|
|
|
Upcoming Events All store events are virtual until further notice. 
April True Story! Nonfiction Book Club - Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart
Sunday April 18, 2021 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM
RSVP HERE Old Town Books True Story! Nonfiction Book Club is free and open to the public. Note that you're planning to attend book club at check out to receive 10% off this month's pick. While buying the book at OTB is not required to attend, we would greatly appreciate it to help keep our free literary programming sustainable! Purchase A Fiery Heart here!About the Book Charlotte Brontë famously lived her entire life in an isolated parsonage on a remote English moor with a demanding father and with siblings whose astonishing creativity was a closely held secret. The genius of Claire Harman’s biography is that it transcends these melancholy facts to reveal a woman for whom duty and piety gave way to quiet rebellion and fierce ambition. Drawing on letters unavailable to previous biographers, Harman depicts Charlotte’s inner life with absorbing intensity. Brontë’s blazingly intelligent female characters brimming with hidden passions transformed English literature, even as a heartrending series of personal losses followed the author’s literary success. Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart is a groundbreaking view of the beloved writer as a young woman ahead of her time. 
April Sci-Fi/Fantasy Book Club: We Could Be Heroes
Friday April 23, 2021 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM
RSVP HERE 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 We Could Be Heroes with your Eventbrite ticket or on Old Town Books' website (note that you're planning to attend book club to receive 10% off the book)! Purchase the book here!About the Book An extraordinary and emotional adventure about unlikely friends and the power of choosing who you want to be.
Jamie woke up in an empty apartment with no memory and only a few clues to his identity, but with the ability to read and erase other people’s memories—a power he uses to hold up banks to buy coffee, cat food and books. Zoe is also searching for her past, and using her abilities of speed and strength…to deliver fast food. And she’ll occasionally put on a cool suit and beat up bad guys, if she feels like it. When the archrivals meet in a memory-loss support group, they realize the only way to reveal their hidden pasts might be through each other. As they uncover an ongoing threat, suddenly much more is at stake than their fragile friendship. With countless people at risk, Zoe and Jamie will have to recognize that sometimes being a hero starts with trusting someone else—and yourself. "Incredibly fun and thoughtful.” —Buzzfeed 
Writing Workshop with Kris King: Small, Joyful Details
Saturday April 24, 2021 | 12:00PM - 1:30PM
RSVP HERE Spring into Writing
Saturday, April 24 from 12:00-1:30pm Saturday, May 22 from 12:00-1:30pm Saturday, June 26 from 12:00-1:30pm
Join Kristen Zory King and Old Town Books for three free, monthly workshops to spring into writing! Throughout each session, we will examine contemporary pieces around a theme and then generate our own work based on prompts and guided discussion. This month, inspired by the natural world blooming around us, we will explore the small, joyful details of life and incorporate them into our writing, planting literary seeds to sprout. You do not need to be an experienced writer or poet to participate—beginners, journal-ers, and award-winning writers all welcome. This workshop is free for all with a suggested pay-what-you-can donation to Book Love, Old Town Books’ charitable giving program that delivers new books to area kids in need.
About the Teaching Artist: Kristen Zory King is a writer and teaching artist based in Washington, DC. A passionate advocate for the arts and community, Kris is the founder of MoonLit, an organization that creatively connects community through accessible literary workshops and programming. Recent work can be found or is forthcoming in Electric Lit, Emerge Literary Journal, Rejection Letters, mac(ro)mic, and SWWIM among others. Learn more or be in touch at www.kristenzoryking.com. 
“Reclaim the Bookshelf: Read the World” Challenge Check-In
Sunday April 25, 2021 | 4:00PM - 5:00PM
RSVP HERE
A Special Old Town Books x Reading Women Partnership About the Event 
Writing Workshop with Essayist Alysia Sawchyn
Tuesday April 27, 2021 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM
RSVP HERE
About the Event: We're making Indie Bookstore Day (April 24) a whole week at Old Town Books. Join us for a class with author and editor Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn on strategies for editing and submitting your essays to literary publications. Where is the best place to submit my work? How does one piece stand out from another in a queue of 100+ essays? Does it actually matter what's in my cover letter? Bring your questions and curiosity. About the Author: Alysia Sawchyn is a features editor for The Rumpus and currently lives in the DC area. Her debut essay collection, A Fish Growing Lungs, was published by Burrow Press in June 2020 and has been longlisted for the Believer Book Awards.
