Washington, D.C. is well known as a literary town, said to have the highest per capita book sales in the country. I've joined a book club that was formed via the Chevy Chase listserv and billed as a book club for men to focus on nonfiction. This to counter the prevalent book club paradigm of women reading fiction.
In the event, our first book was The Dream Life of Sukhanov by Olga Grushin, a novel. Our second selection was American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. And our last selection was Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew Across the Middle East Divide by Jeffrey Goldberg.
Without any plan or intention, our first three choices were all three books by Washington authors. Washington, of course, has many journalists, and many of them write books (Goldberg writes for The New Yorker). Many of the Post journalists write books -- Tom Ricks' Fiasco was a finalist for a Pulitzer this year; David Ignatius and Stephen Hunter write thrillers. Policy wonks, lawyers, and politicians are also wont to write books. But it seems the literary culture in the nation's capital is growing beyond such narrow categories and becoming a more generalized potpourri of literary interests.
There is a well-developed infrastructure to serve writers. Washington Independent Writers has a rich program of lectures, workshops and its annual conference, as well as small groups organized by genre or location. The Writers' Center in Bethesda also has programs. I go to a lunch every other week with a group of writers, and twice a year there is an informal dinner that draws as many as a hundred writers.
So this is making me feel at home. I've just found an agent to represent my latest novel (my last one was published in 1989), and it's helpful to feel like part of a community.
