10178 results were found.

A Patriotic Pick: September 2021

Whether it’s via their tone, topic, or tenor, certain works just say “America.” Here is one such title, suggested by Louise Dubé, executive director of iCivics/CivXNow: First: Sandra Day O’Connor by Evan Thomas. “This book reflects on the life of the first woman on the Supreme Court and a national…

A Writer’s Bucket List

I remember once sitting at the edge of my bed, staring at a crumpled rejection letter in my hand, and wondering if I’d ever get published. That was all I wanted — for the vast amount of work that went into my novels to someday be recognized. I wanted to…

Virtual Escape Room with Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Join us for a virtual escape room inspired by the book The Hawthorne Legacy and a virtual Q&A with author Jennifer Lynn Barnes. Avery Kylie Grambs is still trying to piece together the puzzle of her legacy from Tobias Hawthorne in The Hawthorne Legacy, the sequel to The Inheritance Games.…

An Interview with Amy Argetsinger

When I was growing up, my parents threw an annual Miss America party. It was the hottest ticket in town. Guests arrived in evening gowns and tuxedos, tossed $20 into the pot, and, after choosing their “girl,” rooted for her like she was playing in the Super Bowl. Amy Argetsinger…

A Canadian Classic Gets Its Due

The inside cover of my copy of Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town houses a touching inscription. “To Daddy for Christmas, 1961” (in an adult’s handwriting), followed by three wobbly signatures: “JoHn, coliN, Ellen.” Before moving overseas to Southeast Asia, I ordered the book secondhand from a seller in Canada.…

From Pandemic to Publishing

The pandemic changed my life, as it did for nearly everyone I know. Pre-pandemic, my job entailed traveling 50 percent of the time, and because I was often on the other side of the world — averaging 12-hour days — I would log on early in the morning or late…

Meet Poet E. Ethelbert Miller

Bards Alley Bookshop is thrilled to welcome D.C. poet activist E. Ethelbert Miller back to the store! Join us on the patio for an outdoor signing of Miller’s new collection, When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery and Other Baseball Stories: Poems! No RSVP required, but we recommend you guarantee…

Romance Roundup: September 2021

Happy, happy September! I’m equal parts excited and anxious about this school year, and reading has been a much-needed escape from reality. (Well, reading and shopping for school supplies. I love school supplies…) Here are a couple of my favorite romance novels from the past month. Happy reading! ***** Lucy…

7 Most Favorable Reviews in August 2021

Grant’s Tomb: The Epic Death of Ulysses S. Grant and the Making of an American Pantheon by Louis L. Picone (Arcade). Reviewed by James A. Percoco. “In Josephine Tey’s 1951 murder mystery, The Daughter of Time, the protagonist, Scotland Yard detective Alan Grant, remarks, ‘The truth of anything at all…

5 Most Popular Posts: August 2021

Larry Matthews’ review of The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War by Craig Whitlock (Simon & Schuster). “Whitlock takes us through the fiasco at Tora Bora and Osama bin Laden’s escape to Pakistan, the duplicity of the Pakistani intelligence service, and our misunderstanding of who the Taliban are.…

Craig Whitlock in Conversation with James LaPorta

Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: to defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the…

Authors on Audio: Jeff Shesol

An historian, cartoonist, and former speechwriter in the Clinton Administration, Jeff Shesol is also the author of several books, including Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade. His new book is Mercury Rising: John Glenn, John Kennedy, and the New Battleground of the Cold…

That Ghastly Greek

As a book reviewer and book-club facilitator, I’ve been delighted and inspired by many books I’d never have picked up on my own. But I’ve also struggled through others. We’ve all heard Aristotle’s adage about the educated mind able to entertain ideas without accepting them. But is there any value…

An Interview with Lucy Parker

Ever since Carina Press published Act Like It, Lucy Parker’s first book set in the theater world, the romance author’s fans have grown legion. It’s easy to see why. In her books, Parker pairs keen observations about modern London life with a quirky sense of humor and spicy language. Her…

Children’s Book Roundup: August 2021

Depending on where you live, the school year has either already started or is rapidly approaching. With that in mind, here are three recent releases to get your kids excited about returning to the classroom. Just don’t stay up too late reading them; that big yellow bus comes earlier than…

Pale

Pale

Andrea Hairston in Conversation with Sheree Renée Thomas

We're so excited to celebrate the paperback release of Master of Poisons with Andrea Hairston and Sheree Renée Thomas! This event is in partnership with Tor.com and will be held digitally on Tor.com's Crowdcast channel. This is a free event, but you must register for the event. Purchase a copy…

