We're proud to be your neighborhood bookstore. Stop by on Independent Bookstore Day for some fun specials: free coffee with any bookstore purchase, free gift with any purchase over $50, and prizes for folks who visit five indie bookstores (including The Potter's House).

You’re cordially invited to an afternoon tea party and author talk with Rosey Lee, author of The Gardins of Edin. Order tea at the register (it’s on us!) and enjoy a delightful conversation and book signing.

Rosey Lee writes hopeful stories about complicated families and complex friendships. As a native of the West Bank of New Orleans, Louisiana who lives in Atlanta, Georgia, Rosey’s writing is inspired by the people, traditions, and food that anchor her to the South.

She uses the pen name Rosey Lee as she pursues her passion for writing. Her alter ego is a physician who has dedicated her career to individual and community-based approaches to health equity.

This event is FREE. REGISTER HERE.

Küf Knotz & Christine Elise: Hip Hop | Soul | New Age.

Named Philadelphia Magazine Best Rapper of 2022 and 1 of 10 New Jersey Artists to watch, Küf Knotz (Producer/MC) and Christine Elise (Harpist/Vocalist) connected with a similar mission to create positive, forward thinking music fusing the boom bap era and lo-fi inspired beats supported by the harp. And, you can dance to it!

This event is FREE with a suggested $10 donation. Donations will support the artists and Pay It Forward, a free meals program provided by The Potter's House for community members in need. Register here.

Pay It Forward Benefit Show: Boy Meets Pearl & Wytold

Join us for live music from local musicians Boy Meets Pearl and Wytold. All ticket sales will support Pay It Forward, a free meals program offered daily at The Potter’s House.

Boy Meets Pearl: Queer-fronted and oddly-orchestrated, Boy Meets Pearl, play modern takes on sea shanties, circus waltzes and Victorian Music Hall singalongs.  They've been bringing their brand of carousel punk cabaret to the DMV for a couple of years now and are currently working on their first album, "What Fresh Shell is This?".  

Wytold: Wytold writes original music on the six-string electric cello inspired by outdoor rock climbing trips, world travel, his background studying philosophy of physics, and his experiences leading music workshops in military hospitals and Veteran populations.  Using electronic edge alongside acoustic harmonies and double-stop grit, Wytold’s electrified-chamber and 'In Your Face Cello' sound energizes rock clubs as much as it inspires reflective audiences in the concert hall. Wytold has performed his original music live with the National Symphony Orchestra and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

BUY TICKETS HERE.

Kids Storytime will take place in the Community Room! It’s free to attend and children’s books will be 10% off. See you there!

Join Kristen Zory King for three fast-paced generative writing workshops to help shake you out of a creative rut and get words on the page.

Throughout each 90-minute session, we will examine contemporary pieces around various themes and then generate our own work based on prompts and guided discussion. Writers are welcome to attend one session or all three and you do not need to be an experienced writer or poet to participate—beginners, journal-ers, and award winning creatives all welcome.

Workshops will take place on January 28, February 25, and March 31. Learn more and register:

• January workshop

• February workshop

• March workshop

Join Rick Stack for a conversation about his book We Who Grieve.

Richard A. Stack, associate professor emeritus, taught for three decades in the School of Communication at American University. He has published four books and is an award-winning documentary producer. He volunteers at Washington, D.C.’s leading grief counseling center.

This event is FREE. Register here.

What can you do when your world crumbles? How do you make it through life's murky waters? In her heart-warming and inspirational autobiography, Monique candidly shares how she made it through the darkest seasons of her life. She tells her story of love, loss, and courage and takes us on her faith journey to purpose.

Join us for an open mic featuring singers, rappers, and poets followed by performances from headlining music artists. Register here.

Join us for our first Maker Weekend of the year! Come browse and meet local artists. This month, the work of Raina Fox and Candid Almond will be featured.

Join the Claudia Jones School for International Women's Day with Elisabeth Armstrong to discuss her book Bury the Corpse of Colonialism! This is event is FREE. Register here.

Ajay Singh Chaudhary is the executive director of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and a core faculty member specializing in social and political theory. He has written for The Guardian, The Nation, The Baffler, n+1, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. Ajay’s book on the politics of climate change, The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World, is forthcoming from Repeater Books in February, 2024.

