Join Kris for "Between the Lines," a monthly session that is equal parts book club, writing workshop, and creative inspiration.
Bring a book to share with a neighbor, and one for our Community Book Nook, too!
Refresh your library and help us build up our Community Book Nook to keep our books accessible to everyone. The theme for this month is radical growth (but feel free to bring any books you want). We’ll gather in the cafe to enjoy warm drinks and good conversation.
We hope you’ll come away with a new book, and maybe a new buddy.
Join us for a conversation between Dr Oiyan Poon, author of the recent book Asian American is Not a Color: Conversations about Race, Affirmative Action, and Family, and local author Deepa Iyer!
Join us for a story hour in our event room!
Story time attendees will receive 15% off all picture books. All ages welcome, but those under 12 will enjoy it the most.
Join us for ninety minutes of dedicated time and space each month to sit in the company of other writers and, well, write!
We invite you to join us at Craft & Cry for some cathartic stitching, glueing, knitting, chatting, and yeah maybe a little crying. It’s a tough moment in DC / the country / the world, and we like to handle that by coming together with awesome people who get it.
Bring your current craft project, or pick one up here, and commiserate with us. Potter’s staff will be working on embroidery, crochet, block prints, and paint kits and would be happy to demonstrate.
Let’s craft, cry, and carry on.
Bring a book to share with a neighbor, and one for our Community Book Nook, too!
For our post-holiday book swap, we encourage you to write a little note in the book you bring to share — about why you liked it, what you hope for its new owner, or whatever you’re moved to say.
We’ll gather in the cafe to enjoy warm drinks and good conversation. We hope you’ll come away with a new book, and maybe a new buddy.
Make the shortest day of the year fun and bright with a story hour in our sparkly event room! Story time attendees will receive 15% off all picture books.
All ages welcome, but those under 12 will enjoy it the most.
Peruse the booths of local artists in our festively decked out event space, then lounge with a book and a hot chocolate in our new Community Book Nook. It's the most relaxing way we know to browse for holiday gifts.
We’re accepting proposals from vendors until December 1! If you’re interested, please email bookstore@pottershousedc.org.
Join authors nat raum (Camera Indomita, Specter Dust, and more), Alex Carrigan (May All Our Pain Be Champagne, Now Let's Get Brunch) and Katherine Schmidt (local poet).
Join us on Black Friday for a relaxed day of gaming. Bring your own, pick one up at the shop, or borrow one of our cafe games to while away the afternoon with good company and good books!
Join your neighbors to share a favorite family recipe! Come together to talk about food during the tastiest month of the year. We’ll have designated tables for the swap so you can sit with tea, biscuit, etc. and learn a great new recipe (and its story).
We encourage you to bring a cookbook - or any book - to contribute to our Community Book Nook (and maybe find a new one for yourself). See you on Saturday!
Join us for live music from local musician Lou Black and his Special Musical Guest. All ticket sales will support Pay It Forward, a free meals program offered daily at The Potter’s House.
Lou Black: Lou Black is a Peruvian born, Washington DC area singer/songwriter/producer/video artist/statistician with an international following in 136 countries. His 2004 debut album (“City of No Winters”) has been described by the press as “sophisticated global pop” and “one of the best in the singer songwriter genre,” but Lou Black describes his music as “subversive pop songs of social commentary and personal struggle. I have many musical influences, my primary ones being Roy Orbison and the Velvet Underground, but I always like to keep track of what listeners/fans say I remind them of. The list is broad, but there are some frequent references to Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, Roy Orbison, Bryan Ferry, Lou Reed, Nick Cave, Johnny Cash, Weezer, Pixies, Billy Idol, Tom Waits, Enrique Bunbury, and Raul Seixas, to name a few."
Lou is best known for his popular 2004 song “Searching for a Land of Love,” a song that continues to be his most streamed song on Spotify. His latest album, "Lovely Ashes from the Broken Hearts," released in May 2024 was described by Americana Highways as "Lovely with a touch of quavering vulnerability... the vibe is sparkly and bright." This album featured a variety of female vocalists from the DMV and Philadelphia (Flo Anito, Erin Frisby, Jacie Lee, Heather Aubrey Lloyd, and Meet the Bug).
