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DC Reads - An Evening of DC Literary Voices

A culminating panel conversation with DC authors Lauren Francis-Sharma, E.A. Aymar, and Alice McDermott

To culminate DC Reads, join the Library and the PEN/Faulkner Foundation for a final conversation with our three featured authors. 

This panel will bring together DC writers Lauren Francis-Sharma, E.A. Aymar, and Alice McDermott with moderator Hannah Oliver Depp for a conversation about their books, being a writer in DC, and more. The event will include a Q&A with the audience, and the Library will provide ASL interpretation.

About the authors:
Alice McDermott was born in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of eight previous novels, including Charming Billy, winner of the National Book Award, and That Night, At Weddings and Wakes, and After This, which were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She is also the author of the essay collection What About the Baby? Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Mademoiselle and Seventeen. She has taught at UCSD and American University and she is currently the Richard A. Macksey professor of the Humanities at John Hopkins University. McDermott lives outside Washington, D.C. with her husband, a retired neuroscientist, and has three adult children.

Lauren Francis-Sharma, a child of Trinidadian immigrants, has written about the Caribbean in both of her critically-acclaimed novels, “’Til the Well Runs Dry” and “Book of the Little Axe.”

Lauren holds a degree in English Literature with a minor in African-American Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School, and an MFA from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Lauren, a book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle and a MacDowell Fellow, is also the Assistant Director of Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference at Middlebury College.

Anthony Award-nominated E.A. Aymar’s new thriller, NO HOME FOR KILLERS, will be published February 1, 2023 by Thomas and Mercer. His last book, THEY’RE GONE, was published in 2020 to rave reviews in Publishers Weekly, Kirkus (starred), and was named one of the best books of 2020 by the South Florida Sun Sentinel. His 2019 thriller, THE UNREPENTANT, received similar critical enthusiasm, was a finalist for numerous awards, and was an Amazon bestseller.

Ed’s column, “Decisions and Revisions,” appears monthly in the Washington Independent Review of Books, and he runs the Noir at the Bar series for Washington, D.C. He is a former member of the national board of International Thriller Writers and, for years, was the managing editor of The Thrill Begins, an online resource for debut and aspiring writers. He is an active member of Crime Writers of Color, the Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime. Ed has hosted and spoken at a variety of crime fiction, writing, and publishing events nationwide.

He was born in Panama and now lives and writes in, and generally about, the D.C./MD/VA triangle.

About the moderator:
Hannah Oliver Depp is the coowner of Loyalty Bookstores in Petworth, DC and Silver Spring, MD. Loyalty serves all readers as an intersectional feminist bookstore and programming space. She holds a Masters in English from American University. Oliver Depp is a founding member of the American Booksellers Association’s Committee on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and serves on the boards of Bookshop.org, An Open Book Foundation, and the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association.

About DC Reads: DC Reads is a DC Public Library program that promotes citywide conversations focused on a single book. Past titles have included How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith, Good Talk by Mira Jacob, and Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires. We are delighted to expand the program to three titles this year and focus on writers from right here in the DC community.

About PEN/Faulkner: The PEN/Faulkner Foundation champions the breadth and power of fiction in America. Their participation in this event is made possible by Shreve Williams Public Relations.

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