Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Spotlight on Literary Events: February 2017

2017 AWP Conference & Bookfair
Washington Convention Center 
& Washington Marriott Marquis
February 8 - 11, 2017
Celebrating AWP's 50th anniversary!

The AWP Conference & Bookfair is an essential annual destination for writers, teachers, students, editors, and publishers. Each year more than 12,000 attendees join our community for four days of insightful dialogue, networking, and unrivaled access to the organizations and opinion-makers that matter most in contemporary literature. The 2016 conference featured over 2,000 presenters and 550 readings, panels, and craft lectures. The bookfair hosted over 800 presses, journals, and literary organizations from around the world. AWP’s is now the largest literary conference in North America. Join us in Washington, DC, in 2017 to celebrate the best of what contemporary literature has to offer.

Visit the Writer's Center and Poet Lore at booth #234.


The Life of a Poet: Conversations with Ron Charles – Brenda Shaughnessy
The Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital
921 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE, Washington, DC 20003
Tuesday, February 7th, 7:00 pm

Join Ron Charles, The Washington Post Editor of Book World, for an in-depth discussion with poet Brenda Shaughnessy. The Life of a Poet series offers a rare opportunity to consider a writer’s entire career and explore the major events that have shaped their work. Readings from the work are interspersed throughout the conversation. A book signing will follow.

Brenda Shaughnessy earned a BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an MFA from Columbia University. She is the author of Interior with Sudden Joy (1999), Human Dark with Sugar (2008), winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, Our Andromeda (2012), and So Much Synth (2016). Her work has appeared in theYale Review, the Boston Review, McSweeney’s, and Best American Poetry, among other places. With C.J. Evans, she edited the anthology Satellite Convulsions: Poems from Tin House Magazine (2009).


East City Bookshop 
645 Pennsylvania Ave SE, Suite 100 Washington DC 20003
Friday, February 10th, 6:00 pm

OutWrite presents readings from four authors: Everett Maroon, Risa Denenberg, David Eye & Craig L. Gidney. Moderated by Joe Okonkwo. RSVP on Facebook, or email rsvp@eastcitybookshop.com. This event is free and open to the public.


Kelly Link - Get in Trouble: Stories & Juan Martinez - Best Worst American: Stories
Saturday, February 11th, 6:00 pm
Politics and Prose
5015 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20008

Link’s hauntingly original work has won her legions of fans—including Michael Chabon and Neil Gaiman. Her latest collection of short fiction features nine stories made of wonder and magic. 

An assistant professor at Northwestern University, Martinez was born in Colombia and has published his fiction in literary journals including TriQuarterly and McSweeney’s. In his first collection he paints a world that’s slightly askew, with characters flummoxed not by the strange but by the ordinary. 



Sligo Journal Reading
Sunday, February 12th, 2:00 pm
The Writers' Center
4508 Walsh St., Chevy Chase, MD 20815

Join editor Robert Giron (recently selected as one of the Heroes Latinos LGBTQ, part of the Latino LGBT History Proeject) and writers published in The Sligo Journal, a publication of Montgomery College. The reading will be followed by a reception. 



Then Come Back: A Celebration Of Pablo Neruda
Tuesday, February 14th, 7:30 pm
Folger Shakespeare Library
201 E Capitol St SE, Washington, DC 20003

Reading Neruda’s poems and poems of their own inspired by him are: award-winning poet, editor, and translator Forrest Gander and poet Javier Zamora. Gander's most recent poetry collection is Core Samples from the World.  Zamora was born in El Salvador and migrated to the US; his first collection of poetry is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press. The post–reading conversation will be moderated by poet and translator Carlos Parada Ayala. 


The Deaf Poets Society Reading
Sunday, February 26th, 2:00 pm
The Writers' Center
4508 Walsh St., Chevy Chase, MD 20815

We’re pleased to feature poets published in the Deaf Poets Society, a recently launched on-line journal. Editor Sarah Katz will be joined by Gregory Luce, Jen Stein, Camisha Jones, Carrie Addington, and Isis Nelson. The reading will be followed by a reception.



Literary Trivia 
Monday, February 27th, 6:30 pm
Petworth Citizen

829 Upshur Street, NW Washington, DC 20011

Join The Writer's Center as we bring literary trivia to Petworth Citizen.  Teams of one to four will have an opportunity to show off their book smarts with four rounds of literary questions. Monday nights are all-night happy hour at the bar, so don't miss out, The contest runs from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.