Broommaker: Broommaker began as Teething Veils in 2006 in Washington, DC, playing occasional live shows at places such as the Montgomery College Planetarium and their own living room at 611 Florida Ave, becoming more active about six years later. They have released five LPs (Velorio, 2013; Constellations, 2014; Sea and Sun, 2017; Canopy of Crimson, 2020; and To Have and to Hold, 2022) and a 7” single (Dinner Date, 2015) through the artist-run DC-and-Santa-Fe-based collective Etxe Records. They have played live with audiences in 47 US states and the District of Columbia, and two Canadian provinces. The band members also play, or have played, in The Antiques, Daamsel, Kohoutek, The OSYX, Parlor Scouts, Prom Concussion, Seamstresses, Silo Halo, and Void Vision.
Acacia Sears: Acacia Sears is a Baltimore-based singer songwriter whose work is rooted in true life stories, thick with metaphor and imagery, percussive while being poetic. She has released two indie rock albums and one children’s album, and is recording her next indie rock album to be released in early 2025. This project, “Egress,” talks about grief, divorce, and finding new love, and includes a murder ballad called “Burn the Bed,” a surprising work of fiction that maintains an honest core.
Join us for Something To Lose EP by Lyla DiPaul indie folk artist showcasing love letters that express moments of doubt, heartbreak, and personal growth.
TIckets available here: https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/lyla-dipaul/lyla-dipaul-something-to-lose-acoustic-tour
Open to the public!
Join your neighbors to exchange spooky reads: thrillers, dark academia, horror, ghosty, cozy, etc. We appreciate your help in building up a free library to improve access to books in our neighborhood.
Join Potter's House bookseller Aliza Cohen for an evening of tarot history, conversation, and instruction.
Aside from being your friendly neighborhood bookseller Aliza is also a cartomancer with over two decades of experience. Join her for a brief discussion on the history and structure of tarot, group practice readings, and personal instruction. Whether you're new to tarot or a practiced hand, all cartomancers welcome!
Suggested donation for this workshop is $10. If you donate $35 or more you will also get a complimentary tarot deck hand-selected for this workshop. Your donation will go directly towards providing nourishing food and a welcoming community to those who may otherwise not have access to them. It’s because of people like you that we can sustain and grow our efforts to make a positive impact on the lives of so many.
Get your ticket here: https://givebutter.com/Potters-house-tarot
Join us at The Potter’s House for an evening of music from three different artists from all over!
TICKETS: BIT.LY/SOULANDSONG24
Doors at 6:30, Showtime at 7:00PM
🙀🫨Turn your election anxiety into civic action!✨🗳️
We’re hosting our friends from Sincerely, DC as their organize a handful of letter writing parties here at The potter’s House. Join them as they’ll be writing to voters in historically disenfranchised districts throughout the 2024 swing states; sending handwritten letters and localized “how to vote” guides with all of the up-to-date ID laws, voting dates, etc!
Opportunities to join the group are as follows:
Sept. 15 - 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Sept. 29 - 1:30 PM - 3:30 PM
Oct. 20 - 1:30 PM - 3:30 PM
RSVP and learn more at https://linktr.ee/sincerely_dc
Join us every second Saturday of each month to share stories, music, poetry, discussion, performance and most of all, community. We are bringing back open mic nights and we will love the crowd and any performer!
