It's difficult to describe Edie Sedgwick without using the word "strange." No, we're not talking about the actress who starred in Andy Warhol's short films in the 1960s and died of ethanol intoxication. We're talking about Antelope vocalist Justin Moyer's gender-bending side project, which recently released its third full-length, Things Are Getting Sinister And Sinisterer, on Dischord Records. At first, we were a little wary of the album. Back in March of 2007, we gave... [continue]

MONDAY: Nizam Ali — whose parents, Ben and Virginia Ali, opened Ben's Chili Bowl 50 years ago — and Tracey Gold Bennett will be at the Busboys and Poets in D.C. to discuss and sign copies of their new book, Ben's Chili Bowl: 50 Years of a Washington DC Landmark. 6:30 p.m. TUESDAY: Dexter Filkins, an award-winning foreign correspondent for The New York Times, will be at Politics and Prose to talk about his latest... [continue]

MONDAY: CBS News' Bob Schieffer talks about Bob Schieffer's America at Politics and Prose. Sounds like an episode of Sliders where Jerry O'Connell jumps into a dimension in which Schieffer has become president and he commands an army of cybernetic men in order to suppress all original thought. Or was that Dr. Who? 7 p.m. Linn Ullmann — author of Stella Descending and the daughter of legendary director, screenwriter, and author Ingmar Bergman — will... [continue]

MONDAY: Steve Gillon will be at the New America Foundation to discuss The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry that Defined a Generation. 12:15 p.m. Washington, D.C.-based author and journalist Ron Suskind will be at Politics and Prose to discuss his latest book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism. 7 p.m. TUESDAY: George Pelecanos and contributors Rhozier "Roach" Brown and James Grady will... [continue]

TUESDAY: Bobby Austin will be at Busboys and Poets in D.C. to sign and discuss Circus Clowns & Carnival Animals: Growing Up in the Ebb and Flow of Rural Black Life. 6 p.m. Daniel Mendelsohn, the best-selling author of The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, will make an appearance at Politics and Prose to talk about his latest collection of essays, How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken.... [continue]

Some of us on staff here at DCist are unrepentant video game nerds, so we couldn't help but notice this posting yesterday on the gaming site Penny Arcade about Marissa, a 9-month-old Annandale, Virginia, resident who was diagnosed with a rare pediatric condition called Infantile Spasms (IS). Marissa's dad, being a gaming fan like us, sent the guys at Penny Arcade an e-mail asking if they could take one of Marissa's three stuffed bunnies named... [continue]

MONDAY: Moustafa Mohamed Bayoumi, a professor of English at Brooklyn College, will be at Politics and Prose to talk about How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America, the story of seven young Arab and Muslim Americans forging lives for themselves in the U.S. post-9/11. 7 p.m. TUESDAY: Betsy Hartmann will be at Busboys and Poets to sign and discuss her novel, Deadly Election, the story of a mysterious... [continue]

A simple interpretation of "Chekhov's gun," a literary device made popular by author and playwright Anton Chekhov, is that if there's a gun in a story, at some point somebody should fire it. In other words, every detail in a story, no matter how small, should exist to move the narrative along. Even if the hypothetical gun is never fired, its very existence could be used to create an unnerving atmosphere crucial to the story.... [continue]

Like some poorly constructed M. Night Shyamalan film, something must be in the air killing off our favorite D.C. bands. The latest casualty is Telograph (***), who we've reviewed several times in the past. The band, which will be playing their farewell show at the 9:30 Club this Friday, wrote the following on their MySpace blog: Dear Friends, It is with a heavy heart that we announce this: Telograph has come to an end. We... [continue]

TUESDAY: Breena Clarke, a Washington D.C. native and alumna of Howard University, will be at Politics and Prose to discuss her novel, Stand the Storm, which is set in Georgetown but takes place before and during the Civil War. 7 p.m. Arjun Makhijani discusses and signs his book, Carbon-Free And Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy, at Busboys and Poets in D.C. 6 p.m. WEDNESDAY: Daniel Levitin and songwriter and record producer Parthenon Huxley... [continue]

