This event has passed
Emily Yahr — Taylor Swift: The Debut Years - with Chris Richards — at Union Market
Past event
About This Event
Meet Taylor, 2003. She's a teen who came to Nashville with blisters on her fingers from learning to play a 12-string guitar. In every room she enters, she’s the youngest person (by decades) and often the only woman. And if anyone asked if she could see herself becoming the biggest superstar on the planet, her answer probably would have been yes.Writing alongside industry veterans after school, Taylor Swift’s songwriting ability set her apart. But her origins are more complex than a teen tapping into a new generation of country music fans. It’s a story of taking risks, like walking away from powerhouse label RCA to strike out with an unknown, unfunded new label, and of trusting her instincts when no one else did.Washington Post reporter Emily Yahr pulls back the curtain on the country music industry—from executives who said yes to Taylor (and those who regret saying no), to collaborators like Scott Borchetta, Nathan Chapman, and Liz Rose, to Nashville itself. Intimate and immersive, Yahr takes us to iconic locations like Music Row and The Bluebird Cafe, as well as to Hendersonville High and the Swifts’ own lakefront house.Taylor Swift: The Debut Years tells the definitive origin story of today’s biggest star, with never-before-published interviews. Taylor’s decade in Nashville shaped her as a musician, and ultimately changed country music itself long after she left the genre.Emily Yahr is an award-winning pop culture reporter in the Style section at The Washington Post, where she writes about TV, celebrities, music and movies. She is known for her coverage of country music and her coverage of Taylor Swift. Her first book is Taylor Swift: The Debut Years, a deep dive into Taylor Swift’s first 10 years in Nashville as a country music star. Yahr lives in Washington, DC.Yahr will be in conversation with Chris Richards.This event is free with first come, first serve seating.To request accommodations for this event or to inquire about accessibility please email events@politics-prose.com ideally one week in advance of the event date. We will make an effort to accommodate all requests up until the time of the event.
About the Venue
Politics & Prose · Politics and Prose at Union Market
Politics and Prose is a beloved and award-winning staple for book lovers around the nation's capital and the world. So Many Books, So Little Time.
Visit store pageMore at Politics & Prose · Politics and Prose at Union Market
Joanne Hyppolite & Toni Greenbaum — Bodyworks: The Jewelry of Art Smith - with Karen Davidov — at Union Market
Explore the wearable modern art of Art Smith, one of the world’s most celebrated 20th-century jewelersThis striking jewelry coffee table book features 160 photos of more than 60 jewelry piecesMid-century modernist jeweler Art Smith (1917-1982) considered the human body to be as integral to his jewelry as the metals, wire, and semiprecious stones he used to make it, calling his necklaces “neck pieces” and his rings “hand decorations.” Bodyworks: The Jewelry of Art Smith presents 160 images, including previously unpublished design sketches and historic photographs alongside newly commissioned photography. Together, they offer a comprehensive visual record of Smith’s bold, fluid, and creative designs, including: “Lava” bracelet which evokes volcanic movement through its layers of long, curving, and patinated sheet metal“Lil’s Wire” pendant, inspired by the atom, representing Smith’s interest in mid-century scientific discoveries and the space age“Minetta” necklace with a carnelian stone, whose name alludes to the historical Little Africa neighborhood in New York CityArt Smith was influenced by jazz, dance, visual art, pan-African regalia, and relationships he formed with New York’s African American arts community. In his Greenwich village studio, he created custom pieces for many high-profile clients, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and jazz pianist Duke Ellington, and had work featured in Vogue. Art Smith was a luminary to his contemporaries and remains one to today's artists. With stunning photography and essays that reflect on his life, influences, and legacy, Bodyworks is the magnificent retrospective Smith's pioneering career deserves.The Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History & Culture is the only national museum devoted exclusively to the documentation of African American life, history, and culture. Joanne Hyppolite is the Assistant Director for Culture at the museum and curator of the Cultural Expressions permanent exhibition which showcases Art Smith's work. Under her direction, the museum has acquired two major archival collections on Art Smith.Toni Greenbaum is an art historian specializing in twentieth and twenty-first-century jewelry and metalwork. She has written extensively on modernist jewelry, including Messengers of Modernism: American Studio Jewelry 1940-1960, considered the standard text on the subject.Moderating the conversation will be Karen Davidov, an independent art and design producer, and founder of the Jewelry Library in New York City.This event is free with first come, first serve seating.To request accommodations for this event or to inquire about accessibility please email events@politics-prose.com ideally one week in advance of the event date. We will make an effort to accommodate all requests up until the time of the event.
Midnight Maas - A Court of Thorns and Roses Release Party
Book release party for A Court of Splintered Harmony!Join us for an evening of excitement - we'll have:Costume contestTriviaCraftsFace paintingSnacks and a midnight champagne pop!The book is included in the ticket price.
Zaina Arafat — Our Arab: On Longing, Belonging, and Hope - with Stephanie Merry — at Union Market
A poignant, moving essay collection on the longing and hope of living in diaspora and what it means to be Palestinian today, from the Lambda Literary Award-winning author of You Exist Too Much.Fewer and fewer Palestinians living in the diaspora today have direct experiences of their homeland. How can they maintain a connection to a land so volatile, ever shrinking, and nearly unattainable? And how can a child of diaspora raise a child of diaspora, at a time when Palestinians throughout the world—particularly those living in their homeland—are more vulnerable than ever to censorship, violence, and erasure?Luminous, joyous, and evocative, Our Arab: On Longing, Belonging, and Hope is Zaina Arafat's highly anticipated follow-up to her award-winning novel You Exist Too Much. In essays that move from Nablus to the Appalachian Mountains and from Amman to Manhattan, Arafat reveals “in a singularly compelling voice” (Leslie Jamison) that to live in diaspora is to exist in a state of longing: longing to be elsewhere, longing to return home, and longing to know what home is. A call to action and a call to love, Our Arab holds many truths at once—about society, identity, and family—and flashes with radical compassion, fierce pride, bitter loss, and righteous anger, forming an incredibly complex portrait of what it means to be Palestinian today.Zaina Arafat is the author of Our Arab and the debut novel You Exist Too Much, winner of a Lambda Literary Award. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Granta, Harper's Bazaar, The Believer, Vice, and BuzzFeed. She teaches writing at Barnard College and lives with her family in New York.Joining Arafat in conversation will be Stephanie Merry, a features editor at The Washington Post, where she has worked since 2008. She previously served as deputy editor of The Post's Book World and was a staff writer covering movies, television and other forms of cultureThis event is free with first come, first serve seating.To request accommodations for this event or to inquire about accessibility please email events@politics-prose.com ideally one week in advance of the event date. We will make an effort to accommodate all requests up until the time of the event.