To celebrate the release of Electric Grace: Still more Fiction by Washington Area Women tonight, editor Richard Peabody and ten of the book’s forty-two contributors will be reading selections from their work at Politics & Prose tonight at 7 p.m. Faye Moskowitz, a memoirist, poet, short story writer and professor, will read from her story “Completo (A Triptych),” from the journal, Story Quarterly. Professor Moskowitz—or just Faye, as she would have it—grew up in Detroit......

You'd think that, once the Almighty found himself on the business end of God Is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens' latest broadside, there'd be hell to pay. Instead, Hitchens' book became an international bestseller, racking up laudatory reviews and garnering an even larger audience for his witty contrarianism. Which makes one suspect that perhaps The Hitch is on to something. As if it needed more attention, yesterday God Is Not Great was named one of five......

The holiday shopping season is officially in full swing, so the literary reading cup runneth over and ruineth your coffee table with big names. Message from Big Literature: Books make great gifts! Message from DCist: Free readings help keep your entertainment budget low, which is helpful since you already have to spend your entire bonus on gifts for other people. MONDAY: Joan Collins is 73 years-old and still fabulous. We're not sure how she does......

Shalom, readers. The Washington, D.C. area welcomes competing Jewish Literature Festivals to town: The Hyman S. and Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival at the DCJCC and the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington’s 36th Annual Book Festival. Both festivals offer exciting programs. On 16th Street, the DCJCC kicks things off Monday with Nick Olcott, one of the leading lights in the local theater scene, paying special tribute to Arthur Miller and Saul Bellow. It continues......

No, Nigella Lawson (above) is not involved in this one (it seems that she's busy at the Royal Society of Literature, according to Londonist), but the news headlines would be all the better if she were ... Perhaps in an effort to make food sexy, a Maryland garden club in Frederick has produced a cookbook with recipes garnished with pictures of "nearly nude women" aged 55 to 70, the AP, via the W.Times, reports. It's......