Capital Love Lit Fest is Happening on Sunday, June 28th
The Capital Love Lit Fest is the kick-off event for Washington Writers’ Publishing House’s Summer of Love Tour!
Join us for a marathon literary salon of writing workshops, deep-dive literary discussions, and poetry and prose readings from the new WWPH pocket-sized anthology, Capital Love, at the Writer’s Center of Bethesda on Sunday, June 28th. The Capital Love Lit Fest and our anthology are dedicated to all those who believe love is the antidote to hate and that love is action, intent, healing, and hope. This event is designed to inspire and generate your writing, deepen your craft, introduce you to the Washington Writers’ Publishing House community, and to raise up our collective voices in literary solidarity.
WHEN: Sunday, June 28th. Doors open at 10 am. The event ends at 6 pm.
WHERE: The Writer’s Center of Bethesda
COST: Pay-as-you-can. Free, if that works for you!
Travel notes: Parking on Sunday is free directly across from the Writer’s Center. The Bethesda Metro stop is also within walking distance.
We do ask you to RSVP at the Writer’s Center here. RSVPS will be checked at the door. Attendance will be limited to 120 people, which is the capacity for the theater at the Writer’s Center, so reserve your seat now.
All monies from this pay-as-you-can donation will be shared between your WWPH and the Writer’s Center of Bethesda, two nonprofit literary organizations dedicated to supporting the DMV literary community.
The Capital Love LitFest is made possible by generous grants from the Maryland State Arts Council and the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities.
Schedule of Events
Panels
WWPH Through the Decades
11:15 am – 12:00 pm (Theater)
Moderated by Jona Colson. Featuring Grace Cavalieri, E. Ethelbert Miller, Jane Schapiro, Sid Gold, Katherine Smith, David Taylor, Robert Herschbach, Jason Gebhardt, Emily Holland, Melanie Hatter, and Kim Roberts Meikle.
Join us to celebrate our writers through the decades! Participants will read and discuss stories with Washington Writers’ Publishing House. Authors from the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and beyond!
Black Women Writers on love, healing, and hope
11:15 am – 12:00 pm (Downstairs Lounge)
Moderated by Dine Watson. Featuring Michele Evans, Karen Outen, Vonatte Young, and DeBorah Gilbert
Black Women writers who are shaping their local writing communities come together in one room to discuss the power of love, healing, and hope in writing practices and the work they put into the world.
How to Keep Joy in Our Writing NOW?
12:15 pm – 1:00 pm (Theater)
Moderated by Caroline Bock. Featuring Sean Felix, David Ebenbach, Kara Oakleaf, and Zach Powers
Poets and novelists share what joy they find in the world and how they continue to channel this energy into their writing, even in the face of a turbulent world. We ask the writers from the new Capital Love anthology to share how joy, as much as love, can be an act of resistance.
Voices In Motion On Translation
12:15 pm – 1:00 pm (Downstairs Lounge)
Moderated by Jona Colson. Featuring Yvette Nieser, Nancy Naomi Carlson, and Katie King
Join members of DC-ALT (the DC-metro group of American Literary Translators) for a dynamic 45-minute panel exploring the art and purpose of literary translation in the DMV. This conversation brings together translators to share their journeys, what draws them to the craft, and how language shapes meaning across cultures—featuring brief examples from their own work.
Queer Loves
2:00 pm – 2:45 pm (Theater)
Moderated by Kim Roberts Meikle. Featuring Alex Carrigan, Brandon Blue, Chris Biles, and Jona Colson.
Members of the LGBTQIA+ community come together for an intimate and powerful conversation on poetry—sharing their own work alongside poems by queer writers who have shaped and inspired them. This session explores identity, voice, lineage, and the ways in which poetry becomes both a personal and a collective act of expression, resistance, and celebration.
I’d Love to Get Published, But How?
2:00 pm – 2:45 pm (Downstairs Lounge)
Moderated by Emily Holland (Poet Lore). Featuring Steven Leyva, Hannah Harlee (ARTWIFE), and Courtney LeBlanc (Riot in Your Throat).
Join writers and editors for a conversation about the tips and tricks to a variety of paths to publication. From lit mags to traditional publishing, these authors have a wealth of experience to share.
Workshops
Writing Love with Emily Blumberg
11:15 am – 12:00 pm (Downstairs, Classroom 5)
Emily’s workshop is a time to explore the purpose and value of love in our lives through exercises that play off common expressions of love (ex: love letters, love songs, etc). We will work in both groups and individually to consider what it means to love each other, this city, and ourselves in 2026.
