D.C.-Area Readings

Despite the loss of numerous local bookstores in recent years, there are still plenty of opportunities to see authors in person in the D.C. area.

Many but not all events are free. I encourage you to contact the venue regarding admission charges, or to confirm that the event is happening; I draw information for these listings from venue websites, which may be inaccurate. Contact info for venues that regularly host events is at the bottom of the page.

These listings are by no means complete. The D.C. area has countless think tanks that often host authors; I include some of those events here as I come across them, but the weekly DC Linktank newsletter is a great resource for fuller listings. The literary journal Beltway Poetry Quarterly maintains an excellent page with updates on local reading series, with a special focus on (as you might guess) area poets.

If you’re an author coming to town, or if you’re affiliated with a bookstore or other venue hosting a reading and you’d like to be included here, please drop me a line. The listings are updated every Saturday.

May 18
Richard Blanco, City of a Hundred Fires; Dan Vera, Speaking Wiri Wiri (Writer’s Center)
Marcia Coyle, The Roberts Court: The Struggle for the Constitution (Politics & Prose)
Gail Godwin, Flora (Politics & Prose)
Kathryn O’Sullivan, Foal Play (Barnes & Noble Bethesda)
Felecia Scott, The LP Collection: Lessons and Praise (Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library)
Kenneth Walsh, Prisoners of the White House (Newseum)
Alexander Wohl, Father, Son, and Constitution (Politics & Prose)

May 19
Melvin Goodman, National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism (Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington)
Phyllis Theroux, The Good Bishop (Politics & Prose)

May 20
Jennifer Armstrong, Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted (National Archives)
Ru Freeman, On Sal Mal Lane (Politics & Prose)
Steven E. Harris, Communism on Tomorrow Street: Mass Housing and Everyday Life After Stalin (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars)
Steve Hayes, Light on Dark Water (One More Page Books)
Olympia Snowe, Fighting for Common Ground: How We Can Fix the Stalemate in Congress (Politics & Prose)

May 21
Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher: From Grantham to the Falklands (Politics & Prose)
Matthew Olshan and Sophie Blackall, The Mighty Lalouche (Politics & Prose)
Paul Theroux, The Last Train to Zona Verde: My Ultimate African Safari (Politics & Prose)

May 22
Rick Atkinson, The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944–1945 (National Archives)
Jessica Day George, Wednesdays in the Tower (Politics & Prose, Barnes & Noble Bethesda)
Sue Halpern, A Dog Walks Into a Nursing Home: Lessons in the Good Life From an Unlikely Teacher (Politics & Prose)
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (Sixth & I Historic Synagogue)
Tobie Meyer-Fong, What Remains: Coming to Terms with Civil War in 19th Century China (Library of Congress)
Virginia Pye, River of Dust (One More Page Books)

May 23
Emma Brockes, She Left Me the Gun: My Mother’s Life Before Me (Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital)
Alyscia Cunningham, Feminine Transitions (Woman’s National Democratic Club)
Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed (Sixth & I Historic Synagogue)
Kathryn O’Sullivan, Foal Play (One More Page Books)
Eliot Schrefer, Endangered (Politics & Prose)

May 24
Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman, FDR and the Jews (Politics & Prose)
Ken Kalfus, Equilateral (Politics & Prose)

May 28
Andy Sharpless, The Perfect Protein: The Fish Lover’s Guide to Saving the Oceans and Feeding the World (Busboys & Poets 5th & K)

May 29
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah (Politics & Prose)
Mike Canning, Hollywood on the Potomac (Francis A. Gregory Neighborhood Library, 3660 Alabama Avenue SE, 202-698-6373)

May 30
David R. Gillham, City of Women (One More Page Books)
Ralph Nader, Told You So: The Big Book of Weekly Columns (Politics & Prose)
Naomi Schaefer Riley, ‘Til Faith Do Us Part: How Interfaith Marriage Is Transforming America (Sixth & I Historic Synagogue)