Washington, DC – On October 8, 2024, 18 members of the local music community, paired into 9 duos will be debuting new songs they wrote to benefit Potters House DC Pay It Forward Program, providing roughly 100 meals a day to folks in need. The show is at DC9, 1940 9th St., NW. Tickets are $15 and available at the door or online. Participating songwriters are: Alexia Gabriella (Shalom), Antoñio Villaronga, Bev Stanton (Sad Veiled Bride), Christian Crowley (Boy Meets Pearl), Damien Bethel, Erin Frisby (Ammonite), Jasper Hobbs (Deccan Traps), Juels Bland, Lou Black, Mx. Mundy, Nina Goodman (Haircuts), Rebecca Berlin, Robzie Trulove (Lud Roes), Safety Bear, Sanjay Arora, Sea Griffin (Boy Meets Pearl), Talia Segal and Wytold. Songwriters were matched by choosing the same tarot card from a 9-card spread with the goal of getting musicians to work with other musicians they hadn’t worked with before or maybe even know! This is the first Why Don’t We Duet? with the hopes of turning it into a series to cross-pollinate the local music scene and raise money for cool causes.
Potters House DC is a radical cafe bookstore in Adams Morgan with a rich history of social justice and compassion work dating back to 1960. The Pay It Forward Program provides free meals to00 people in need every day and the whole cafe/bookstore is on a Pay What You Can Model.
Why Don’t We Duet? at DC9, 1940 9th St., NW. Tickets $15 online and at the door. Doors at 7:30 PM, Sh ow 8:00 PM.
Link to eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/why-dont-we-duet-tickets-1016748932427
Bry Reed (she/they) is a Baltimore native dedicated to books and community-building. As a speaker and facilitator, Bry aims to connect literature and text to the histories of communities and movements around the world. Her written work is featured in The Baltimore Beat. You can find her all around the mid-Atlantic connecting with independent bookstores and readers.
September is National Recovery Month! Join Bry Reed for a discussion of Pomegranate by Helen Elaine Lee in collaboration with Potter's House and DCOR to discuss how addiction, recovery, and trauma connect to all of our lives. This is an online event so feel free to join us online for an exclusive Monday night gathering.
🙀🫨Turn your election anxiety into civic action!✨🗳️
We’re hosting our friends from Sincerely, DC as their organize a handful of letter writing parties here at The potter’s House. Join them as they’ll be writing to voters in historically disenfranchised districts throughout the 2024 swing states; sending handwritten letters and localized “how to vote” guides with all of the up-to-date ID laws, voting dates, etc!
Opportunities to join the group are as follows:
Sept. 15 - 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Sept. 29 - 1:30 PM - 3:30 PM
Oct. 20 - 1:30 PM - 3:30 PM
RSVP and learn more at https://linktr.ee/sincerely_dc
Bring a banned book to share and you’ll have the opportunity to chat with other like-minded folks about their favorite reads but also leave with a new one for yourself!
Jennifer Kabat’s THE EIGHTH MOON and NIGHTSHINING are forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in 2024 and 2025. Her essays are sweeping histories that interleave socialism, modernism and science with her own longing for a way to understand socialism and democracy today. Included in Best American Essays, her writing has also appeared in McSweeney’s, BOMB, The New York Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Believer, Virginia Quarterly Review, Granta and The White Review, among others. She frequently writes for Frieze and has contributed to artists’ monographs and museum catalogues including London’s Victoria & Albert museum.
NIGHTSHINING has been supported by a Silvers Foundation grant, and early research from the book was a finalist for Notting Hill Editions’ essay prize and subsequently published by Harper’s. THE EIGHTH MOON grew from an essay in Granta.
Join us for a poetry reading by Miguel Avero and the Washington Writers’ Publishing House, publishing their first-ever translation with Aguas/Waters by Avero and translated by Jona Colson. Miguel Avero is a prolific contemporary writer in Uruguay, the smallest Spanish-speaking country in South America that is often overlooked for its literary significance. Uruguayan poetry is difficult to find in translation, and his work carries themes that include his love for his motherland, civil war, and political corruption. Avero’s poems elevate impressions of the everyday into something that we can only know through love and image.
This event is free and open to the public.
🙀🫨Turn your election anxiety into civic action!✨🗳️
We’re hosting our friends from Sincerely, DC as their organize a handful of letter writing parties here at The potter’s House. Join them as they’ll be writing to voters in historically disenfranchised districts throughout the 2024 swing states; sending handwritten letters and localized “how to vote” guides with all of the up-to-date ID laws, voting dates, etc!