Poetry Workshop with Steve Levya
12:15 pm – 1:00 pm (Downstairs, Classroom 5)
Disrupting the Present: Writing Narrative Jumps Forward with Samantha Neugebauer
2:00 – 2:45 pm (Downstairs, Classroom 5)
Joy, hope, and resistance emerge from our faith that the world is not stagnant, that things can and do change. In fiction, change is often dramatized through the passage of time. But what are some methods for writing successful forward time jumps in our stories? In this generative workshop, we will look at some seminal and contemporary examples of successful temporal jumps forward in short and long fiction and practice our own!
All Authors
Chris Biles
Queer Loves Panel | Capital Love
Chris Biles (she/her) lives and works in Washington D.C.. She enjoys playing with light and dark, losing herself in music, anything outside, and some words here and there. She is published in magazines, journals, and anthologies in print and online. www.marks-in-the-sand.com / Instagram: @marks.in.the.sand
Brandon Blue
Queer Loves Panel | Capital Love
Brandon Blue is a black, queer poet, translator, and educator from the D(M)V. Their work appears in Foglifter, Frozen Sea, &Change, and more. His work is also featured in the Capital Pride Poem-a-Day event. Their chapbook, Snap.Shot (Finishing Line Press, 2023), was named in Poetry Mutual’s Best Books of 2023.
Emily Blumberg
Workshop Leader | Capital Love
Emily Blumberg is a writer and producer living and working in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Her writing is published in The 51st, Teen Vogue, Autism Spectrum News, and The Michigan Daily. She founded the Purple Line Collective, an arts and culture collective for young creatives in the DC area.
Caroline Bock
WWPH Editor | Joy Panel Host | Capital Love
Caroline Bock is the author of four books including the novel THE OTHER BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE (Regal House Publishing, 2026). She is the co-president/prose editor at the Washington Writers’ Publishing House.
Nancy Naomi Carlson
Translation Panel
Nancy Naomi Carlson’s translation of Khal Torabully’s Cargo Hold of Stars: Coolitude (Seagull Books, 2021) won the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. A recipient of two translation grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, her work has appeared in APR, Poetry, Paris Review, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, The Georgia Review, and The Writer’s Chronicle.
Alex Carrigan
Queer Loves Panel | Capital Love
Alex Carrigan (he/him) is a Pushcart-nominated editor, poet, and critic from Alexandria, VA. He is the author of Now Let’s Get Brunch (Querencia Press, 2023) and May All Our Pain Be Champagne (Alien Buddha Press, 2022).
Grace Cavalieri
Founder of WWPH | WWPH Through the Decades Panel | Capital Love
Grace Cavalieri is celebrating 49 years on public radio, with “The Poet and the Poem” now from the Library of Congress. She holds AWP’s “George Garret Award.” Her latest books include Fables From Italy and Beyond (Asterism Books, 2025) and The Third Eye. She lives in Annapolis, MD.
Ellen Aronofsky Cole
Capital Love
Ellen Aronofsky Cole is the author of two poetry collections—Notes from the Dry Country (Mayapple Press, 2019) and Prognosis (Finishing Line Press, 2011). Journal publications include Bellevue Literary Review, Gargoyle, Little Patuxent Review, Potomac Review, Innisfree, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Fledgling Rag, New Verse News, Ekphrastic Review, and Mid-Atlantic Review.
Jona Colson
WWPH Editor | Queer Loves Panel | Capital Love
Jona Colson is a poet, educator, and translator, and is the author of Said Through Glass (Washington Writers’ Publishing House Jean Feldman Poetry Prize, 2018). He is also the translator of Aguas/Waters by Miguel Avero and the co-editor of America’s Future: poetry and prose in response to today (2025).
Kyle G. Dargan
Capital Love
Kyle G. Dargan is the author of six poetry collections. An Associate Professor of Literature and Creative Communications at American University and the Books Head for Janelle Monae’s creative company Wondaland. Dargan also, along with Shyree Mezick, operates as the creative consulting firm SKKS Creates. More at www.american-boi.com.
David Ebenbach
Joy in Writing | Capital Love
David Ebenbach is the author of eleven books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. David lives with his family in Washington, DC. He teaches creative writing, literature, and creativity, and supports teaching practices of faculty and graduate students at Georgetown University. You can find out more at www.davidebenbach.com.
Michele Evans
Black Women Writers
Michele Evans is the author of februaries (Yellow Arrow Publishing, 2026) and purl (Finishing Line Press, 2025). Before becoming an educator, this fifth-generation Washingtonian (DC) studied at Smith College, King’s College-London, and the Graduate School at the University of Maryland. This Watering Hole Fellow has been published in Artemis, Bellevue Literary Review, Gargoyle, and other places. www.awordsmithie.com.
