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Upcoming Events 
Bad Romance Book Club: A Daring Arrangement + A Notorious Vow by Joanna Shupe
Friday January 24 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM
Join us for the January Bad Romance Book Club! We will be discussing Joanna Shupe's books set in the NYC Gilded Age!
Ticket price for this meeting includes one copy of each of the books for 20% off the cover price. *If you would like to avoid the online ticket processing fee, please purchase your book in the store before the club meeting. Make sure you mention Bad Romance to your bookseller to get the discount. About the Books: A Daring Arrangement: Set in New York City’s Gilded Age, Joanna Shupe’s Avon debut introduces an English beauty with a wicked scheme to win the man she loves—and the American scoundrel who ruins her best laid plans. Lady Honora Parker must get engaged as soon as possible, and only a particular type of man will do. Nora seeks a mate so abhorrent, so completely unacceptable, that her father will reject the match—leaving her free to marry the artist she loves. Who then is the most appalling man in Manhattan? The wealthy, devilishly handsome financier, Julius Hatcher, of course…. Julius is intrigued by Nora’s ruse and decides to play along. But to Nora’s horror, Julius transforms himself into the perfect fiancé, charming the very people she hoped he would offend. It seems Julius has a secret plan all his own—one that will solve a dark mystery from his past, and perhaps turn him into the kind of man Nora could truly love. A Notorious Vow: Joanna Shupe returns to New York City’s Gilded Age, where fortunes and reputations are gained and lost with ease—and love can blossom from the most unlikely charade. With the fate of her disgraced family resting on her shoulders, Lady Christina Barclay has arrived in New York City from London to quickly secure a wealthy husband. But when her parents settle on an intolerable suitor, Christina turns to her reclusive neighbor, a darkly handsome and utterly compelling inventor, for help. Oliver Hawkes reluctantly agrees to a platonic marriage... with his own condition: The marriage must end after one year. Not only does Oliver face challenges that are certain to make life as his wife difficult, but more importantly he refuses to be distracted from his life’s work—the development of a revolutionary device that could transform thousands of lives, including his own. Much to his surprise, his bride is more beguiling than he imagined. When temptation burns hot between them, they realize they must overcome their own secrets and doubts, and every effort to undermine their marriage, because one year can never be enough. About the Author: Joanna Shupe has always loved history, ever since she saw her first Schoolhouse Rock cartoon. While in college, Joanna read every romance she could get her hands on and soon started crafting her own racy historical novels. In 2013, she won Romance Writers of America’s prestigious Golden Heart® Award for Best Historical. She now lives in New Jersey with her two spirited daughters and dashing husband.
Children's Storytime in the Kids Nook
Saturday January 25 | 12:30PM - 1:00PM
Come to our kids nook at 12:30 for a storytime with a bookseller and after the reading, take home our storytime pick for 10% off!
Quarterly Member Sale
Tuesday January 28 | 6:30PM - 8:30PM
We hope to see all of our members at our Quarterly Member Sale in January! An Old Town Books Membership is $25, and with that membership you will receive:
If you are not already a member, ask a bookseller about joining and come out to shop with us in January!
RSVP is free, but a membership is required to attend! Buy it in advance or buy it night of at the door! 
Literary Magazine Launch Party + Studio Unveiling
Friday January 31 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM
Join us for the unveiling of the Old Town Books Literary Loft and our new literary magazine!
About this Event: Old Town Books is expanding and we want to show off our new Literary Loft (Lit Loft) where we will be hosting classes and events! Join us for a night of bookish mingling and help us celebrate the launch of our Literary Magazine, Cobblestone Creative. We will have snacks and raffles throughout the night, and your ticket price includes a copy of Cobblestone Creative. Buy Tickets Here. Cobblestone Creative is a literary magazine about creativity, community, and the craft of writing that was inspired by our inaugural Emerging Writers Festival. The magazine is filled with tips from our past panelist and workshop leaders about cultivating community in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia literary scene and its proceeds will help us put on this year's Emerging Writers Festival. 
