensington, where it remains up to the present day.

John Van Zandt, a major proprietor of the Highwire in the mid-Aughts, and the basis for the character Jim O' Rourke, died in 2006.