Poetry Slam
Friday April 30, 2021 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM
RSVP HERE! Can you write a poem a day? Give it a try with our month-long poetry challenge. Follow the hashtag #OTBWrites, stay tuned on our social channels for poetry-inspired prompts and giveaways, then join us for this virtual poetry slam to celebrate your work! 
May Old Town Books Book(s) Club: What Comes After by JoAnne Tompkins
Saturday May 08, 2021 | 4:00PM - 5:00PM
RSVP HERE
About the Club Old Town Book(s) 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 We Run the Tides with your Eventbrite ticket or on Old Town Books' website (note that you're planning to attend book club to receive 10% off the book)! Purchase your book here!About the Book In misty, coastal Washington State, Isaac lives alone with his dog, grieving the recent death of his teenage son, Daniel. Next door, Lorrie, a working single mother, struggles with a heinous act committed by her own teenage son. Separated by only a silvery stretch of trees, the two parents are emotionally stranded, isolated by their great losses—until an unfamiliar sixteen-year-old girl shows up, bridges the gap, and changes everything. Evangeline’s arrival at first feels like a blessing, but she is also clearly hiding something. When Isaac, who has retreated into his Quaker faith, isn’t equipped to handle her alone, Lorrie forges her own relationship with the girl. Soon all three characters are forced to examine what really happened in their overlapping pasts, and what it all possibly means for a shared future. With a propulsive mystery at its core, What Comes After offers an unforgettable story of loss and anger, but also of kindness and hope, courage and forgiveness. It is a deeply moving account of strangers and friends not only helping each other forward after tragedy, but inspiring a new kind of family. 
May Murder by the Book: In the Garden of Spite
Tuesday May 18, 2021 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM
RSVP HERE
About the Book - Purchase Your Copy Here! (Mention that your purchase is for book club and receive 10% off.) An audacious novel of feminine rage about one of the most prolific female serial killers in American history--and the men who drove her to it. They whisper about her in Chicago. Men come to her with their hopes, their dreams--their fortunes. But no one sees them leave. No one sees them at all after they come to call on the Widow of La Porte. The good people of Indiana may have their suspicions, but if those fools knew what she'd given up, what was taken from her, how she'd suffered, surely they'd understand. Belle Gunness learned a long time ago that a woman has to make her own way in this world. That's all it is. A bloody means to an end. A glorious enterprise meant to raise her from the bleak, colorless drudgery of her childhood to the life she deserves. After all, vermin always survive. 
May Bad Romance Book Club (BRBC): To Love and To Loathe
Friday May 21, 2021 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Join the Bad Romance Book Club in discussing Martha Waters' To Love and To Loathe in May! Purchase To Love and To Loathe from Old Town Books and mention BRBC at checkout to get added to the virtual event and to get 10% off the book club picks!
About the book: The widowed Diana, Lady Templeton and Jeremy, Marquess of Willingham are infamous among English high society as much for their sharp-tongued bickering as their flirtation. One evening, an argument at a ball turns into a serious wager: Jeremy will marry within the year or Diana will forfeit one hundred pounds. So shortly after, just before a fortnight-long house party at Elderwild, Jeremy’s country estate, Diana is shocked when Jeremy appears at her home with a very different kind of proposition. After his latest mistress unfavorably criticized his skills in the bedroom, Jeremy is looking for reassurance, so he has gone to the only woman he trusts to be totally truthful. He suggests that they embark on a brief affair while at the house party—Jeremy can receive an honest critique of his bedroom skills and widowed Diana can use the gossip to signal to other gentlemen that she is interested in taking a lover. Diana thinks taking him up on his counter-proposal can only help her win her wager. With her in the bedroom and Jeremy’s marriage-minded grandmother, the formidable Dowager Marchioness of Willingham, helping to find suitable matches among the eligible ladies at Elderwild, Diana is confident her victory is assured. But while they’re focused on winning wagers, they stand to lose their own hearts. With Martha Waters’s signature “cheeky charm and wonderfully wry wit” (Booklist, starred review), To Love and to Loathe is another clever and delightful historical rom-com that is perfect for fans of Christina Lauren and Evie Dunmore. 