May 31
Scott C. Johnson, The Wolf and the Watchman: A Father, a Son, and the CIA (Politics & Prose)

June 1
Gary Anthes, The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal; Emily Anthes, Frankenstein’s Cat: Cuddling Up to Biotech’s Brave New Beasts (One More Page Books)
Peter Carlson, Junius and Albert’s Adventures in the Confederacy: A Civil War Odyssey (Politics & Prose)
Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy, Whitey Bulger: America’s Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice (Newseum)
Michael Levi, The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America’s Future (Politics & Prose)
Cate Lineberry, The Secret Rescue: An Untold Story of American Nurses and Medics Behind Nazi Lines (Politics & Prose)
Thomas Mallon, Watergate (National Portrait Gallery)

June 2
Clarence Brown, Needs; Elizabeth Huergo, The Death of Fidel Perez (Writer’s Center)
Allen C. Guelzo, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (Politics & Prose)
Sidney Schwarz, Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Future (Politics & Prose)

June 3
Joseph S. Nye, Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era (Politics & Prose)

June 4
Sarah Dessen, The Moon and More (Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library)
Jim Gaffigan, Dad Is Fat (Sixth & I Historic Synagogue)
Melissa Mohr, Holy Shit: A Brief History of Swearing (Politics & Prose)

June 5
A X. Ahmad, The Caretaker (Politics & Prose)
Jeffery Deaver, The Kill Room (Barnes & Noble Tysons Corner)
Jeff Shaara, A Chain of Thunder (Smithsonian Associates)

June 6
Daniel James Brown, The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics (Politics & Prose)
Jen Lancaster, The Tao of Martha: My Year of LIVING; Or, Why I’m Never Getting All That Glitter Off of the Dog (Barnes & Noble Bethesda)
Andrea Pitzer, The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov (Smithsonian Associates)

June 7
Steve Vogel, Through the Perilous Fight: Six Weeks That Saved the Nation (Politics & Prose)

June 8
Gary Anthes, The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (Politics & Prose)
Elliott Holt, You Are One of Them (Politics & Prose)
Stephen Harding, The Last Battle: When U.S. and German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe (Barnes & Noble Alexandria)
Ken Ludwig, How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare (Folger Shakespeare Library)

June 9
Suzanne Cleary, Trick Pear; Karen Sagstetter, The Thing with Willie: Stories of Two Families (Writer’s Center)
Kerry L. Malawista, Therapist in Mourning: From the Faraway Nearby (Politics & Prose)
Kenneth T. Walsh, Prisoners of the White House: The Isolation of America’s Presidents and the Crisis of Leadership (Politics & Prose)

June 10
Walter Mosley, Little Green: An Easy Rawlins Mystery (Politics & Prose)

June 11
Todd Gray and Ellen Kassoff Gray, The New Jewish Table (Washington DC Jewish Community Center)
Marc Maron, Attempting Normal (Sixth & I Historic Synagogue)
Lionel Shriver, Big Brother (Politics & Prose)

June 12
Margalit Fox, The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code (Smithsonian Associates)
Abraham H. Foxman and Christopher Wolf, Viral Hate: Containing Its Spread on the Internet (Politics & Prose)
Jeannette Walls, The Silver Star (Sixth & I Historic Synagogue)

June 13
Jonathan Lyons, The Society for Useful Knowledge: How Benjamin Franklin and Friends Brought the Enlightenment to America (Politics & Prose)
Susan Schorn, Smile at Strangers: And Other Lessons in the Art of Living Fearlessly (Comet Ping Pong, 5037 Connecticut Avenue NW, via Politics & Prose)

June 14
Martha Grimes and Ken Grimes, Double Double: A Dual Memoir of Alcoholism (Politics & Prose)

June 15
Marjorie Heins, Priests of Our Democracy: The Supreme Court, Academic Freedom, and the Anti-Communist Purge (Politics & Prose)
Drew Magary, Someone Could Get Hurt: A Memoir of Twenty-First-Century Parenthood (Politics & Prose)

