Past, Present, and Future of Bookselling

Celebrate the 40th anniversary of Politics and Prose with an enlightening discussion between industry experts about the state of the book business. Hear directly from authors, critics, publishers, and sellers on how they approach the constantly evolving book business and their predictions for the industry's future.

Includes opening remarks and celebratory toast by co-owners Bradley Graham and Lissa Muscatine.

Featuring:

Wil Haygood is the author of ten books, among them prizewinning biographies of Thurgood Marshall, Sammy Davis Jr., Sugar Ray Robinson, and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. His book, The Butler, was made into a film directed by Lee Daniels. Haygood has been a reporter for The Washington Post and the Boston Globe, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. A Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, in 2022 Haygood received the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award from the Dayton International Literary Peace Prize Committee.

He is a Visiting Scholar at Miami University in Ohio.

Ruth Liebmann joined Penguin Random House in 1995 and is currently Vice President, Account Marketing. She has worked at a literary agency, as an editor, as an author, and in an independent bookstore. Her first visit to Politics & Prose was in 1999.

Katy Waldman is a staff writer at The New Yorker, for which she writes about books, culture, and more. Previously, she was a staff writer at Slate and the host of the “Slate’s Audio Book Club” podcast. She won the National Book Critics Circle’s Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing in 2019 and the American Society of Magazine Editors’s award for journalists under thirty in 2018.

Susan Coll has worked at Politics and Prose for seven years as both the director of Events and Programs and now as the Events Advisor. She is the author of seven novels, including Bookish People and Real Life and Other Fictions, and was the president of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation for five years. Her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, Washingtonian Magazine, Moment Magazine, NPR.org, and Atlantic.com.

Bradley Graham is co-owner of Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, DC. He and his wife, Lissa Muscatine, assumed ownership of P&P in 2011. Previously, Brad spent 30 years with The Washington Post as a reporter and editor focused mostly on foreign and national security affairs. He also has written two books---Hit to Kill, an account published in 2001 of renewed U.S. efforts to build a national missile defense system, and By His Own Rules, a biography of Donald Rumsfeld published in 2009.

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Founded by Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade in 1984, Politics and Prose Bookstore is Washington, D.C.'s premier independent bookstore and cultural hub, a gathering place for people interested in reading and discussing books. Politics and Prose offers superior service, unusual book choices, and a haven for book lovers in the store and online.