Archives for Capital City

The Chicago-based mag Stop Smiling has just put out a D.C. issue. I went to a party on Friday for some of the contributors and people Q&A’d in the issue (I’m neither) and got off to a good start by asking the editor who he was. At least I can’t be accused of sucking up…. Continue reading »

Mark Athitakis, a DC-based critic and arts editor of the Washington City Paper, has put up a page of who’s reading in the area over the next few months. You can find it here at his American Fiction Notes blog. Good work, Mark.

Len Downie, the Post’s former executive editor, says enough already with the DC-bashing: Large numbers of Washingtonians have dedicated much of their lives to real public service that does not involve the ego trips, trappings and hypocrisies of elective office. Amen to that. It’s not all earmarks and Gucci Gulch lobbyists, kids. For all its… Continue reading »

D.C. Noir 2: The Classics got a nice write-up in the Post yesterday. For obvious reasons I’m predisposed to like the book, and it sounds like there’s plenty to like: Two of the finest stories rely on a collision of cultures. Edward P. Jones’s masterful “A Rich Man” follows a womanizing senior citizen’s descent into… Continue reading »

Bored already by the Booker shortlist? I am. The Guardian (though no stranger to Booker coverage) has some literary relief. They asked naturalist Esther Woolfson for a personal list of “Top 10 birds in fact and fiction.” In fiction, she says, she likes “a hint of birds: a bird as subsidiary character, as metaphor or… Continue reading »