June 16
Sean Enright, Nearly True: Selected Poems 1990-2012; Bernadette Geyer, The Scabbard of Her Throat (Writer’s Center)
Will Schwalbe, The End of Your Life Book Club (Politics & Prose)

June 17
George Packer, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (Politics & Prose)

June 18
Elissa Altman, Poor Man’s Feast (Sixth & I Historic Synagogue)
Joseph J. Ellis, Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence (Politics & Prose)
Michael Pocalyko, The Navigator (Barnes & Noble Downtown)

June 19
Susan Allen, The Remarkable Ronald Reagan: Cowboy and Commander in Chief (Barnes & Noble Tysons Corner)
Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and Kathryn Bowers, Zoobiquity: The Astonishing Connection Between Human and Animal Health (Smithsonian Associates)

June 20
Daniel Bergner, What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire (Politics & Prose)

June 21
Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane (George Washington University Lisner Auditorium, via Politics & Prose)
Brendan I. Koerner, The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking (Politics & Prose)

June 22
Audrey Niffenegger, Raven Girl (Politics & Prose)

June 23
Mary Louise Kelly, Anonymous Sources (Politics & Prose)

June 24
Diana West, American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character (Politics & Prose)

June 25
Curtis Sittenfeld, Sisterland (Politics & Prose)

June 26
Anchee Min, The Cooked Seed: A Memoir (Politics & Prose)

June 29
A.X. Ahmad, The Caretaker; Rae Bryant, The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals; Alyson Foster, God Is an Astronaut; Dave Housley, If I Knew the Way, I Would Take You Home; Tyler Mills, Tongue Lyre; Glen Finland, Next Stop (Writer’s Center)
Roxana Robinson, Sparta (Politics & Prose)
Mason Williams, City of Ambition: FDR, Laguardia, and the Making of Modern New York (Politics & Prose)
Marion Winik, Highs in the Low Fifties: How I Stumbled Through the Joys of Single Living (Politics & Prose)

June 30
Courtney Angela Brkic, The First Rule of Swimming (Politics & Prose)
Harold Holzer, The Civil War in 50 Objects (Politics & Prose)

July 14
P.J. Hoover, Solstice (Barnes & Noble Tysons Corner)
Julie Wakeman-Linn, Chasing the Leopard Finding the Lion; Susi Wyss, The Civilized World; Glen Retief, The Jack Bank (Writer’s Center)

July 24
Daniel Silva, The English Girl (Sixth & I Historic Synagogue)

July 25
Daniel Silva, The English Girl (Barnes & Noble Bethesda)
Robert Wolke, What Einstein Kept Under His Hat: Secrets of Science in the Kitchen (Smithsonian Associates)

September 21
National Book Festival (National Mall)

September 22
National Book Festival (National Mall)

Venues:

Arlington Central Library
1015 North Quincy Street
Arlington, VA
703-228-5990

Shirlington Public Library
4200 Campbell Avenue
Arlington, VA
703-228-6545

Aspen Institute
1 Dupont Circle NW #700
Washington DC
202-736-5800

Arts Club of Washington
2017 I Street NW
Washington, DC
202-331-7282

Barnes & Noble Alexandria
3651 Jefferson Davis Highway
Alexandria, VA
703-299-9124

Barnes & Noble Arlington
2800 Clarendon Boulevard Suite 500
Arlington, VA
703-248-8244