Old Town Book(s) Club: Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Saturday February 01 | 10:00AM - 11:00AM
About this Event:
Old Town Book Club is free and open to the public; RSVP is appreciated. Take 20% off your in-store purchase of Girl, Woman, Other by mentioning the book club. While buying the book at OTB is not required to attend, we greatly appreciate it - it helps keep our free literary programming sustainable! Free RSVP here. About the Book: Winner of the 2019 Booker Prize for Fiction, Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives of twelve very different people in Britain, predominantly female and black. Aged 19 to 93, they span a variety of cultural backgrounds, sexualities, classes and occupations as they tell the stories of themselves, their families, friends and lovers, across the country and through the years. About the Author: British writer Bernardine Evaristo is the award-winning author of eight books and numerous other published and produced works that span the genres of novels, poetry, verse fiction, short fiction, essays, literary criticism, and radio and theatre drama. Her writing and projects are based around her interest in the African diaspora. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London. 
Storytime in the Kids Nook
Saturday February 01 | 12:30PM - 1:30PM
Come to our kids nook at 12:30 for a storytime with a bookseller and after the reading, take home our storytime pick for 10% off!
True Story! - Nonfiction Book Club: The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom
Saturday February 08 | 10:00AM - 11:00AM
Join us for the February meeting of the OTB True Story! Book Club where we will be reading /discussing Sarah M. Broom's The Yellow House!
Sarah. M Broom's The Yellow House is a brilliant, haunting and unforgettable memoir from a stunning new talent about the inexorable pull of home and family, set in a shotgun house in New Orleans East. The Yellow House is the winner of the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction, a New York Times Bestseller, has been named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review, and has been named to the best books list on many sites including, the Washington Post, NPR, the New York Public Library, Shelf Awareness, LitHub, and many others! Free RSVP here. About the Event: Old Town Book Club is free and open to the public, but RSVP is appreciated. Take 20% off your in-store purchase of The Yellow House by mentioning the book club. Purchasing the book at our store is not required to attend, but it is much appreciated - it sustains our free literary arts programming. About the Book: In 1961, Sarah M. Broom’s mother Ivory Mae bought a shotgun house in the then-promising neighborhood of New Orleans East and built her world inside of it. It was the height of the Space Race and the neighborhood was home to a major NASA plant—the postwar optimism seemed assured. Widowed, Ivory Mae remarried Sarah’s father Simon Broom; their combined family would eventually number twelve children. But after Simon died, six months after Sarah’s birth, the Yellow House would become Ivory Mae’s thirteenth and most unruly child. A book of great ambition, Sarah M. Broom’s The Yellow House tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America’s most mythologized cities. This is the story of a mother’s struggle against a house's entropy, and that of a prodigal daughter who left home only to reckon with the pull that home exerts, even after the Yellow House was wiped off the map after Hurricane Katrina. The Yellow House expands the map of New Orleans to include the stories of its lesser-known natives, guided deftly by one of its native daughters, to demonstrate how enduring drives of clan, pride, and familial love resist and defy erasure. Located in the gap between the “Big Easy” of tourist guides and the New Orleans in which Broom was raised, The Yellow House is a brilliant memoir of place, class, race, the seeping rot of inequality, and the internalized shame that often follows. It is a transformative, deeply moving story from an unparalleled new voice of startling clarity, authority, and power. About the Author: Sarah M. Broom is a writer whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Oxford American, and O, The Oprah Magazine among others. A native New Orleanian, she received her Masters in Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004. She was awarded a Whiting Foundation Creative Nonfiction Grant in 2016 and was a finalist for the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Nonfiction in 2011. She has also been awarded fellowships at Djerassi Resident Artists Program and The MacDowell Colony. She lives in New York State. 
