We are excited to welcome two local short story authors as they launch new collections! Amber Sparks, author of AND I DO NOT FORGIVE YOU: STORIES AND OTHER REVENGES, and Art Taylor, author of THE BOY DETECTIVE & THE SUMMER OF '74 AND OTHER TALES OF SUSPENSE, will be in conversation with Tara Laskowski, author of ONE NIGHT GONE.

Books and brunch! Come do both with us.

Exciting fans of such writers as Kelly Link, Karen Russell, and Carmen Maria Machado with prose that shimmers and stings, Amber Sparks holds a singular role in the canon of the weird. Now, she reaches new, uncanny heights with And I Do Not Forgive You. She is the author of a previous collection, May We Shed These Human Bodies, and her fiction has appeared in American Short Fiction, The Collagist, and elsewhere. She lives in Washington, DC.

Kate Zambreno is the author of several books including Screen Tests, Heroines, Book of Mutter, and Green Girl. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, VQR, and elsewhere. A novel, Drifts, is forthcoming from Riverhead in May 2020. She teaches in the writing programs at Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College.

We’ve got a very special BURGER WEDNESDAY Tire Fire Readings for February, with our dear friends Amber Sparks, Tara Campbell, and Chelsea Graham.

Doors 7 // Reading 8

This month, we’ll be donating our $ to the Women’s Medical Fund, who protects and expands abortion access for low-income folks through direct service and advocacy. “We support those living in poverty who need abortion care today by providing counseling and emergency financial assistance. We support people in the future by working to expand and equalize access to abortion through lifting the insurance bans and eliminating other barriers.”

Accessibility Note: Reading is upstairs and non-bumper car seating is limited, and tends to be first-come, first-serve. If you need assistance or accommodations, please let us know.

Enjoy this event with our Burger Wednesday specials:
$4 Mom’s Beef Burgers & Mom’s Vegan Burgers
$2 Narragansett Lager Tall Boys
a special Burger of the Month
& half price drafts 5-7pm and 10-11pm

Join the Facebook Event and invite all your pals!

At this month's multigenre event, we're celebrating outstanding new work by Amber Sparks (And I Do Not Forgive You), Rye Curtis (Kingdomtide), Nicolette Polek (Imaginary Museums), Amanda Leduc (Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space), Marco Rafala (How Fires End), and Stacie Evans (The Rumpus, Jezebel). Join us for a provocative night of surreal short fiction, fairy tales reenvisioned through feminist and disablist lenses, fearless memoir, survival adventures, and more!

FREE ADMISSION, $5 beers + a free-to-enter raffle for the authors' amazing books!

Join us for the next installment of the Charlottesville Reading Series, featuring Amber Sparks and Nan Macmillan. This event will be free and open to the public.

Amber Sparks is the author of several short story collections, including The Unfinished World and Other Stories, and the upcoming I Do Not Forgive You (Liveright, 2020). Her essays and fiction can be found widely in print and online, in places like The Paris Review, NYMag, Granta, and Tin House.

The Charlottesville-based songwriter Nan Macmillan pushes at the borders of Americana, folk and indie rock with a timeless ease. She studied music and poetry writing at the University of Virginia, and went on to get her masters in music performance and production at Berklee College of Music in Valencia, Spain. She’s deeply rooted in her local music scene, hosting, performing, and collaborating in shows around town. Nan has been working with producer and friend Jay Foote on her debut EP, August and the In-Between, which is set to be released in late 2019. She plays from the heart, and her songs serve as reminders to listen, to feel, and to express with vivid color.

Join East City Bookshop and Andrea Kleine, author of Eden and Calf, for a book talk, Q&A, and signing. Andrea will be joined in conversation with Amber Sparks, author of The Unfinished World.

Rion Amilcar Scott, Amber Sparks, Ryan Bloom, and Erica Wright Four contributors to Tiny Crimes: Very Short Tales of Mystery & Murder gather for a conversation about reimagining the genre of crime writing. 