Barnes & Noble Bethesda
4801 Bethesda Avenue
Bethesda, MD
301-986-1761

Barnes & Noble Bowie
15455 Emerald Way
Bowie, MD
301-809-1552

Barnes & Noble Downtown
555 12th Streeet NW
Washington, DC
202-347-0176

Barnes & Noble Fairfax
12193 Fair Lakes Promenade Drive
Fairfax, VA
703-278-0300

Barnes & Noble Gaithersburg
21 Grand Corner Avenue
Gaithersburg, MD
301-721-0860

Barnes & Noble Reston
1851 Fountain Drive
Reston, VA
703-437-9490

Barnes & Noble Rockville
12089 Rockville Pike
Rockville, MD
301-881-0237

Barnes & Noble Springfield
6646 Loisdale Road
Springfield, VA
703-971-5383

Barnes & Noble Tysons Corner
7851 L. Tysons Corner Center
McLean, VA
703-506-2937

Barnes & Noble Potomac Yard
3651 Jefferson Davis Highway
Alexandria, VA
703-299-9124

Barnes & Noble Seven Corners
6260 Seven Corners Center
Falls Church, VA
703-536-0774

Bridge Street Books
2814 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC
202-965-5200

Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC
202-797-6000

Busboys & Poets 14th & V (@busboysandpoets)
2021 14th Street NW
Washington, DC
202-387-7638

Busboys & Poets 5th & K
1025 5th Street NW
Washington, DC
202-789-2227

Busboys & Poets Hyattsville
5331 Baltimore Avenue, Suite 104
Hyattsville, MD
301-779-2787

Busboys & Poets Shirlington
4251 South Campbell Ave
Arlington, VA 22206
703-379-9756

Cato Institute
1000 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC
202-789-5229

Corcoran Gallery of Art
500 17th Street NW
Washington, DC
202-639-1700

Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E Street NW
Washington, DC
202-994-6240

Folger Shakespeare Library
201 East Capitol Street SE
Washington, DC
202-544-4600

George Mason University
4400 University Drive
Fairfax, VA
703-993-1000

The George Washington University Lisner Auditorium
730 21st Street NW
Washington, DC
202-994-6800

The George Washington University Marvin Center
800 21st Street NW
Washington DC
202-994-7470

Heritage Foundation
214 Massachusetts Avenue NE
Washington, DC
202-546-4400

Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital (@hillcenterdc)
921 Pennsylvania Avenue SE
Washington, DC
202-549-4172

Historical Society of Washington, DC
801 K Street NW
Washington, DC
202-383-1800

Hooray for Books
1555 King Street, Suite 101
Alexandria, VA
703-548-4092

Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington (JCCGW)
6125 Montrose Road
Rockville, MD
301-348-3805

Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice (@TheLannanCenter)
Georgetown University
New North 306
Washington, DC
202-687-6294

Library of Congress (@librarycongress)
101 Independence Avenue SE
Washington, DC
202-707-8000

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library
901 G Street NW
Washington, DC
202-727-0321

National Air and Space Museum
Independence Avenue SW
Washington DC 20024
202-633-2214

National Archives (@archives_gov)
700 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC
866-272-6272

National Geographic Society
1600 M Street NW
Washington, DC
202-857-7700

National Portrait Gallery
F Street and 8th Street NW
Washington, DC
202-633-8300

National Press Club
529 14th Street NW
Washington, DC
202-662-7500

Newseum (@Newseum)
555 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC
888-639-7386

One More Page Books (@justonemorepage)
2200 N. Westmoreland Street
Arlington, VA
703-300-9746

Politics & Prose (@Politics_Prose)
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
Washington, DC
202-364-1919

Reiter’s Books
1900 G St. NW
Washington, DC
202-223-3327

Sixth & I Historic Synagogue (@sixthandi)
600 I St. NW
Washington, DC
202-408-3100

Smithsonian Associates
1100 Jefferson Drive SW
Washington, DC
202-633-3030

Washington DC Jewish Community Center (@16thstreetj)
1529 Sixteenth St. NW
Washington, DC
202-518-9400

Woman’s National Democratic Club
1526 New Hampshire Avenue NW
Washington, DC
202-232-7363

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center
One Woodrow Wilson Plaza
1300 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC
202-691-4000

The Writer’s Center (@writerscenter)
4508 Walsh Street
Bethesda, MD
301-654-8664