Let's Talk Voice
Saturday February 08 | 2:00PM - 4:00PM
Join novelist Julie Langsdorf for a two hour writing intensive on experimenting with voice in any genre. We'll begin with a craft talk and writing exercises, and wrap up with a publishing Q+A about what to do with your work once those voices are ready to be heard! Tickets for this two hour class are $50.
Buy tickets here. About Julie: Julie Langsdorf’s short stories and essays have appeared in Poets and Writers, Lit Hub, Electric Literature among other publications. White Elephant was named an editors’ choice by The New York Times, a book not to miss by USA Today, a highly anticipated debut novel by The LA Times, a best new book by Southern Living Magazine, and a Real Simple best book of 2019. She has two children and lives in Washington, D.C. Please reach out to hello@oldtownbooks.com if you'd like to attend a writing workshop and are in need of a sliding scale fee. If you would like to sponsor a writing class we are always looking for local sponsors to help us fund at least two spots in each class!
Love, Letters
Sunday February 09 | 2:00PM - 4:00PM
Nika Smernoff of Calligraphette & Co returns to teach an introduction to pointed pen calligraphy on February 9th from 2-4pm , just in time for you to practice penning love notes! Your $75 ticket includes practice materials and two hours of instruction, and you'll leave with pens, ink, and your guidebook.
Light refreshments will also be served.
Blooms for Book Lovers
Saturday February 15 | 2:00PM - 4:00PM
Is your bookshelf your boyfriend? Same here! At Old Town Books, we love books and we love blooms, so what better way to celebrate Valentine's Day weekend than with a two-hour design workshop with floral pro Elizabeth Town?
Ticket price includes everything you need to create a beautifully bookish arrangement - including locally grown spring blooms and a ceramic book-shaped vase you can fill again and again. Buy tickets here.
Going Places - Breaking into Travel Writing
Saturday February 22 | 2:00PM - 4:00PM
Have you always wanted to be a travel writer? Come out to Old Town Books to learn about crafting compelling travel stories for print and online. This two hour intensive, taught by experienced editor, author, and travel journalist Jess Moss covers what it takes to craft, pitch, and publish travel writing.
Buy tickets here. About Jess Moss: Jess Moss is a Washington DC-based travel writer and photographer. She has worked as an in-house editor at Fodor's Travel and AOL Travel, and currently leads editorial strategy at Marriott Bonvoy Traveler. She also freelances; her work has appeared in Conde Nast Traveler, US News Travel, Fodor's and more. Her first book, Easy Weekend Getaways from Washington, D.C., was published this past fall. Please reach out to hello@oldtownbooks.com if you'd like to attend a writing workshop and are in need of a sliding scale fee. If you would like to sponsor a writing class we are always looking for local sponsors to help us fund at least two spots in each class! 
Old Town Sci-Fi/Fantasy Book Club: Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton
Friday February 28 | 7:30PM - 8:30PM
About the Event:
Old Town Book Club is free and open to the public, but RSVP is appreciated. Take 20% off your in-store purchase of Hollow Kingdom by mentioning the book club. Purchasing the book at our store is not required to attend, but it is much appreciated - it sustains our free literary arts programming. RSVP here
About the Book: S.T., a domesticated crow, is a bird of simple pleasures: hanging out with his owner Big Jim, trading insults with Seattle's wild crows (i.e. "those idiots"), and enjoying the finest food humankind has to offer: Cheetos ®. But when Big Jim's eyeball falls out of his head, S.T. starts to think something's not quite right. His tried-and-true remedies - from beak-delivered beer to the slobbering affection of Big Jim's loyal but dim-witted dog, Dennis - fail to cure Big Jim's debilitating malady. S.T. is left with no choice but to abandon his old life and venture out into a wild and frightening new world with his trusty steed Dennis, where he suddenly discovers that the neighbors are devouring one other. Local wildlife is abuzz with rumors of Seattle's dangerous new predators. Humanity's extinction has seemingly arrived, and the only one determined to save it is a cowardly crow whose only knowledge of the world comes from TV. What could possibly go wrong?
