Friday, November 20, 2015

Spotlight on Literary Events: November 20-26



Jesse Eisenberg - Bream Gives Me Hiccups
Friday, November 20th at 7 pm
Politics & Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
Washington, D.C. 20008

Jesse Eisenberg now adds a lively collection of short fiction to his many accomplishments, which include writing and acting in play, publishing in The New Yorker, and being nominated for an Academy Award for his role in The Social Network. As likely to take place in a college dorm as in ancient Pompeii, the stories feature a diverse cast of characters and their miscommunications, from Alexander Graham Bell frustrated in reaching someone by phone, to a couple whose email exchange is hijacked by a relative obsessed with Bosnia. Free admission.

LIVE! From Busboys Talent Showcase Open Mic hosted by Angie Head
Friday, November 20th from 10 pm to 12 am
Busboys and Poets (Hyattsville location)
5331 Baltimore Ave
Hyattsville, MD 20781

LIVE! from Busboys is an open mic talent showcase that offers a platform for all performers, not just poets. Whether you are a musician, comedian, dancer, actor, magician or any other type of performer, we want to see what you got! Come out and showcase your talents! $5 cover.

Serwa Kenyetta Agyeman - Rebirth of Me: Embracing the Journey
Saturday, November 21st from 9 am to 11 am
Busboys and Poets (Hyattsville location)
5331 Baltimore Ave
Hyattsville, MD 20781
http://busboysandpoets.com/events/2015/11/21

Serwa Kenyetta knows that many women struggle with self-esteem. Sometimes knowing there are others who share your struggle gives you the encouragement to press on. Rebirth of Me: Embracing the Journey is the beginning of a new chapter in her life; committed to the motivating and providing developmental tools to assist young women to become all that they desire to be. Free admission.

Tanya Golash-Boza - Deported: Policing Immigrants, Disposable Labor and Global Capitalism
Saturday, November 21st at 1 pm
Politics & Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
Washington, D.C. 20008

Since 1997, the U.S. has deported five million people—double the number prior to 1996. The statistics speak for themselves—almost. The individuals behind these numbers have real lives and real stories, and in her fifth book, Tanya Golash-Boza presents details of nearly 150 deportees, the vast majority of them Latin American and Caribbean men. From this basic profile, Golash-Boza explores the wider socio-economic conditions at work, from race and employment status to a criminal justice system whose only way out for immigrants is deportation. Golash-Boza is an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Merced, author of Immigration Nation, and a contributor to media outlets including Al Jazeera and The Nation. Free admission.

Claire Vaye Watkins – Gold Fame Citrus
Saturday, November 21st at 3:30 pm
Politics & Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
Washington, D.C. 20008

Named one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Best Writers Under 35, Claire Vaye Watkins made a dazzling debut with the stories of Battleborn, which won the Story Prize and appeared on numerous Best of the Year lists. Her first novel is a vivid, gritty love story set in a drought-stricken southern California of the near future. While most residents of the Central Valley relocate to government camps, Luz and Ray refuse to be corralled; survivors, they rely on instinct, looting, and any means necessary to get by. Watkins will be in conversation with Annie McGreevy, author of the novella Ciao Suerte, and a senior lecturer at Ohio State. Free admission.

Youth Open Mic presented by Busboys and Poets
Saturday, November 21st from 5 pm to 7 pm
Busboys and Poets (5th and K location)
1025 5th St NW
Washington, DC 20001

Youth-focused and youth-led, Youth Open Mic is a monthly series that features student poets, singers, musicians and actors from the DC/Maryland/Virginia area. Middle school and high school students are encouraged to come share their art in our supportive, progressive, artistic atmosphere. $5 cover.

James Rosen - Cheney One On One: Candid Conversations with America's Most Controversial Statesman
Saturday, November 21st at 7 pm
Politics & Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
Washington, D.C. 20008
http://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/james-rosen-cheney-one-one-candid-conversations-americas-most-controversial-statesman

The Washington correspondent for Fox News, Rosen is an experienced journalist who has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic Monthly. He is a contributing editor at Playboy, for which he conducted an extensive series of interviews with Dick Cheney. Presented here in their entirety, these wide-ranging conversations present the former vice president’s views on domestic politics, foreign affairs, and much more. Free admission.

Victoria McKernan - Shackleton's Stowaway
Monday, November 21st at 7 pm
Upshur Street Books
827 Upshur St NW
Washington, DC 20011

This is the incredible tale of Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated journey attempting to sail across the Antarctic one century ago, as told through by an 18-year-old stowaway. On October 26, 1914, Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance set sail from Buenos Aires in pursuit of the last unclaimed prize in exploration: the crossing of the Antarctic continent. Within months, the Endurance, trapped and crushed by ice, sank. And even Perce, the youngest member of the stranded crew, knew there was no hope of rescue. If the men were to survive in the most hostile place on earth, they would have to do it on their own. Victoria McKernan deftly weaves the hard-to-fathom facts of this famous voyage into an epic, edge-of-your-seat survival novel. Free admission.