Sensational Summer Stories

Summer is my time to ignore new books about the U.S. Constitution, the Supreme Court, and other heady analyses of justice, law, and history in favor of purely entertaining reads. This year, during several weeks visiting kids and grandkids while hobbled by aging body parts which kept me from more…

Bedtime Stories: August 2021

Raima Larter: When it comes to reading and the pandemic, I have noticed there are two types of people: those who read voraciously for months, finishing book after book, and those who found it difficult to focus long enough to read anything more than a tweet or newspaper headline. I…

Teri Ellen Cross Davis in Conversation with St. Clair Detrick-Jules

In the tender, sensual, and bracing poems of a more perfect Union, Teri Ellen Cross Davis reclaims the experience of living and mothering while Black in contemporary America, centering Black women’s pleasure by wresting it away from the relentless commodification of the White gaze. Cross Davis deploys stunning emotional range…

An Interview with Michael A. Beer

Michael A. Beer is director of the DC-based Nonviolence International, an organization he’s been with for nearly three decades. “I believe that Dr. King was not overly exaggerating when he said…that we can either choose a nonviolent future or a future of non-existence,” he says. “This is not just some…

Maurice Carlos Ruffin in Conversation with Deesha Philyaw

This event will stream online as a part of our P&P Live! Series Maurice Carlos Ruffin has an uncanny ability to reveal the hidden corners of a place we thought we knew. These perspectival, character-driven stories center on the margins and are deeply rooted in New Orleanian culture in The…

Hamnet

Hamnet

Poetry Launch with Miko Reed Collins

From accomplished poet and spoken-word artist and DC native Miko Reed Collins comes an indelible collection of poetry and personal essays about love, relationships, heartache, and finding her identity through it all. With the rhythm of Nikki Giovanni, Miko reckons with the pain of her past in her new book,…

The Streaming Boom

Content is king as film entertainment rapidly evolves, spurred on by advances in technology and the covid-19 pandemic. The explosive growth of streaming is creating a new golden age in what is quaintly still known as television, and that is adding to a boom for authors. Novels have always made…

On Poetry: August 2021

Once again, I find myself in August — at summer’s end, when the light begins to slowly creep out of the days — pondering the many ghosts that chase us beyond campfires into the dark woods. Shadows can take any form, from addiction and religion to history or ruptured childhoods.…

Authors on Audio: Stephen Budiansky

In this week’s podcast, courtesy of Biographers International Organization, Sonja Williams and Stephen Budiansky discuss Budiansky’s award-winning Journey to the Edge of Reason: The Life of Kurt Gödel. Publishers Weekly says that “Gödel comes through as a brilliant though tragic figure in Budiansky’s richly descriptive prose. This captivating portrait of…

Bookending Sébastien Japrisot

Back in the early 2000s, when I worked at the North Carolina Museum of Art, several colleagues and I started a small book club, the first I’d ever joined. Though we were all big readers, our individual tastes ran in different directions — but that latter point was one we…

Reframing the Picture

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about perspective. It influences so many aspects of our lives — what we feel is important, why we do what we do, how we relate to others and the world — and yet remains an almost automatic part of our internal processing, something we…

Kristin Arnett and Hannah Oliver Depp in Conversation with Elias Rodriques

Loyalty is super psyched to welcome Elias Rodriques in conversation with Kristen Arnett and Loyalty's own Hannah Oliver Depp for All the Water I've Seen is Running! This event will be held digitally via Crowdcast. Click here to register for the event with a donation of any amount of your…

A Patriotic Pick: August 2021

Whether it’s via their tone, topic, or tenor, certain works just say “America.” Here is one such title, suggested by Erin Carlson Mast, president and CEO of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation: Becoming Americans: Immigrants Tell Their Stories from Jamestown to Today, edited by Ilan Stavans. “Containing letters, diary…

Styling and Substance

Laura, the woman who cuts my hair, cares about what is going on inside my head as well as what’s under her scissors. The cliché is true: In the brightly lit salon, between longtime client and gifted hairdresser, there’s confessional intimacy. Staring into the unforgiving mirror, hair wet, a little…

Julie Klam in Conversation with Matthew Klam

Ever since she was young, Julie Klam has been fascinated by the Morris sisters, cousins of her grandmother. According to family lore, early in the twentieth century the sisters’ parents decided to move the family from Eastern Europe to Los Angeles so their father could become a movie director. On…

20+ Non-Beach Reads to Read at the Beach

The best vacation books grab you and won’t let go, and the eclectic titles here — from poetry and memoir to dystopia — fit that bill nicely. Pick one to enjoy on your next summer escape, even if it’s only to the back yard. All the King’s Men by Robert…

