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Shara McCallum — BEHOLD - with Chet'la Sebree — at Union Market
Past event
About This Event
Born of the poet's longstanding love of visual art, especially painting, Behold examines why we love what we love, and how we see (and are seen) by art. When we say we "saw" something, McCallum asks, what is it that we saw--outside of us, and within?Over two years spent working on this book, McCallum traveled to museums in the U.S. and abroad with the explicit goal of standing before works of art created by contemporary Caribbean, Black, and women artists. The resulting collection works to untangle what it means to locate oneself within the frame--to imagine belonging by entering the scene.Behold begins as a dialogue, a call and response traversing the territory McCallum is known for: history, interiority, identity, and the ways bodies present themselves in the world. These poems explore fulfillment and connection, the labor of seeking, the ache of loss, and the histories carried within the self. They are meditations on the existence of place within us, the way it is seeded within, and seeds us.From Jamaica and born to a Jamaican father and Venezuelan mother, Shara McCallum is the author of seven books of poetry, published in the US & UK, including Behold, forthcoming in 2026. Awards for her work include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Musgrave Medal, NEA Fellowship, Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for No Ruined Stone, OCM Bocas Caribbean Poetry Prize for Madwoman, Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize for The Water Between Us, among others. McCallum teaches at Penn State University and served as the Penn State Laureate from 2021-2022.McCallum will be in conversation with Chet'la Sebree, the author of the debut essay collection Turn (W)here: A Geography of Home, forthcoming from The Dial Press on May 5, 2026. She is also the author of three poetry collections: Blue Opening (Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, Lambda Literary Bisexual Poetry Award finalist, and longlisted for the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection); Field Study (winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets); and Mistress (New Issues Poetry Prize Winner and NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work-Poetry finalist). She is an assistant professor of English at the George Washington University and teaches in Randolph College’s Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program.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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Politics and Prose at Union Market
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Lindsay Merbaum — Witches of the Wheel — at Union Market
In her metaphysical mystery Witches of the Wheel, Lindsay Merbaum weaves a spellbinding tale of mythology, bartending, and queer belonging.Gold grows up knowing only a few things about herself: something lets her see ghosts and read her neighbors' secrets, and her mother seems to hate her. But when she strikes out on her own, she stumbles into a job at The Wheel, a literally-underground lesbian bar where a coven gathers every Thursday and each entrance requires a painful sacrifice. It feels like the first place she's belonged.But the bar, its patrons, and its history are more complicated, and more dangerous, than Gold ever realized. As she entangles herself in her new community, she learns more about herself than she wanted to know--and attracts an ancient goddess's deadly attention.Lindsay Merbaum is a queer feminist author and high priestess of home mixology. Her award-nominated short fiction has appeared in PANK, Anomalous Press, The Collagist, Epiphany, Gargoyle, Day One, Harpur Palate, and Hobart, among others. Essays and interviews can also be found in Electric Literature, Bustle, Bitch Media, The Huffington Post, The Rumpus, and more. A 2021 Foreword Indies Finalist, The Gold Persimmon was her first novel with Creature Publishing. Her second book, a smutty horror-comedy novella called Vampires at Sea, was a LibraryReads Bonus Pick. Lindsay lives in Flint, Michigan with her partner and cats.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.
Emily Yahr — Taylor Swift: The Debut Years - with Chris Richards — at Union Market
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.
Imbolo Mbue — Every Story Is a Love Story - with Angie Kim — at Union Market
From the New York Times bestselling author of Behold the Dreamers, a captivating novel about love lost—and the weight of regretWhat if I’d never gotten into that car? What if I’d pulled out of the driveway five minutes earlier, or ten minutes later?Three years ago, Wolo’s pregnant wife was killed in a tragic car accident. In an instant, the great love of his life was gone, and so was their beautiful future: the twins they were expecting, the PhD she was on the cusp of finishing, and the house they’d just bought in New Jersey. In the face of a loss that seemed insurmountable, Wolo has slowly rebuilt a semblance of a life: he goes to work, hangs out with a small circle of friends, and fends off the matchmaking efforts of the older women in his family. The grief that dogged him has, with time, become a little gentler.Until a letter arrives one day, unbidden, threatening to upend his life once again. It is from Victoria, the woman who was behind the wheel that terrible day. Wolo’s family pastor tells him the letter is the work of the devil; his mother expressly forbids him from making further mention of it; his father’s second wife calls, from Cameroon, to tell him to destroy it. But Wolo ponders it for days, and ultimately agrees to meet with the woman who killed his wife. When he does, the compassion and deep remorse of the woman affects him in ways he had never imagined, and he begins to wonder if the long road to healing can be shared. What do we owe to those who have hurt us? Are we defined by our worst moments and our deepest regrets? And, more than anything, can forgiveness ease our suffering? Moving and full of life, Every Story Is a Love Story charts the uneven path from heartbreak to healing.Imbolo Mbue is the author of the New York Times bestseller Behold the Dreamers, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was an Oprah’s Book Club selection. Her second novel, How Beautiful We Were, about a fictional African village’s fight against an American oil company, was named by the New York Times as “One of the 10 Best Books” of 2021. A native of Limbe, Cameroon, Mbue lives in New York.Mbue will be in conversation with Angie Kim, who moved as a preteen from Seoul, South Korea, to the suburbs of Baltimore. After graduating from Interlochen Arts Academy, she studied philosophy at Stanford University and attended Harvard Law School, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Her debut novel, Miracle Creek, won the Edgar Award, the ITW Thriller Award, the Strand Critics’ Award, and the Pinckley Prize and was named one of the best books of the year by Time, The Washington Post, Kirkus Reviews, and the Today show. Angie Kim lives in northern Virginia with her family.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.