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Patricia Grace King — Those Who Vanish - with Anna Lapera — at Union Market

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Winner of the 2026 Drue Heinz Literature PrizeTaking place during the decades-long civil conflict, Those Who Vanish follows the stories of Guatemalan citizens and North American expats set on a collision course by war. Across eight stories, martyrs and missionaries, guerrillas and gringos are thrown together amid political violence. A peace worker shelters a rebel fighter. An exile returns to confront the legacy of her parents' murders. The Virgin Mary begins appearing above an elderly woman's stove. Set in a world of daily disappearances, the collection addresses a vital question: when all certainties are snatched away, what remains of lives, of memory, of faith?Patricia Grace King grew up in North Carolina and has since lived in Spain, Guatemala, and the UK, where she resides. Her work has won the Miami University Novella Prize, the Arts & Letters Fiction Prize, and the Florida Review’s Leiby Prize. Other stories have been published by Ploughshares, The Gettysburg Review, Narrative, and Nimrod. A former Carol Houck Smith Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, she has received additional support from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, and the British Library. Those Who Vanish is her first book.King will be in conversation with Anna Lapera, a Guatemalan-American author and educator. Her debut novel, Mani Semilla Finds Her Quetzal Voice, is an International Latino Book Award winner, a 2025 International Literacy Association Honor Book, and was named one of the Best of 2024 by the New York Public Library, and others. Her forthcoming 2028 novel, Birdsong in the Long Night, is a YA thriller set in 1978 Guatemala City that follows a burgeoning journalist as she awakens to the resistance movements unfolding around her and uncovers the truth about the mother she believed to be long dead. C.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.

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Nov21
Author EventWashington, DC

Jennifer Anne Moses and Stuart P. Green — The Rebbe of Baton Rouge - With Amy E. Schwartz — at Union Market

6:00 PM • Saturday, November 21, 2026Politics & Prose · Politics and Prose at Union MarketFree

This event is in partnership with Moment Magazine.Anna Zisk is a professor of Yiddish literature who, after being accused of an inappropriate relationship with a grad student, flees her settled life in Boston and seeks refuge at her childhood home in Baton Rouge. There, she's forced to confront her long-ago first boyfriend, who claims he still loves her; a fraught relationship with her sister; and the uneasy feeling of never having quite belonged in the Deep South. To top it all off, she's been relegated to teaching LSU football players basic composition--a skill they do not crave and will not master. Meanwhile, Adam Kluger, the new rabbi in town, is struggling to keep his congregation afloat in a small southern city where there are barely enough Jews to fill a high school gymnasium. It doesn't help that his ex-fiance left him; the cross-town rival synagogue's rabbi is poaching his shul's members; and he's being haunted by a spectral, Yiddish-speaking, elderly Hasid who pops up at the most inopportune moments. Not to mention that he's falling in love with Anna. The Rebbe of Baton Rouge is funny, absorbing, and twisty. A genre-bending, Yiddish-infused, southern lit rom-com that digs deep into the dynamics of this proud but vulnerable community--their rivalries and friendships; pettiness and generosity; faith and skepticism; insecurities and sense of solidarity.Jennifer Anne Moses is the author of nine previous books of fiction and nonfiction, including Bagels and Grits: A Jew on the Bayou, a memoir. Her novels explore family, identity, and the messy beauty of everyday life.Stuart P. Green is a Distinguished Professor of Law at Rutgers University and the author of several books on criminal law and philosophy.Moses and Green will be in conversation with Amy E. Schwartz, the opinion and book editor of Moment Magazine, as well as editor of the magazine's popular "Ask the Rabbis" section. She is editor of the 2020 book Can Robots Be Jewish? And Other Pressing Questions of Modern Life. Before joining Moment in 2011, she spent 17 years as an editorial writer and weekly op-ed columnist at The Washington Post. She has also worked at Harper's, The New Republic and The Wilson Quarterly. Schwartz is president of the non-denominational Jewish Study Center, an independent adult education institution in Washington, DC. 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.