An Interview with Marguerite Kaye

Her Heart for a Compass, which came out last week, was the most anticipated royal historical novel of the year. Authored by Sarah, Duchess of York, in collaboration with Marguerite Kaye, the story is a fictional account of the life of the duchess’ great-great-great-aunt Lady Margaret Montagu Douglas Scott, who…

Open to Interpretation

When Leo was a toddler, I once asked him what he thought I did all day long. He knew Karl — hubby to me; Dada to him — went to an office every morning and came home every night, tired and hungry. What Karl did wasn't a big concern to…

Laura Hankin in Conversation with Laurie Gillman

East City Bookshop welcomes author Laura Hankin in conversation with ECB founder and co-owner Laurie Gillman for a virtual conversation as part of A Mighty Blaze's Authors Love Bookstores series. This event is free to attend and will be streamed live on A Mighty Blaze's Facebook and YouTube pages. About…

Romance Roundup: August 2021

August? How did that happen? I know we’re in the throes of the dog days of summer, but I’m already looking forward to my kids starting school, the weather turning cooler (eventually), and having a little more structure to my days. Until then, I’m cramming in as much reading time…

Chronicling Historical Butchery

Living in an alternate reality between 2016 and 2021 caused me to fear that American social justice, and our democracy, was moving backward, not forward. But history is cyclical; we’ve been here before. In years past, our nation participated in deplorable and shameful practices — the plundering of Indigenous people,…

Amy McGrath in Conversation with Jennifer Rubin

In Honor Bound, Amy McGrath writes of gaining an appointment in high school to the U.S. Naval Academy, making it through Marine Corps training, graduating from Annapolis, Maryland, becoming a Second Lieutenant, and raising her right hand to swear to defend the U.S. Constitution, honor bound. She vividly recounts her…

7 Most Favorable Reviews in July 2021

Plunder: Napoleon’s Theft of Veronese’s Feast by Cynthia Saltzman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Reviewed by Margaret Rodenberg. “Like Veronese’s Feast itself, Saltzman’s story is peopled with dozens of colorful characters. Vivant Denon, an art expert who advised Napoleon, stands out because a wing of the present-day Louvre bears his name.…

MahoganyBooks Begins a New Chapter

With summer in full swing, Anacostia-based MahoganyBooks is set to expand its colorful impact on DC’s literary scene with the opening of a second location, at National Harbor in Prince George’s County, Maryland, this Saturday, Aug. 7th, at noon. According to owners Ramunda and Derrick Young, the new outpost will…

WE Are Family

American motherhood is one of those timeless social minefields where traps are laid and navigated not just by mothers, but by political, economic, legal, and reproductive policies. But for lesbian mothers — particularly lesbian mothers of color — parenting collides with oppressions that liberal-equality narratives erase. Queering Family Trees: Race,…

5 Most Popular Posts: July 2021

Drew Gallagher’s review of How to Be a Man (Whatever that Means): Lessons in Modern Masculinity from a Questionable Source by James Breakwell (BenBella Books). “For most of history, the world has been ruled by men. On the rare occasions when women attained power, it did not end well. (See:…

Here Is the Forge

“Home,” goes the oft-quoted line by T.S. Eliot from his Four Quartets, “is where one starts from.” My starting point is the town of Burke, in Northern Virginia — a home that, in many respects, I never entirely left. In fact, several Sundays a month, my partner and I make…

Outdoor Book-Signing with Diane Zinna

Join Bards Alley for a covid-safe, outdoor signing with author Diane Zinna! She'll be on our patio signing copies of the newly released paperback edition of her book, The All-Night Sun. No RSVP required, but we recommend that you guarantee your copy with a preorder! As always, we ask that…

Mr. Don’t-Know-It-All

I’m not usually driven to distraction. I typically walk there on my own. But the anti-science bias becoming ingrained among some people in our culture is about to send me around the bend. These folks see elitists under their beds. I’m particularly perturbed because I’m reading a terrific book, The…

Megha Majumdar in Conversation with Danielle Evans

Loyalty is super psyched to celebrate the paperback release of A Burning with Megha Majumdar and Danielle Evans! This event will be held digitally via Crowdcast. Click here to register for the event with a donation of any amount of your choice or you can order the book below to…

Authors on Audio: Kerri K. Greenidge

In this week’s podcast, courtesy of Biographers International Organization, Sonja Williams and Kerri K. Greenidge discuss Greenidge’s award-winning Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter. The New York Times says the book “opens up a rich seam of inquiry that persists to this day, about the tug-of-war…

Nothing but the Truth!