Writing Workshop with Kris King: The Shape of Memory
Saturday May 22, 2021 | 12:00PM - 1:30PM
RSVP HERE
About the Event Spring into Writing
Join Kristen Zory King and Old Town Books for three free, monthly workshops to spring into writing! Throughout each session we will examine contemporary pieces around a theme and then generate our own work based on prompts and guided discussion. This month, we will explore poems and prompts that think through sensory memories and how they have shaped the world around us. You do not need to be an experienced writer or poet to participate—beginners, journal-ers, and award-winning writers all welcome. This workshop is free for all with a suggested pay-what-you-can donation to Book Love, Old Town Books’ charitable giving program that delivers new books to area kids in need. Kristen Zory King is a writer and teaching artist based in Washington, DC. A passionate advocate for the arts and community, Kris is the founder of MoonLit, an organization that creatively connects communities through accessible literary workshops and programming. Recent work can be found or is forthcoming in Electric Lit, Emerge Literary Journal, Rejection Letters, mac(ro)mic, and SWWIM among others. Learn more or be in touch at www.kristenzoryking.com. 
May Sci-Fi/Fantasy Book Club: The Galaxy, and the Ground Within
Friday May 28, 2021 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM
RSVP HERE
About the 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, and the Ground Within with your Eventbrite ticket or on Old Town Books' website (note that you're planning to attend book club to receive 10% off the book)! Purchase your book here!About the Book Return to the sprawling, Hugo Award-winning universe of the Galactic Commons to explore another corner of the cosmos—one often mentioned, but not yet explored—in this absorbing entry in the Wayfarers series, which blends heart-warming characters and imaginative adventure. With no water, no air, and no native life, the planet Gora is unremarkable. The only thing it has going for it is a chance proximity to more popular worlds, making it a decent stopover for ships traveling between the wormholes that keep the Galactic Commons connected. If deep space is a highway, Gora is just your average truck stop. At the Five-Hop One-Stop, long-haul spacers can stretch their legs (if they have legs, that is), and get fuel, transit permits, and assorted supplies. The Five-Hop is run by an enterprising alien and her sometimes helpful child, who work hard to provide a little piece of home to everyone passing through. When a freak technological failure halts all traffic to and from Gora, three strangers—all different species with different aims—are thrown together at the Five-Hop. Grounded, with nothing to do but wait, the trio—an exiled artist with an appointment to keep, a cargo runner at a personal crossroads, and a mysterious individual doing her best to help those on the fringes—are compelled to confront where they’ve been, where they might go, and what they are, or could be, to each other.
June Old Town Books Book(s) Club: Last Night at the Telegraph Club
Saturday June 05, 2021 | 12:00PM - 1:00PM
RSVP HERE
Old Town Book(s) 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 Last Night at the Telegraph Club with your Eventbrite ticket or on Old Town Books' website (note that you're planning to attend book club to receive 10% off the book)! Purchase your book here!About the Book Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the feeling took root—that desire to look, to move closer, to touch. Whenever it started growing, it definitely bloomed the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. Suddenly everything seemed possible. But America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day. 
June True Story! Nonfiction Book Club - Fathoms: The World in the Whale
Sunday June 13, 2021 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM
RSVP HERE
About the Club Old Town Books True Story! Nonfiction Book Club is free and open to the public. Note that you're planning to attend book club at check out to receive 10% off this month's pick. While buying the book at OTB is not required to attend, we would greatly appreciate it to help keep our free literary programming sustainable! Pre-order your paperback copy of Fathoms here!About the Book A “delving, haunted, and poetic debut” (The New York Times Book Review) about the awe-inspiring lives of whales, revealing what they can teach us about ourselves, our planet, and our relationship with other species. When writer Rebecca Giggs encountered a humpback whale stranded on her local beachfront in Australia, she began to wonder how the lives of whales reflect the condition of our oceans. Fathoms: The World in the Whale is “a work of bright and careful genius” (Robert Moor, New York Times bestselling author of On Trails), one that blends natural history, philosophy, and science to explore: How do whales experience ecological change? How has whale culture been both understood and changed by human technology? What can observing whales teach us about the complexity, splendor, and fragility of life on earth? In Fathoms, we learn about whales so rare they have never been named, whale songs that sweep across hemispheres in annual waves of popularity, and whales that have modified the chemical composition of our planet’s atmosphere. We travel to Japan to board the ships that hunt whales and delve into the deepest seas to discover how plastic pollution pervades our earth’s undersea environment.