Nerds! Triva Night
Friday, November 21st at 8 pm
Politics & Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
Washington, D.C. 20008

How many rings were forged by Sauron in J.R.R. Tolkein’s Middle Earth? Excluding monuments, what is the tallest building in D.C.? Put on your thinking cap, grab a drink, and join us for our monthly trivia night! Enjoy the grilled cheese sandwich special at the P&P Coffehouse from 7 to 8 p.m., grab a latte (with a lid!) and trek upstairs to four rounds of mind-bending trivia questions. Prizes will be awarded. Trivia night is open to all ages. Free admission.

Michelle Chan Brown - Motherland with Wolves & Patricia Schultheis - St. Bart’s Way
Sunday, November 22nd at 1 pm
Politics & Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
Washington, D.C. 20008

Washington Writers Publishing House sponsors annual prizes in poetry and fiction for area writers. The 2015 Jean Feldman Award goes to Michelle Chan Brown, editor of Drunken Boat, for her second full-length collection of poems. Brown is also the author of Double Agent, honored with the 2012 Kore First Book Award, and the chapbook The Clever Decoys. Patricia Schultheis has won the WWPH fiction prize for her collection of stories. A finalist for the 2008 Flannery O’Connor Award, Schultheis has published short fiction in a wide range of literary journals; she’s also a voting member of the National Book Critics Circle and has served on the editorial boards of The Baltimore Review and Narrative magazine. Free admission.

Elisavietta Ritchie and Richard Harteis
Sunday, November 22nd from 2 pm to 4 pm
The Writer's Center
4508 Walsh Street
Bethesda, MD 20815

Join us for New Beginnings, a Literary Afternoon with debut novelist Johnes Ruta, poets Tom Kirlin, Elisavietta Ritchie, Grace Cavalieri and Daniel Levanti. We'll celebrate new publications and the 2015 William Meredith Award for Poetry given to Andrew Oerke. Visual artists Deborah Curtis, Katia Jirankova and Nancy Frankel will exhibit their paintings and sculptures. The program is hosted by William Meredith Foundation President Harteis and sponsored by the William Meredith Foundation and Poets Choice. Free admission.

Victoria Kelly - When the Men Go Off To War & Sue Ellen Thompson – They
Sunday, November 22nd at 5 pm
Politics & Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
Washington, D.C. 20008

Victoria Kelly is a widely published poet whose work was selected for The Best American Poetry 2013. A U.S. Mitchell Scholar at Trinity College, Dublin and a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, Kelly is a military spouse, and her first full collection combines the emotional intensity of lyric with the momentum of narrative to convey the spectrum of hope, fear, frustration, and, most of all, the abiding love, that is the experience of a woman whose husband is at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Editor of The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, a collection used in many college courses, Sue Ellen Thompson has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and has won the Samuel French Morse Prize, the Pablo Neruda Prize, and several others; in 2010 the Maryland Library Association selected her as winner of its prestigious Maryland Author Award. Her fifth book of poetry has the immediacy of headlines and the narrative depth of a novel as Thompson evokes the experience of three generations of a family coping in their different ways with the gender transition of a child. Free admission.

John Vartoukian - The Adventure Sarkis and Hagop
Sunday, November 22nd from 5 pm to 6:30 pm
Busboys and Poets (Hyattsville location)
5331 Baltimore Ave
Hyattsville, MD 20781

One sunny, Sunday morning Sarkis Levonian, a 50-year-old tailor heads toward the neighborhood newsstand to buy the Sunday paper as he has for the past 18 years. This time, however, he encounters 10 year-old Jack Silveri, a neighborhood friend of the family, and the Sunday papers would just have to wait. In the spirit of adventure our two unlikely heroes set out for parts unknown. The story covers a period of almost four days until local authorities and family members are able to track down the two runaways. The confrontational ending involving Sarkis, his wife, the boy's parents and the local police, pits the world of innocence and wonder against the world of adult responsibility." Free admission.

Sunday, November 22nd at 6:30 pm
Busboys and Poets (14th & V location)
2021 14th St, NW
Washington, D.C. 20009

Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran showed how essential literature is to life in a repressive culture. Does fiction play a similar role in a free society? Arguing passionately that it does, Nafisi, a past visiting fellow at Hopkins SAIS and the author of Things I’ve Been Silent About, combines memoir with close readings of works by Twain, McCullers, and Sinclair Lewis to demonstrate fiction’s power to keep minds open and resistant to conformity. Join us for the paperback release of this tribute to great books. Free admission.