“Nonfiction: n., Prose writing other than fiction, such as history, biography, and reference works, esp. that which is concerned with the narrative depiction of factual events.” – Oxford English Dictionary The problem is not brand new. In 1800, Parson Weems (known to his parents as Mason Locke Weems) produced a…

Children’s Book Roundup: July 2021

The three books below make something clear: Tiny beings can do mighty things! From embodying the power of friendship to embarking on cover-of-darkness escapades or just mastering new skills, there’s no limit to what the wee-est among us can accomplish! Lala's Words: A Story of Planting Kindness by Gracey Zhang…

Tuesday Night Open-Mic with Tatiana Figueroa

Born in Puerto Rico and raised in the mainland United States, Tatiana Figueroa Ramirez graduated with a B.A. in English literature from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and is a VONA Voices Alumna, having worked with award winning poets Willie Perdomo and Danez Smith. She recently completed the…

16 Summer Reads for Adults & Kids

Looking for your next great summertime story? Check out this list from David Bruce Smith, founder and president of the Grateful American™ Foundation! From Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None to Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby and E.L. Konigsburg’s From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Smith’s suggestions…

Giving and Taking (a Break)

“Are you doing another Noir at the Bar?” I’ve been asked that question A LOT this year, given how many virtual Noirs at the Bar I did in 2020 — about 14. And they were fun! I had the chance to showcase close to a hundred talented writers, and the…

Bedtime Stories: July 2021

J.M. Tyree: Pandemic-related travel restrictions (and, this year, a slowly healing broken ankle) have prevented me from visiting London for two years in a row now. So I’ve been traveling by book, ordering titles from imprints I admire from the U.K. and here at home. My summer-reading shelf contains mostly…

Savala Nolan in Conversation with Nadia Owusu

A powerful and provocative collection of essays that offers poignant reflections on living between society’s most charged, politicized, and intractably polar spaces — between Black and white, rich and poor, thin and fat. Savala Nolan is a writer, speaker, and lawyer. She is executive director of the Thelton E. Henderson…

An Interview with William R. Ferris

Bill Ferris grew up on a family farm near the Mississippi River. Blessed with a voracious academic appetite for folklore and the South, Ferris earned a doctorate at Penn, taught at Yale, co-founded the Center for Southern Folklore in Memphis, chaired the National Endowment for the Humanities, and taught at…

Bending the Narrative Arc

I recently abandoned a novel that I had been working on for almost a year. Abandoned manuscripts (along with finished ones that should never see the light of day) are a hazard of the novelist’s trade. There’s no shame in admitting defeat. Just as an equestrian learns from falling off…

Busting Up Camelot

Join us for Busting Up Camelot: A Sword Stone Table Celebration with editors Swapna Krishna & Jenn Northington in conversation with Ausma Zehanat Khan, Sarah MacLean, Jessica Plummer, and S. Zainab Williams! This event will be held digitally via Crowdcast. Click here to register for the event with a donation…

On Poetry: July 2021

Oftentimes, a theme organically emerges while reading multiple, seemingly disparate books. Poetry tends to lend itself to ruminating on particular concepts, as the mark of any poet worth his/her/their salt is the ability to grasp expansive questions of humanity and its place in the world and distill them into as…

12 Good Books to Pass Along

The Street by Ann Petry. “I should give away plenty of books on my shelves, or maybe focus on the ones that have spilled over onto the floor. However, I get a special lift from giving people Petry’s The Street, an eminently readable novel that is not read enough.” ~John…

Companionable Characters

For the first time in a year, I’ve been able to leave my circumscribed pandemic bubble in Falls Church, Virginia. I’ve been up to Brunswick, Maine, and to Acadia. I’ve been to Hingham, Massachusetts. And now, I’m writing this column from my sister’s Russian Hill apartment in San Francisco. For…

Authors on Audio: Vanessa R. Sasson

A professor of religious studies at Marianopolis College in Quebec, Vanessa R. Sasson is also the author of multiple academic works. Yasodhara and the Buddha, however, marks her debut as a novelist. Shambhala Times calls the story “a page-turner, an enchanting fairytale, [that] at the same time [is] grounded in…

Lucia

Lucia

Miranda Cowley Heller in Conversation with Adrienne Brodeur

A story of summer, secrets, love and lies: in the course of a singular day on Cape Cod, one woman must make a life-changing decision that has been brewing for decades. Set against the summer backwoods and beaches of Cape Cod, The Paper Palace unfolds over 24 hours and across…

Meet Dr. Tom Glenn

On Monday, July 12, 2021, Dr. Tom Glenn will be reading from his books at the Ellicott City 50+ Center. Glenn will focus on his two most recent books, Secretocracy, a novel about the Trump administration’s attack on an intelligence budgeteer, and Coming to Terms, a collection of short stories…