June Bad Romance Book Club (BRBC): One Last Stop
Friday June 18, 2021 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
Join the Bad Romance Book Club in discussing Casey McQuiston's highly-anticipated One Last Stop in June! Purchase One Last Stop from Old Town Books and mention BRBC at checkout to get added to the virtual event and to get 10% off the book club picks!
About the Book From the New York Times bestselling author of Red, White & Royal Blue comes a new romantic comedy that will stop readers in their tracks... For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can’t imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there’s certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures. But then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train. Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile, showing up in a leather jacket to save August’s day when she needed it most. August’s subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there’s one big problem: Jane doesn’t just look like an old school punk rocker. She’s literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her. Maybe it’s time to start believing in some things, after all. Casey McQuiston’s One Last Stop is a magical, sexy, big-hearted romance where the impossible becomes possible as August does everything in her power to save the girl lost in time. 
June Murder by the Book: Last Call
Tuesday June 22, 2021 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM
RSVP HERE
About the Book - Purchase Your Copy Here! (Mention that your purchase is for book club and receive 10% off.) The gripping true story, told here for the first time, of the Last Call Killer and the gay community of New York City that he preyed upon. The Townhouse Bar, midtown, July 1992: The piano player seems to know every song ever written, the crowd belts out the lyrics to their favorites, and a man standing nearby is drinking a Scotch and water. The man strikes the piano player as forgettable. He looks bland and inconspicuous. Not at all what you think a serial killer looks like. But that’s what he is, and tonight, he has his sights set on a gray haired man. He will not be his first victim. Nor will he be his last. The Last Call Killer preyed upon gay men in New York in the ‘80s and ‘90s and had all the hallmarks of the most notorious serial killers. Yet because of the sexuality of his victims, the sky-high murder rates, and the AIDS epidemic, his murders have been almost entirely forgotten.
June Sci-Fi/Fantasy Book Club: The Bone Shard Daughter
Friday June 25, 2021 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM
RSVP HERE
About the 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 Bone Shard Daughter with your Eventbrite ticket or on Old Town Books' website (note that you're planning to attend book club to receive 10% off the book)! Purchase your book here!About the Book The emperor's reign has lasted for decades, his mastery of bone shard magic powering the animal-like constructs that maintain law and order. But now his rule is failing, and revolution is sweeping across the Empire's many islands. Lin is the emperor's daughter and spends her days trapped in a palace of locked doors and dark secrets. When her father refuses to recognize her as heir to the throne, she vows to prove her worth by mastering the forbidden art of bone shard magic. Yet such power carries a great cost, and when the revolution reaches the gates of the palace, Lin must decide how far she is willing to go to claim her birthright - and save her people. 
Writing Workshop with Kris King: Multitudes - Writing the Self Portrait
Saturday June 26, 2021 | 12:00PM - 1:30PM
RSVP HERE
About the Event Spring into Writing Join Kristen Zory King and Old Town Books for three free, monthly workshops to spring into writing! Throughout each session, we will examine contemporary pieces around a theme and then generate our own work based on prompts and guided discussion. This month, we will explore poems and prompts that think through sensory memories and how they have shaped the world around us. You do not need to be an experienced writer or poet to participate—beginners, journal-ers, and award-winning writers all welcome. This workshop is free for all with a suggested pay-what-you-can donation to Book Love, Old Town Books’ charitable giving program that delivers new books to area kids in need. About the Teaching Artist: Kristen Zory King is a writer and teaching artist based in Washington, DC. A passionate advocate for the arts and community, Kris is the founder of MoonLit, an organization that creatively connects communities through accessible literary workshops and programming. Recent work can be found or is forthcoming in Electric Lit, Emerge Literary Journal, Rejection Letters, mac(ro)mic, and SWWIM among others. Learn more or be in touch at www.kristenzoryking.com. |