Malcolm Harris is an American journalist, critic, and thought leader. He is an editor at The New Inquiry and authored Kids These Days: The Making of Millennials and Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit: History Since the End of History. His new book is Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World.

REGISTER HERE.

Join poet Jubi Arriola-Headley for a reading from his upcoming book Bound.

Jubi Arriola-Headley (he/him) is a Black queer poet, storyteller, first-generation United Statesian, and author of the poetry collection original kink (Sibling Rivalry Press). He’s a recipient of the 2021 Housatonic Book Award and his second collection, Bound, will be published by Persea Books in February 2024.

Jubi will be joined by authors Teri Ellen Cross Davis and Sylvia Jones.

Chantal James will discuss her novel None But the Righteous, which was lauded as "a deeply haunted novel that moves with calm and ruthless determination" by The Los Angeles Times. Prize-winning author Shannon Sanders will moderate the conversation. 

The DC Prevention Center for Wards 1 & 2 will be hosting a Naloxone training and distributing free Narcan at The Potter's House. This activity is sponsored by the State Opioid Response grant through the District of Columbia Department of Behavioral Health. This training will cover the opioid epidemic here in DC, as well as how to recognize and respond to an opioid overdose. The training will be followed up by a conversation about the use of opioids and stimulants in the Wards 1 & 2 community. This event is completely free and open to the public. Please email yannira@layc-dc.org with any questions.

Join Amber Sparks and Blake Butler in conversation about Blake’s memoir Molly.

Blake Butler is the author of nine book-length works, including Alice Knott (Riverhead), 300,000,000 (Harper Perennial), Sky Saw (Tyrant Books), There is No Year (Harper Perennial), Scorch Atlas (Featherproof Books), and Ever (Calamari Press), as well as the nonfictional Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia (Harper Perennial). His short fiction, interviews, reviews, and essays have appeared widely, including in The Believer, The New York Times, Bomb, Bookforum, and as an ongoing column at Vice. In 2021, he was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. He is a founding editor of HTMLGIANT.

Amber Sparks is the author of And I Do Not Forgive You and The Unfinished World, and her fiction and essays have appeared in American Short Fiction, Paris Review, Tin House, Granta, and elsewhere. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband, daughter, and two cats.

Register here.

Join Stanchion at The Potter’s House for a book fair, celebration of their thirteenth issue and three year anniversary, and literary reading featuring poetry and prose by: Katie Anderson, Matt Barrett, Peg Cherrin-Myers, Ashley Evans, Fannie Gray, Hannah Grieco, L. Andrew Huffman, Kristen Zory King, Francesca Leader, and Sam Milligan.

RSVP here: https://partiful.com/e/I6hc6Duvs9LdfL6GmHqN

We experience the world through our bodies: pleasure and pain, illness, joy, nourishment, sex, and The Body Politic. Writers TJ Butler (Dating Silky Maxwell, ELJ Editions) and Rebecca Morrison will discuss how they’ve used their own and other women’s physical selves to deepen their writing and create a sensory experience for the reader.

TJ Butler is a writer and photographer who lives part-time on a sailboat on the Chesapeake Bay. She writes fiction and essays that are not all fun and games, teaches workshops, and coaches writers. Her work has appeared in outlets such as Huffington Post, Insider, and various literary journals.

Suzette Romero is a writer and educator. She’s facilitated workshops for both adults and adolescents regarding the power of language. “Writing the Body” will be Suzette’s first facilitation event with The Potter’s House. When she's not dividing her time between Virginia and New York, you can find her helping the next generation find their writing voice.

Rebecca Morrison is a lawyer and writer. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Today Show, Newsweek, NBC News, HuffPost, Salon, Insider and The Independent. Her HuffPost essay on being an immigrant reached the #1 trending story on AppleNews and she is currently completing a middle grade novel.

Join us for an open mic featuring singers, rappers, and poets followed by performances from headlining music artists Bril Abanti and Jolene Carter. Register here.

Stop by The Potter's House to shop products by local makers! 

Join Sunu P. Chandy, Jody Hobbs Hesler, and Jeffrey Dale Lofton for Lifting Up Marginalized Voices: a Reading and Discussion at The Potter’s House!