A Patriotic Pick: July 2021

Whether it’s via their tone, topic, or tenor, certain works just say “America.” Here is one such title, suggested by 2016 Grateful American™ Book Prize winner Chris Stevenson, author of The Drum of Destiny: Gabriel Cooper & the Road to Revolution: George Washington's Indispensable Men: Alexander Hamilton, Tench Tilghman, and…

Notes from the Beach

The ocean, despite our human penchant for mythology, is less a god and more like a cartoon theme song: methodically upbeat, relentless, and expansive. When we are away from its shores, we crave its comfort. When we are near it too long, familiarity breeds contempt. Or maybe the ocean has…

The 1455 Summer Festival Runs Next Week

The nonprofit 1455’s third-annual Summer Festival takes place virtually from July 15-17, 2021. This free and inclusive program will offer a wide array of content designed to showcase storytellers, celebrate creativity, build community, and encourage participants to pursue their own creative endeavors. Highlights of the three-day event include: More than…

Borrow That Book!

My library has recently begun to include on its check-out receipts the money saved by borrowing books instead of buying them. I stockpiled $14.55 when I scored A Month in Siena, a memoir by Hisham Matar, and $28 when I took home David Sinclair’s Lifespan: Why We Age — And…

Walk with JoAnn Hill

Join us in real life for a casual walking tour of sites from JoAnn Hill’s Secret Washington, DC: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure! JoAnn will lead the tour starting from the bookstore at 7 p.m.; we will head to the National Mall and back. Around the world,…

Authors on Audio: John Archibald

A reporter and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Birmingham News, John Archibald is also author of the recently released Shaking the Gates of Hell: A Search for Family and Truth in the Wake of the Civil Rights Revolution. The Washington Post called the book “a fascinating blend of family memoir…

7 Most Favorable Reviews in June 2021

Great Circle: A Novel by Maggie Shipstead (Knopf). Reviewed by Clarissa Harwood. “The opening pages make for a vertiginous reading experience because of the many characters, settings, and time periods introduced in quick succession. Shipstead is willing to risk losing the reader from the outset, mimicking in narrative form the…

Guided by Books

Almost exactly five years ago, I found myself in the emergency room overwhelmed with panic. Nothing specifically hurt; my brain just kept sending signals that something was wrong. As soon as the attending physician stepped into the room, I burst into uncontrollable sobs and couldn’t explain what was the matter.…

Redefining Success

Last September, my first book was published, an event that used to mark the beginning of a poet’s career but which is now often a mid- or even late-career accomplishment. While some are lucky enough to publish a first book right out of college or their MFA program, it’s not…

J’nell Ciesielski in Conversation with Greer Macallister

Join us online as we gather to celebrate the release of The Ice Swan with J’nell Ciesielski! Author and local favorite Greer Macallister (The Arctic Fury) will join J'Nell in conversation. Amid the violent last days of the glittering Russian monarchy, a princess on the run finds her heart where…

Romance Roundup: July 2021

After a slow and stressful start to 2021, I blinked, and suddenly it’s July. It seems like the publishing industry is back in full swing, at least on the book-reviewing side of things, and I’ve been happily reading all sorts of wonderful romance fiction lately. Here are a couple of…

5 Most Popular Posts: June 2021

Sally Shivnan’s review of The Murmur of Bees: A Novel by Sofía Segovia; translated by Simon Bruni (Amazon Crossing). “A magical-realism romp from Mexico, Sofía Segovia’s The Murmur of Bees — her first novel translated into English — offers a dizzying swirl of history, family lore, tragedy, redemption, and, of…

A Classic(s) Dilemma

One of the questions the New York Times Book Review has sometimes asked in its “By the Book” interviews with writers and celebrities is whether there’s a work they feel they should have read but never got around to. Sometimes the editors even qualify it by calling it a book…

Literary DC

Even throughout the pandemic, we were reminded of the resilience of the arts. Now, with the world beginning to open again, read how a few local nonprofits are contributing to the arts and literary scene in DC. 826DC Under the storefront of Tivoli’s Astounding Magic Supply Company in Columbia Heights,…

Authors on Audio: Jason L. Riley

A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and member of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, Jason L. Riley is also the author of multiple books, including Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders and Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed. His…

Yasmeen Abutaleb & Damian Paletta in Conversation with Ashley Parker

Since the day Donald Trump was elected, his critics warned that an unexpected crisis would test the former reality-television host — and they predicted that the president would prove unable to meet the moment. In 2020, that crisis came to pass, with the outcomes more devastating and consequential than anyone…