Linear narrative is fine for your Aunt Linda or your Grandma Dorothy. But you want to create stories that claw back, shoot off the page and reflect our fractured, post-modern world, no? Stories that don’t travel in a straight line so much as double back, skip ahead, disappear into the distance, then reappear, swearing the whole thing never happened. Stories, in other words, that do something entirely new on the page. So this is the class for you. We’ll listen to some hip-hop, do some talking, then do some weird writing exercises that will get you thinking about new ways to look at and deliver narrative in your stories. We’ll talk about the best tricks and tips for springboarding excellent non-linear fiction, and brainstorm some of our own. You’ll take home: a list of moves for non-linear fiction writing, a short piece of fractured writing that I’m positive you’ll want to keep working on, and some further recommended fiction reading and music listening, too.

I love Rion. He wrote Insurrections, one of the best books (IMHO) THE best book) of 2017. And now we're going to read together! Come see us, buy books, chat us up. It'll be great.

Join SmokeLong Quarterly and D.C.’s Noir at the Bar for an off-site AWP reading “Cold, Dark Flash,” an evening of noir flash fiction.

With readers:

Matt Bell
Tara Campbell
Rob Hart
W. Todd Kaneko
Jennifer Pashley
Amber Sparks
Art Taylor
and hosted by:
Tara Laskowski
E.A. Aymar

Music by DJ Alkimist

Books for sale, raffle prizes, music, and more! Hope to see you there.

Join us for an early evening of readings by Gabriel Blackwell, Rikki Ducornet, Robert Lopez, Carmen Maria Machado, Michael Martone, Martin Riker, and Amber Sparks! Hosted by John Madera.
 

For increasing numbers of writers, MFA programs are an entry to the publishing world. How does this trend affect writers without the degree? What kinds of nonacademic credentials can help all writers in their careers? How does one become part of a literary community? What are the attitudes towards writers who do not teach? This diverse panel discusses the increasing cross-pollination between writers with MFAs and writers with other academic degrees that create a stronger literary community.

Like many troubled adolescents, Diamond found solace in the movies. Now a sports editor at Rolling Stone, Diamond is still grateful to John Hughes’s Pretty in Pink for showing him that kids who were different could still be cool. Diamond’s alienation stemmed from a troubled home life with an abusive father and a mother who abandoned him; he later became clinically depressed and homeless, all the while drinking too much. But amid these bad decisions, Diamond struggled to pay homage to his favorite director by writing his biography. This account of his failed efforts to produce a book is by turns funny and moving as Diamond recalls his often plastered twenty-something self, his long days in coffee shops, and the sometimes outrageous lengths he went to gather facts.

Diamond will be in conversation with Amber Sparks, author of The Unfinished World and Other Stories.

To get everyone in the mood, P&P will be screening the Hughes classic Ferris Bueller's Day Off in the store from 6 p.m., finishing the movie after the event. Beer and wine will be for sale from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

This event is free to attend with no reservation required. Seating is available on a first come, first served basis. Click here for more information.

The Writer's Center will be teaming up with Barrelhouse for The DC Literary Pub Crawl. A collaborative effort between the two organizations, The DC Literary Pub Crawl was conceived as a way to bring contemporary and engaging literary voices directly into the community, to showcase and celebrate local literary artistry. The DC Literary Pub Crawl, which will take place at Walters Sports Bar, The Twisted Horn and Upshur Street Books, will feature nine talented literary voices and bring literature directly to the people, fostering a sense of artistic excellence and community. 

Join us from 4:00-7:00 to enjoy drink specials and a fun summer afternoon of literature and community. Tickets are $10.00 in advance and $15.00 on the day-of the event and will include admission to all three readings as well as drink specials at each venue.

To purchase tickets to the event, please click here. 

Amber Sparks, Jen Michalski and James Magruder read at the Pratt Free Library.

Upshur Street Books hosts Amber Sparks, Sam Lignon, Roy Kesey, and Robert Lopez for a Sunday night reading.

Reading and panel at the Baltimore City Lit Festival. Book signing to follow.