Monday, November 23rd at 6:30 pm
Busboys and Poets (14th & V location)
2021 14th St, NW
Washington, D.C. 20009

The stomping ground of poet Frank O’Hara, radical Emma Goldman, legendary band The Velvet Underground, and myriad other leaders, cultural figures, and vivid personalities, St. Marks Place has fostered one avant-garde after another. Calhoun, a native of this distinctive slice of Manhattan, is a journalist who has contributed to The New York Times Magazine, The New York Post, and other publications; for this vivid history of a legendary neighborhood she has interviewed a wide range of St. Marks’s denizens, combed archives, and gathered telling images and many stories.
From the end of the Civil War through the 1940s, Beale Street was the center of cultural, political, and criminal life in Memphis. Lauterbach, whose first book, The Chitlin’ Circuit, chronicled the rise of rock-and-roll as a history of black juke joints, tells Beale Street’s lively story by following some of its most colorful characters, including W.C. Handy, “Father of the Blues,” the political boss, E.H. Crump, activist and journalist Ida B. Wells, and Robert Church, the South’s first black millionaire. Free admission.

An Evening of Independent Fiction with Curbside Splendor
Monday, November 23rd 6:30 pm
Kramerbooks
1517 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036

Curbside Splendor was conceived as a punk rock band in the early 1990s in an apartment in Urbana, Illinois. The band never really went anywhere, but Curbside was re-founded as an independent press in the fall of 2009. They publish fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry that celebrate art, urban life, and extraordinary voices. Three authors will read from their work. Free admission.

Alexander Wolff - The Audacity of Hoop: Basketball and the Age of Obama
Monday, November 23rd at 7 pm
Politics & Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
Washington, D.C. 20008

In this unique analysis of Obama’s presidency, Alexander Wolff, a Sports Illustrated senior writer and the author of Big Game, Small World, studies how the Chief Executive plays basketball. Wolff uses Obama’s on-court technique as a key to understanding how he leads the nation. With photos of the president in pick-up games, a detailed “Baracketology,” and timelines showing the parallel developments in Obama’s political and athletic styles, this book is a tribute to how sports can build character. Free admission.

Mary-Louise Parker – Dear Mr. You
Monday, November 23rd at 7 pm
Sixth and I Historic Synagogue
600 I St NW
Washington, DC 20001

Dear Mr. You renders the singular arc of a woman’s life through letters Mary-Louise Parker composes to the men, real and hypothetical, who have informed the person she is today. The literary debut from the award-winning actress is as unconventional in its form as in its telling. Parker writes to a co-worker in a loincloth at her co-op; to a taxi driver she screamed at during a dark period; to the orderly assigned to her after the birth of her son; to the grandfather she never knew; to the uncle of the infant daughter she adopted, and the future man who will love that daughter. Her letters reveal the complexity and power to be found in relationships both loving and fraught. Parker’s writing has appeared in Esquire, The Riveter, Bust, and The Bullet. In conversation with David Plotz. CEO of Atlas Obscura and former Editor of Slate. Free admission. Book signing to follow.

1 ticket: $18; 1 ticket + 1 book: $28; 2 tickets + 1 book: $35

Monday Night Open Mic Poetry
Monday, November 23rd from 8 pm to 10 pm

Busboys and Poets (Shirlington location)
4251 South Campbell Avenue
Arlington, VA 22206
http://busboysandpoets.com/events/2015/11/23

For two hours, audiences can expect a diverse chorus of voices and a vast array of professional spoken word performers, open mic rookies, musicians, and a different host every week. Expect to be moved, expect a packed house, expect the unexpected, but above all come with an open mind and ear. $5 cover.

Monday Night Open Mic hosted by Drew Law
Monday, November 23rd from 9 pm to 11 pm
Busboys and Poets (Brookland location)
625 Monroe St. NE
Washington, D.C. 20017 

For two hours, audiences can expect a diverse chorus of voices and a vast array of professional spoken word performers, open mic rookies, musicians, and a different host every week. Expect to be moved, expect a packed house, expect the unexpected, but above all come with an open mind and ear. $5 cover.

Making the Case: Critics on Literature
Tuesday, November 24th at 12 pm
Library of Congress
Thomas Jefferson Building (Whittall Pavilion – Ground Floor)
101 Independence Ave SE
Washington, DC 20540

The launch of a new series with the National Book Critics Circle, poet and critic Stephen Burt will give a lecture titled “The Poem Is You.” This event is free and open to the public. Book sales and signing to follow. Free admission.