Children’s Book Roundup: June 2021

Summer is officially here! That means the days are longer, the nights are balmier, and the to-do lists are (hopefully) less insidious. In the spirit of lazy summertime fun, here are three new titles to keep the kids entertained the old-fashioned way. Go ahead and share all of them at…

The Composition of a Compilation

To say that my mother loves words is an understatement — although in this case, even the word “understatement” seems inadequate to describe the depth of her devotion to language. This is, after all, the woman who once spent several winter months in the Soviet Union studying Russian language and…

John Tresch in Conversation with Oliver Gaycken

The Ivy is thrilled to welcome John Tresch for a reading and discussion from his new book The Reason for the Darkness of the Night. John will be in conversation with the Director of the Comparative Literature Program at University of Maryland, Oliver Gaycken. This event will take place on…

Tome of the Unknown

It always appears somewhere, usually way in the back, the size of a stitch. Mary Collins Absolutely no one would ever bother to find it, except my mom, but millions have read my work. I’m a bestselling author just like the writer who penned the list of rules on the…

No Skimming Aloud

Sometimes, I flinch at the question, “What are you reading?” and draw a blank as though pop quizzed on independent study. Reading so much, I can fall prey to “in one eye and out the other.” I skim, distracted. Like listening while thinking of something else. Or, dangerously, driving a…

Authors on Audio: Julia Sweig

Award-winning author Julia Sweig, a former longtime senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has several books to her name, including Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know and Friendly Fire: Losing Friends and Making Enemies in the Anti-American Century. Her new book is Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain…

Meet Rio Cortez and Lauren Semmer

We are so excited to welcome Rio Cortez and Lauren Semmer for their phenomenal picture book, The ABCs of Black History! This event will be held digitally via Crowdcast and is free to attend, but an RSVP is required. You can order the book below from our website, and there…

Bedtime Stories: June 2021

Kevin McIlvoy: A hypothesis from neuroscientist Erik Hoel that is both very new and quite old proposes that our reading experiences might serve as “dream substitutions…they could perhaps even be designed to help delay the cognitive effects of sleep deprivation.” In a recent article in Science Daily, Hoel continues, “Dreams…

Beached Reads

A while back, I stood in a receiving line and patiently waited for Mary Gaitskill to sign my dog-eared copy of Two Girls, Fat and Thin. The novel, which came out in 1991, follows the story of Justine, a beautiful, lonely, sexually addicted young woman who meets Dorothy, who’s been…

Global Assault

Misconceptions and myths — or “frames” — around rape and sexual assault are a global phenomenon and have been around forever. Unfortunately, some of them were created and/or are perpetuated by news, entertainment, and social media. Writing my book, Hear #Metoo in India: News, Social Media, and Anti-Rape and Sexual…

Kai Bird in Conversation with David Ignatius

In these remarkable pages, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Bird traces the arc of Carter’s administration, from his aggressive domestic agenda to his controversial foreign policy record, taking readers inside the Oval Office and through Carter’s battles with both a political establishment and a Washington press corps that proved as adversarial as…

22 Great Books to Give (or Get) on Father’s Day

Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War by Bob Greene. “This is a compelling story about a high-profile member of the Greatest Generation — Paul Tibbets, who flew the Enola Gay and dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.” ~Talmage Boston Dad’s Maybe Book by Tim O’Brien.…

By Any Other Name

It’s clear that author Tracey S. Phillips is an expert in flexibility. Yes, she practices yoga, and yes, she’s a piano teacher. But she also writes novels across multiple genres and publishing platforms. Phillips’ first novel, Best Kept Secrets (BKS) — a police-procedural thriller featuring a gritty female detective —…

On Poetry: June 2021

As the full days of June fall hot upon us, we enter into ripening summer gardens and widening horizons with three collections that take us from the Southwestern desert through the Midwest and into the hollers of Kentucky. Each poet here invites readers inside a private domain or into a…

Authors on Audio: Julia Cooke

Journalist and travel writer Julia Cooke’s first book, The Other Side of Paradise: Life in the New Cuba, was published in 2014. Her second, which came out in March, is Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am. In a starred review, Kirkus called Cooke’s…

Matthew Norman in Conversation with Jessica Anya Blau

We are so excited to welcome Matthew Norman to our online platforms to celebrate the release of his latest novel, All Together Now! He will be joined by Jessica Anya Blau, author of Mary Jane. About All Together Now: At just 35, reclusive billionaire Robbie Malcolm is a renowned financial…

An Interview with Eman Quotah

Eman Quotah’s debut novel, Bride of the Sea, spans more than 40 years in the life of protagonist Hanadi, whose parents’ separation leads to a peripatetic childhood. While her father, back in Saudi Arabia, devotes much of his life to searching for his daughter even as he starts a second…