MONDAY: Award-winning author and columnist Maggie Jackson will be at the Busboys and Poets in D.C. to talk about Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. If a dark age is characterized by a decline in civilization, and Jackson believes it's only just now "coming," she hasn't been watching enough reality TV. 6:30 p.m. Dick Meyer, a long-time CBS journalist who now spends his time with NPR, will be making an appearance... [continue]

MONDAY: Prize-winning Civil War historian Noah Andre Trudeau talks about Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea at the Barnes and Noble in Georgetown. 7:30 p.m. Sheryll Cashin will be at Politics and Prose to talk about The Agitator's Daughter: A Memoir of Four Generations of One Extraordinary African-American Family. 7 p.m. TUESDAY: Steven Shafarman will be at the Busboys and Poets in D.C. to sign and discuss Peaceful, Positive Revolution: Economic Security for Every... [continue]

MONDAY: Michaele Weissman will be at Politics and Prose to talk about God in a Cup, Weissman’s investigation of coffee at every stage of its production, marketing and consumption. 7 p.m. Leora Kahn will be at Busboys and Poets in D.C. to discuss and sign copies of Darfur: Twenty Years of War and Genocide in Sudan. 6:30 p.m. Martin Clark will be at the Olsson's in Dupont Circle to read from The Legal Limit, the... [continue]

MONDAY: Karen Dawn will be Thanking the Monkey at the Olsson's in Dupont Circle. No, that doesn't mean what you think. Dawn, who founded the animal advocacy media group DawnWatch.com, merely wants us to rethink the way we treat animals. For starters, chimpanzees want all you horrible sitcom and commercial writers out there to stop calling them monkeys. They're apes, dorks. 7 p.m. Law professor Cass Sunstein will make an appearance at Politics and Prose... [continue]

MONDAY: Ethan Canin, bestselling author of the The Palace Thief, will make an appearance at Politics and Prose to discuss America, America, a novel about America as it was and is. Or as Sam the Eagle would say, "It's a tribute to all nations, but mostly America." 7 p.m. Rebecca Harrison Reed, a local artist, will be at the Olsson's in Old Town Alexandria to read from and discuss her work illustrating The Train to... [continue]

MONDAY: Stella Rimington will make an appearance at the Olsson's in Dupont Circle to talk about the new installment in her series of books about MI5 officer Liz Carlyle, Illegal Action. When it comes to mysteries and thrillers, an illegal action has to be more interesting than a legal action, right? 7 p.m. When he isn't making creepy YouTube videos, presidential candidate Mike Gravel is writing books about the military-industrial complex and the imperial presidency.... [continue]

Back in March we wrote about how the literary web site Hitotoki (pronounced hee toe toe key) was seeking submissions to launch a D.C. edition. Sadly it appears our post wasn't enough to give the site enough momentum. Greg Lavallee, who was handling the submissions for the D.C. site, wrote to DCist today:It is with a heavy heart that I deliver news of Hitotoki D.C.'s demise. Unfortunately, we were unable to gather enough quality submissions... [continue]

MONDAY: John Harwood, chief Washington correspondent for CNBC and a political writer for The New York Times, will be at the Busboys and Poets in D.C. to discuss and sign copies of his new book, Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power. 7:30 p.m. Alan Furst will be at Politics and Prose to discuss his new novel, the tenth in the Night Soldiers series, The Spies of Warsaw. 7 p.m. Michael I. Meyerson will be at... [continue]

MONDAY: Jonathan Miles will be at the Olsson's in Dupont Circle to talk about his novel, Dear American Airlines, the story of a man stuck at Chicago's O’Hare airport with thousands of other passengers who decides to write a complaint letter. 7 p.m. Conservative columnist George Will will make an appearance at Politics and Prose to discuss and sign copies of his new book, One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation.... [continue]

With June inevitably comes summer music. We're not just talking about the catchy pop singles you blast on your car radio with the windows rolled down, but also the songs that seem to drift from the speakers during those late-night talks with your friends on somebody's porch. Washington D.C.'s The Fairline Parkway exists in that dreamy space inhabited by bands such as Yo La Tengo and Grizzly Bear, where slide guitars mingle with the occasional... [continue]