David Black – Fast Shuffle
Tuesday, November 24th at 6:30 pm
Busboys and Poets (14th & V location)
2021 14th St, NW
Washington, D.C. 20009

For his third work of fiction, David Black has created a modern version of Don Quixote, the man who was so enchanted with tales of knights that he thought he was one. Black’s Quixote is Harry, who sells cars for a living but acts like he’s a 1940s private eye. When he claims to have discovered a cache of bank documents indicating foul play involving a woman who has disappeared, who can say whether he’s on to a real crime? Black will be in conversation with James Grady, author of Six Days of the Condor and Last Days of the Condor. Free admission.

Forrest Pritchard - Growing Tomorrow: A Farm-To-Table Journey in Photos and Recipes behind the Scenes with 18 Extraordinary Sustainable Farmers Who Are Changing the Way we Eat
Tuesday, November 24th at 6:30 pm
Busboys and Poets (Takoma location)
235 Carroll St. NW
Washington, D.C. 20012

Pritchard’s Gaining Ground told the spirited story of how he took over his family’s struggling farm. Now a full-time organic farmer, Pritchard regularly speaks, writes, and blogs on “I Support Farmers’ Markets,” about running Smith Meadows, one of the nation’s first sustainable, free-range enterprises. His new book travels throughout the country, celebrating the lives and work of eighteen people who have made invaluable contributions to this eco-friendly food movement; here are their visions, their challenges—their recipes. Free admission. 

David Baldacci – The Guilty
Tuesday, November 24th at 7 pm
Politics & Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
Washington, D.C. 20008

Starting with The Innocent, Will Robie staked his claim as one of the most coldly efficient professional killers any government could have on retainer. On his fourth international mission, however, Robie chokes. He can’t pull the trigger. To go forward, Robie must go back—back to the Mississippi town he escaped after high school. There he finds his estranged father accused of murder, and to resolve his own issues, he has to solve his father’s case. In this deft thriller, Baldacci tells a rich tale of psychological suspense. Free admission.

Gabe Klein – Start-Up City
Wednesday, November 24th at 7 pm
Upshur Street Books
827 Upshur St NW
Washington, DC 20011

Join the clever and delightful Gabe Klein, author of Start-Up City, for an exciting discussion of urban trends in business, transportation and more - including some happening now and some we may see in the near future. With the advent of self-driving vehicles and other technological shifts upon us, Gabe Klein asks how we can close the gap between the energized, aggressive world of start-ups and the complex bureaucracies struggling to change beyond a geologic time scale. From his experience as a food-truck entrepreneur to a ZipCar executive and a city transportation commissioner, Klein’s career has focused on bridging the public-private divide, finding and celebrating shared goals, and forging better cities with more nimble, consumer-oriented bureaucracies. This book is for anyone who wants to change the way we live in cities without waiting for the glacial pace of change in government.  Free admission.

Beltway Poetry Slam
Tuesday, November 24th from 8 pm to 10 pm
Busboys and Poets (Brookland location)
625 Monroe St. NE
Washington, D.C. 20017

Each open slam will be two rounds. Standard rules apply (3 minutes, own work, no props, etc). The first round will have a maximum of twelve poets and the order will be by random draw. The top eight poets from the first round will move on to the second round and the order will be high to low from the first round. The two poets with the highest cumulative scores will move on to semi-finals (see below). $5 cover.

Tuesday Night Open Mic Hosted by Drew Anderson
Tuesday, November 24th from 9 pm to 11 pm
Busboys and Poets (Takoma location)
235 Carroll St. NW
Washington, D.C. 20012

For two hours, audiences can expect a diverse chorus of voices and a vast array of professional spoken word performers, open mic rookies, musicians and a different host every week. Expect to be moved, expect a packed house, expect the unexpected, but above all come with an open mind and ear. $5 cover.

Tuesday Night Open Mic Hosted by Gowri K
Tuesday, November 24th from 9 pm to 11 pm
Busboys and Poets (14th & V location)
2021 14th St, NW
Washington, D.C. 20009

For two hours, audiences can expect a diverse chorus of voices and a vast array of professional spoken word performers, open mic rookies, musicians, and a different host every week. Expect to be moved, expect a packed house, expect the unexpected, but above all come with an open mind and ear. $5 cover.
 
Wednesday Night Open Mic Hosted By Dwayne B
Wednesday, November 25th from 9 pm to 11 pm
Busboys and Poets (5th and K location)
1025 5th St NW
Washington, DC 20001
                                                                                                             
For two hours, audiences can expect a diverse chorus of voices and a vast array of professional spoken word performers, open mic rookies, musicians, and a different host every week. Expect to be moved, expect a packed house, expect the unexpected, but above all come with an open mind and ear.
$5 cover.


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