Sean Felix
Joy in Writing | Capital Love
Sean Felix is a citizen poet from Washington, DC. He has performed and read with local jazz bands and literary reading series. He has published poems with Broken Spine, Humana Obscura, the Mid-Atlantic Review, Sunday Mornings at the River, and numerous other literary journals.
Jason Gebhardt
WWPH Through the Decades | Capital Love
Jason Gebhardt is the author of the chapbook Good Housekeeping and the full-length poetry collection Dictionary of Air (Washington Writers’ Publishing House, 2027). He is the recipient of multiple Artist Fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
DeBorah Gilbert
Black Women Writers
DeBorah Gilbert White is a social psychologist, housing justice and homelessness advocate, and a triple-certified coach. She is lead practitioner at S.P.A.R.K Coaching LLC, host of the “Empowered For Change” YouTube channel, and author of Beyond Charity: A Sojourner’s Reflections on Homelessness, Advocacy, Empowerment and Hope.
Sid Gold
WWPH Through the Decades | Capital Love
Sid Gold is the author of Very Eyes (Poets’ Choice, 2023). He is a two-time recipient of the MSAC Individual Artist Award for Poetry and was named one of Baltimore Magazine’s Best Poets. His poems have appeared in reviews and journals for more than forty years. He lives in Hyattsville, MD.
Hannah Harlee
I’d Love to Get Published | ARTWIFE Founder and EIC
Hannah Harlee is the founder of ARTWIFE Magazine and the host of The ARTWIFE Podcast. She has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from UNR Lake Tahoe, where she served as the faculty advisor and managing editor for the Sierra Nevada Review. She writes essays, short stories, and long-form fiction; teaches creative writing for adults; and works 1:1 with writers to develop and edit their creative writing projects.
Melanie Hatter
WWPH Through the Decades
Melanie S. Hatter is the author of Malawi’s Sisters, which was selected by Edwidge Danticat as the winner of the inaugural Kimbilio National Fiction Prize and published by Four Way Books in 2019. Her debut novel, The Color of My Soul, won the 2011 Washington Writers’ Publishing House Fiction Prize, and Let No One Weep for Me: Stories of Love and Loss was released in 2015.
Robert Herschbach
WWPH Through the Decades
Robert Herschbach is the author of Loose Weather (Washington Writers’ Publishing House, 2013) and A Lost Empire (Ion Books, 1994), with new work forthcoming in Southern Poetry Review and The Southern Review. He lives in Laurel, Maryland with his wife and four cats.
Emily Holland
I Would Love to Get Published | Poet Lore Executive Editor
Emily Holland (they/she) is a genderqueer lesbian writer living in Baltimore, MD. Their work appears in publications including HAD, Shenandoah, DIALOGIST, Little Patuxent Review, and Black Warrior Review. They are the Executive Editor of Poet Lore, America’s oldest poetry journal, and the Communications Manager at The Writer’s Center. Learn more about Emily Holland at https://emily-holland.com/
Katie King
Voices In Motion: On Translation
Katie King is a journalist, scholar, and literary translator whose poetry and prose translations from the Spanish have appeared in print and online. She has lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in Spain and Latin America. Her research focuses on the evolution of translation and translation studies in the digital age, and on the literature of Spain in translation to English.
Courtney LeBlanc
I Would Love to Get Published | Riot in Your Throat Founder and EIC
Courtney LeBlanc is author of the full length collections Her Dark Everything (Riot in Your Throat, 2025), Her Whole Bright Life, winner of the Jack McCarthy Book Prize (Write Bloody, 2023), Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart (Riot in Your Throat, 2021), and Beautiful & Full of Monsters (VA Press, 2020). She is the Arlington Poet Laureate Emeritus (2023-2025), a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts fellow (2022), and the founder and editor-in-chief of Riot in Your Throat, an independent poetry press.
Steven Leyva
Craft Workshop | I Would Love to Get Published
Steven Leyva was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and raised in Houston, Texas. He is a Cave Canem fellow and author of the chapbook Low Parish and author of The Understudy’s Handbook which won the Jean Feldman Poetry Prize from Washington Writers Publishing House. Steven holds an MFA from the University of Baltimore, where he is an associate professor in the Klein Family School of Communications Design.