Sunu P. Chandy (she/her) is a social justice activist including through her work as a poet and a civil rights attorney. She’s the daughter of immigrants from Kerala, India, a queer woman of color, and lives in Washington, D.C. with her family. Her award-winning collection of poems, My Dear Comrades, was published by Regal House in 2023.

Jody Hobbs Hesler has written ever since she could hold a pencil and now lives and writes in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her debut story collection, What Makes You Think You're Supposed to Feel Better was published by Cornerstone Press in October 2023. Jody teaches at WriterHouse in Charlottesville, Virginia and reads for The Los Angeles Review. 

Jeffrey Dale Lofton hails from Warm Springs, Georgia and has called the nation’s capital home for over three decades. A former actor, Jeffrey is currently a senior advisor at the Library of Congress, where he's surrounded by books and people who love books—in short, paradise. Red Clay Suzie is his first novel, a fictionalized memoir written through his personal lens growing up a gay, physically misshapen outsider in a conservative family and community in the Deep South. Red Clay Suzie was longlisted for The Center for Fiction 2023 First Novel Prize.

Set against the extraordinary events of January 6, 2021 and rooted in the joys and struggles of the immigrant experience that have long defined the American experiment, Staff Sergeant Aquilino Gonell’s inspirational memoir is one of hope and the belief in the promise of a nation enduring in the face of challenges.

Aquilino Gonell is a Dominican immigrant, former U.S. Army soldier, and Iraq War veteran. For seventeen years, he was a United States Capitol Police officer and was one of four police officers who testified before the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. He’s been featured on ABC, CBS, CNN, Telemundo, Univision, and NPR, and in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and El Diario. He is a recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Citizens Medal.

Susan Shapiro is an award-winning Jewish American journalist. She’s the author/coauthor of the acclaimed nonfiction books Unhooked (a New York Times bestseller), The Forgiveness Tour (a Jewish Book Council pick), The Bosnia List (an Oprah book of the Week, ASJA award winner and William Saroyan Nonfiction finalist ) and World In Between (a Notable Book for Global Society). She writes for The New York Times, New York Magazine, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Newsweek, among others.

1455’s Author Series continues with Alyson Gold Weinberg, who will read from Bellow & Hiss.

About Bellow & Hiss: “Riding shotgun with Oedipus, your mother, and the pothole in your heart,” Bellow & Hiss navigates generational suffering and hurtles headlong toward reverie. The collection’s knowing “I” interrogates the dark gift of childhood trauma, the nature of family, and the weaving together of identity.

About Alyson Weinberg: Alyson Gold Weinberg is an award-winning poet, playwright, speechwriter and ghostwriter. Her poems have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies including December, Poetica, District Fray, and others. She is a 2021 Jeff Marks Memorial Prize finalist (chosen by Carl Philips), winner of the 2021 The Inner Loop Poetry Prize, winner of the 2021 Derick Burleson Poetry Prize, a 2022 Harbor Review Jewish Women’s Poetry Prize finalist, and a 2022 New Women’s Voices Chapbook Competition finalist. Alyson’s play, Object Relations, had its live-streamed staged reading premiere during the pandemic to benefit mental health equity. A fully staged production is in the works.

About 1455: At 1455, storytellers are sacred, and we’re dedicated to showcasing the written word and other forms of creative expression. Curating community through year-round free programming, 1455 connects art and audience via intimate conversations and the promotion of diverse voices. Taking our name from the year Gutenberg’s printing press helped democratize content on a global scale, 1455 continues the tradition of using technology to advance an understanding and appreciation of impactful storytelling.

Patrice Gaines is a writer and abolitionist who became a convicted felon at age 21 for being a heroin user. She eventually became an award-winning Washington Post reporter, best-selling author, and social justice advocate. As a speaker, she shares her story of addiction and recovery and discusses how other countries handle crime in more humane ways.

This activity is sponsored by the State Opioid Response grant through the District of Columbia Department of Behavioral Health.

Join award-nominated author Michael Solis for a book talk and signing. Books will be available for purchase, and a percentage of the night's proceeds will benefit OYE Honduras.