About the Author:
A Killer Sense of Place
Saturday February 29 | 2:00PM - 4:00PM
This writing class is for anyone who wants to craft a memorable and impactful sense of place in their work. Writing place is important for any story, regardless of genre. But in mystery and thrillers? It's gotta be to die for. Get tips and tricks from Famous in Cedarville author Erica Wright while taking a look at how successful thrillers and mysteries solve the problem of "where to hide the body."
About Erica Wright:
Erica Wright's new crime novel Famous in Cedarville received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was called "a clever little whodunnit" in The New York Times Book Review. She is the author of three previous novels including The Red Chameleon, which was one of O, The Oprah Magazine's Best Books of Summer 2014. Her poetry collections are Instructions for Killing the Jackal and All the Bayou Stories End with Drowned. She is the poetry editor and a senior editor at Guernica Magazine as well as a former editorial board member for Alice James Books. She has taught creative writing at Marymount Manhattan College and New York University's continuing studies program. She grew up in Wartrace, TN and now lives in Washington, DC with her husband and their dog Penny.
Please reach out to hello@oldtownbooks.com if you'd like to attend a writing workshop and are in need of a sliding scale fee. If you would like to sponsor a writing class we are always looking for local sponsors to help us fund at least two spots in each class!
Reader's Run
Sunday March 01 @ 01:00PM - Sunday April 26 @ 08:00AM
Bookworms are stereotypically sedentary, right? Well at Old Town Books we *do* love to cozy up on the couch to read, but we also like to keep it moving! Join us for a beginner-friendly running group this March and April! When we'll meet*: March 1 @ 1pm: Kick off meeting (no run) March 8 @ 8am: Group Run March 11 @ 7pm: Yoga For Runners March 15 @ 8am: Group RunMarch 22 @ 8am: Group Run March 29 @ 8am: Group Run; 9am: Book ClubApril 5 @ 8am: Group Run April 12 @ 8am: Group Run April 19 @ 8am: Group Run; 9am: Book Club April 26: Race Day - Parkway Classic 5k @ 8am * Come to as many meetings as you are able
- Two books (Spirit Run by Noe Alvarez & Let Your Mind Run by Deena Kastor) - 7 group runs - 1 technique consultation with a professional running coach - 2 book club discussions - 1 discount code for the parkway classic - Chances to win prizes including a $100 gift card to Pacers Also, Spirit Run author Noe Alvarez will meet via Skype with our book club for a Q+A session! 
Emily Dickinson's Gardening Life Event
Sunday April 26 | 2:00PM - 4:00PM
Old Town Books is partnering with Carlyle House Historic Park for a tea time, author lecture, Q+A, and book signing. A $50 ticket includes tea and the book, as well as access to the event at the Carlyle House in Old Town Alexandria.
Buy your tickets here. About the Book: From New York Times bestselling author Marta McDowell, Emily Dickinson's Gardening Life: The Plants and Places That Inspired the Iconic Poet is an illustrated exploration of how gardening and plants inspired Emily Dickinson, one of the most beloved poets of all time. McDowell explores Dickinson's deep passion for plants and how it inspired and informed her writing. Tracing a year in the garden, the book reveals details few know about Dickinson and adds to our collective understanding of who she was as a person. By weaving together Dickinson's poems, excerpts from letters, contemporary and historical photograph, and botanical art, McDowell offers an enchanting new perspective on one of America's most celebrated but enigmatic literary figures. About the Author: Marta McDowell teaches landscape history and horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden and consults for private clients and public gardens. Her latest book is Emily Dickinson's Gardening Life. Timber Press also published The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder, New York Times-bestselling All the Presidents' Gardens, and Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life, now in its seventh printing. Marta is working on a new book about The Secret Garden and its author Frances Hodgson Burnett, due out from Timber Press in 2022. She is the 2019 recipient of the Garden Club of America's Sarah Chapman Francis Medal for outstanding literary achievement. |