Kim Roberts Meikle
WWPH Through the Decades | Queer Love | Capital Love
Kim Roberts Meikle is the author of seven books of poems, most recently Q&A for the End of the World, a collaboration with Michael Gushue (WordTech Editions, 2025). Meikle co-curates DC Pride Poem-a-Day and co-directs the Pride Poetry Fellowship at the Arts Club of Washington.
E. Ethelbert Miller
WWPH Through the Decades | Capital Love
E. Ethelbert Miller is a literary activist and author of two memoirs and several poetry collections. Miller is an Associate Editor and a columnist for The American Book Review. He was given a 2020 congressional award from Congressman Jamie Raskin in recognition of his literary activism, awarded the 2022 Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement Award by the Peace and Justice Studies Association, and named a 2023 Grammy Nominee Finalist for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album.
Samantha Neugebauer
Craft Workshop | Capital Love
Samantha Neugebauer is the author of the story collection Villains (Washington Writers’ Publishing House, 2027) and craft book Teaching Writing through Reimaginings (Bloomsbury). She lectures at NYU in Washington, DC, serves as senior editor of Painted Bride Quarterly, and holds an MFA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins.
Yvette Nieser
Voices In Motion: On Translation
Yvette Neisser is an award-winning poet, Spanish translator, and founder of the DC-Area Literary Translators Network. Her most recent collection is Iron into Flower (Finishing Line, 2022), and her latest co-translation of Venezuelan Maria Teresa Ogliastri’s work is forthcoming from Carnegie Mellon University Press. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Kara Oakleaf
Writing Joy | Capital Love
Kara Oakleaf’s stories appear in New Flash Fiction Review, Smokelong Quarterly, matchbook, and elsewhere, and have been selected for Best Small Fictions and the Wigleaf Top 50. She earned her MFA at George Mason, where she teaches and directs Watershed Lit and the Fall for the Book festival.
Karen Outen
Black Women Writers
Karen Outen’s fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, The North American Review, Essence, and elsewhere. She is a 2018 recipient of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award and has been a fellow at both the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan and the Pew Fellowships in the Arts. She received an MFA from the University of Michigan. She lives in Maryland.
Zach Powers
Joy in Writing | Capital Love
Zach Powers is the author of the forthcoming novel The Migraine Diaries (JackLeg, 2026), the novel First Cosmic Velocity, and the story collection Gravity Changes. He serves as Executive & Artistic Director for The Writer’s Center and Poet Lore. Originally from Savannah, Georgia, he now lives in Arlington, Virginia. ZachPowers.com
Jane Schapiro
WWPH Through the Decades
Jane Schapiro’s work has appeared in numerous journals. Her first book Tapping This Stone was published by WWPH in 1995. She is the author of two other volumes of poetry: Warbler, which won a 2020 Nautilus Award, and Let The Wind Push Us Across. Her nonfiction book Inside a Class Action: The Holocaust and the Swiss Banks was published by the University of Wisconsin.
Katherine Smith
WWPH Through the Decades
Katherine Smith’s work has been published in a number of journals, among them Missouri Review, Cincinnati Review, Ploughshares, Gargoyle, The Journal of the Motherhood Initiative, Poetry, Shenandoah, and The Southern Review. Her first book, Argument by Design (Washington Writers’ Publishing House), appeared in 2003. Her second book Woman Alone on the Mountain appeared with Iris Press in Fall 2014.
David Taylor
WWPh Through the Decades
David Taylor’s collection, Success: Stories, received the WWPH fiction prize. His fiction has appeared in Gargoyle, Jabberwock, Washington City Paper, and elsewhere, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He received his MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop and is writer- producer for “The People’s Recorder,” nominated for Best Indie podcast in the 2025 Ambies.
Bernardine “Dine” Watson
Black Women Writers
Bernardine (Dine) Watson is a nonfiction writer and poet who lives in Washington, DC. Dine’s book Transplant: A Memoir, won the 2023 Washington Writers’ Publishing House prize for nonfiction. Transplant was also chosen by National Public Radio as one of the 2023 “books we love” and featured in Poets and Writers Magazine as one of its 5 over 50 debuts. Her poetry has also appeared in numerous journals.
Vonatte Young
Black Women Writers
Vonetta Young is a writer based in Washington, DC. Her essays and fiction have appeared in Indiana Review, Barrelhouse, Lunch Ticket, Gargoyle, and the anthology, Furious Gravity, among others. She currently serves as Editor in Chief of The Offing, and she was previously Senior Fiction Editor at The Rumpus and Assistant Flash Editor at Hippocampus. To read her work, visit www.vonettayoung.com. Follow her on Instagram at @VonettaWrites.