Dirt

Dirt

Virtual Book Launch: Tara Campbell

Free and open to the public! Celebrate the release of Tara Campbell's new book! The Writer’s Center welcomes Tara for a virtual reading and discussion of Cabinet of Wrath: A Doll Collection, in conversation with Kelly Ann Jacobson, author of Tink and Wendy and An Inventory of Abandoned Things, with…

A Patriotic Pick: June 2021

Whether it’s via their tone, topic, or tenor, certain works just say “America.” Here is one such title, suggested by 2018 Grateful American™ Book Prize winner L.M. Elliott, author of Suspect Red: The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War by Joanne B. Freeman. This…

As I Lay Trying

When William Faulkner contemplated compulsory racial integration at the public university in his native state, he promised he would “fight for Mississippi against the United States even if it meant going out into the street and shooting Negroes.” Later, he would claim he was drunk when he made that inflammatory…

A Pretty Good Guide

I received a magazine in the mail last week that I wasn’t expecting. Let me rephrase: I still expect to get other magazines. (You remember those, don’t you? I don’t mean the kind that mass murderers slam into their assault rifles, seemingly on a regular basis. I mean the kind…

Meet JoAnn Hill

Join us in real life for a casual walking tour of sites from JoAnn Hill’s Secret Washington, DC: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure! JoAnn will lead the tour starting from the bookstore at 7 p.m.; we will head to the National Mall and back. Around the world,…

Authors on Audio: Patricia Engel

Colombian American writer/professor Patricia Engel is author of the prize-winning novels Vida, It’s Not Love, It’s Just Paris, and The Veins of the Ocean. Her new novel, already a bestseller, is Infinite Country, which Buzzfeed calls “a piercing story of family, sacrifice, and Latin American immigration…an eye-opening account of what…

An Interview with Jessica Anya Blau

Mary Jane, the title character of Jessica Anya Blau’s latest novel, is a nice girl. She cooks with her mother, sings in the church choir, and knows the lyrics to practically every Broadway showtune ever written. At 14, Mary Jane is both a girl and an old woman. Until she…

Poetry Is Play

“I feel really stuck and like I only write crappy poems,” Auden, my poetry mentee, tells me. We’re talking about their writing, and I’m encouraging them to write outside of their normal habits and just play around. They insist the real problem is that they only write bad poems now,…

Melissa Scholes Young in Conversation with Jared Yates Sexton

The Hive is a story of class in America and the fates of four sisters and their family business in a politically divided Midwestern town. After the sudden death of their patriarch, the surprising details of succession in his will are revealed and the mother’s long-term affair surfaces as her…

Romance Roundup: June 2021

As I’m writing this, it’s Memorial Day Weekend, and I can honestly say I’ve never been happier for the (unofficial) start of summer! There’s a feeling of anticipation and hope in the air as we edge closer and closer to something like normal life again. I’m excited! I’m also excited…

7 Most Favorable Reviews in May 2021

The Lady of Zamalek: A Novel by Ashraf El-Ashmawi; translated by Peter Daniel (Hoopoe). Reviewed by Alice Stephens. “One does not have to know Egyptian history to be swept up into the thrilling, action-packed drama of the novel, for the characters are motivated by universal human emotions. Peter Daniel’s translation…

Ashley C. Ford in Conversation with Jeffrey Marsh

Loyalty is so so excited to celebrate the release of Somebody's Daughter with Ashley C. Ford and Jeffrey Marsh! This event will be held digitally via Crowdcast. Click here to register for the event with a donation of any amount of your choice or you can order the book below…

5 Most Popular Posts: May 2021

“The Logical Lincoln” by Talmage Boston. “Because no businessperson thought to manufacture bound tablets or legal pads during his lifetime, whenever Lincoln had an epiphany or wrestled with conflicting perspectives until he could pin them into a permanent hold, he often wrote his thoughts on scraps of paper that happened…

An Interview with John Edgar Wideman

The writer John Edgar Wideman turns 80 this month. The two-time winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award, among many other honors, is observing the occasion by releasing not one but two books this year, both collections of his stories. The first, already out, is You Made Me Love You: Selected Stories,…

Children’s Book Roundup: May 2021

It’s the last day of May, so it’s almost the last day of school, too! But summertime doesn’t have to mean an end to learning; it just means learning can be done purely for its own sake now — with no grades attached. And if it’s fun and engaging? All…

The Unimportance of Being Earnest

I enjoy satire, though not quite as much as I used to. A while ago, a close friend (in conjunction with an essay I read by David Foster Wallace) challenged me to complicate my relationship with the sardonic. “Why is it so funny to look down on people?” this friend…

Sasha Issenberg in Conversation with Amy Walter

On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state bans on gay marriage were unconstitutional, making same-sex unions legal across the United States. But the road to that momentous decision was much longer than many know. In this definitive account, Sasha Issenberg vividly guides us through same-sex marriage’s…

“A Book Is Forever”

When I brought my 90-year-old immigrant grandfather, a factory worker, a copy of my first book, he held it in his hands, kissed me, and told me, half in Yiddish, half in English, how proud he was. I was embarrassed, self-deprecating. “Grandpa, it’s just a book,” I said disingenuously, as…

The Re-Awakening

What we have endured during the last year has changed us. Our sense of connection and connectivity has been reshaped. We cannot reenter our communities as the same people we were before covid-19 and won’t return to the same world. The pandemic might also have changed the books we reach…

Authors on Audio: Jayne Zanglein

In this week’s podcast, courtesy of Biographers International Organization, Lisa Napoli and Jayne Zanglein discuss Zanglein’s The Girl Explorers: The Untold Story of the Globetrotting Women Who Trekked, Flew, and Fought Their Way Around the World. It’s a book in which, says Publishers Weekly, the author “makes a strong case…

May Sci-Fi/Fantasy Book Club

Old Town Books' Sci Fi and Fantasy Book Club is free and open to the public. While buying the book at Old Town Books is not required to attend, we would greatly appreciate it to help keep our free literary programming sustainable! You can purchase a copy of The Galaxy,…

An Interview with Patrick K. O’Donnell

I've been reading military/combat historian Patrick K. O’Donnell’s books for a number of years. He had me hooked with Washington's Immortals: The Untold Story of an Elite Regiment Who Changed the Course of the Revolution (2016), about the Maryland Continental Line during the War of Independence. And, in 2018, The…

Joy Harjo in Conversation with Deborah A. Miranda & Eric Gansworth

Joy Harjo, the first Native poet to serve as U.S. Poet Laureate, has championed the voices of Native peoples past and present. Her signature laureate project gathers the work of contemporary Native poets into a national, fully digital map of story, sound, and space, celebrating their vital and unequivocal contributions…

Bedtime Stories: May 2021

Ethel Rohan: I recently dreamed that books overtook my house and ousted my family and me. We four stood on the sidewalk across the road from our sunshine-yellow home — shivering in the moonless night, clutching the front of our bathrobes, and watching the property crumble like it was on…

The Art of Friendship

After a year, I’ve returned to a Sunday night ritual of watching sci-fi shows and cooking dinner with a group of dear friends. One of them dubbed it “Sci-Fi and Supper,” a name charming, simple, and enduring. Before the pandemic, this was a sustaining bit of community for me, a…

Authors on Audio: Ronald C. White

Historian Ronald C. White is the New York Times bestselling author of A. Lincoln: A Biography and American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant, among other titles. His new book is Lincoln in Private: What His Most Personal Reflections Tell Us About Our Greatest President, which the Wall Street…

Lit Out Loud: Jonny Sun and Michelle Zauner

East City Bookshop welcomes Jonny Sun with his new book, Goodbye, Again, and musician and author Michelle Zauner with her new book, Crying in H Mart. **Signed copies of the book are available!! All preorders and books ordered at the event will be signed. We will have a limited supply…

Mission Accomplished!

After the heartbreaking but necessary decision to cancel last year, everyone at the Independent was determined that the 2021 Washington Writers Conference would go on, one way or the other. As it turned out, the only way was virtual. Understanding that many of us are suffering from Zoom fatigue after…

An Interview with Peter Henriques

A professor emeritus of history at George Mason University and frequent lecturer on the Founding era, Peter Henriques has written two earlier books about our first president: The Death of George Washington: He Died as He Lived and Realistic Visionary: A Portrait of George Washington. His most recent book, First…

A Virtual Success

I first started the LIT on H St. Book Club with a fellow DC Bookstagrammer. The idea of it popped up during a conversation with Solid State Books’ (SSB) then events director. As a new bookstore, SSB was interested in reinvigorating the local literary scene, so they reached out to…

A Patriotic Pick: May 2021

Whether it’s via their tone, topic, or tenor, certain works just say “America.” Here is one such title, suggested by Grateful American™ Book Prize judge Dr. Douglas Bradburn, president and CEO of George Washington’s Mount Vernon: Give Me Liberty: A History of America's Exceptional Idea by Richard Brookhiser. By exploring…

A Fighter for Faith

A Gallup Poll recently reported that church membership in America declined from 70 percent in 1999 to 47 percent in 2020, mainly because only 36 percent of millennials attend church, and the number of those citing no religious preference increased 13 percent. With the unfortunate but real progression of some…

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