Opportunities to join the group are as follows:
Sept. 15 - 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Sept. 29 - 1:30 PM - 3:30 PM
Oct. 20 - 1:30 PM - 3:30 PM
RSVP and learn more at https://linktr.ee/sincerely_dc
Indie folk singer/songwriter Sofía Campoamor first started writing songs to make school projects more fun. This lighthearted approach to academics took her to Yale University, where she performed a cappella music around the world as the first woman member of the Whiffenpoofs.
Now Brooklyn-based, Campoamor blends her love of intricate vocal harmony with dreamy acoustic soundscapes to tell tales of longing and friendship on her debut album, "if you knew, i couldn't tell."
Her latest indie pop anthem, “Break Out,” captures the universal longing to escape our bodies through intimacy with others, delivering poetic and piercing lyrics in an uptempo earworm. Break Out serves as the opening track of Campoamor’s upcoming album about the body, which will delve into themes of physical intimacy, mortality, and chronic illness.
Lizzy is an ambitious 23-year-old living in New York City and making art on her own terms. She's written hundreds of songs, self-released 4 full-length albums, and composed music and lyrics for multiple theatrical projects. Lizzy's music hones a folksier, softer sound, paired with lyrics holding evocative imagery, whimsy and a twinge of fantasy.
Link for the eventbrite can be found here. $15 at the door.
On Medicine as Colonialism is a reframing of the health care debate in the US. It is a strident meticulously researched expose that shows how corporate America uses Medicare and Medicaid to extract resources from communities, as it rethinks the process of colonialism in a globalized world. It has been called “a sobering diatribe on health care in America”, driven by “outrage at what has been wrought” – but also provides “a realistic perspective on achieving health equity.”
Dr. Fine is the author of Health Care Revolt (2018), The Nature of Health (Radcliffe Press, 2007), Rhode Island Stories (Stillwater River Press, 2021), The Bull and Other Stories (Stillwater River Press, November 2020) the IPNE 2021 Literary Fiction Book of the Year, and Abundance (PM Press, 2019). He is the former Director of the Rhode Island Department of Health, a family physician, speaker, commentator, podcaster, community organizer, and activist. Please see https://www.michaelfinemd.com for full information, press packet, and pictures.
Lane Smith is a transmasculine nonbinary writer with over 20 years of experience as an activist, organizer, and Tarot reader. They have been involved in struggles against war, the death penalty, attacks on LGBT rights and body autonomy for marginalized genders and birthing people, police violence, and apartheid. They have worked as a social worker in prisons, and in the field of harm reduction with people who are at risk for HIV/AIDS. With a professional Master’s degree in Social Work and an academic Master’s degree in Humanities and Social Thought, Lane expresses their ideas in clear, nonacademic language in the interest of putting social justice values into practice. Lane is the editor of the Tarot & Politics zine, and a member of Solidarity Tarot where they live in Baltimore City, Maryland.
This event is free and open to the public.
On August 30th, join us for a special milestone as The Potter's House DC embarks on an exciting new journey! After being lovingly guided by the 8th Day Faith Community and Church of the Savior community at large, we are thrilled to announce our transition to an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit as we file our paperwork in the coming days.
To mark this momentous occasion, we’re inviting our wonderful community to come out and support us as we take this next step. Our doors will be open from 8 AM to 8 PM, offering a full day of celebration, connection, and community spirit.
Here’s how you can be a part of this exciting day:
Enjoy a Meal or Coffee: Stop by for a delicious meal or a refreshing coffee. Every purchase supports our mission and helps us continue serving our community.
Spread the Word: Tell your friends, family, and neighbors about our new chapter and invite them to join the festivities. They can even donate from afar by visiting https://pottershousedc.org/donate
Pay It Forward: Can’t make it in person? You can still make a difference by donating online. Just $10 provides a full meal or 2 gently used books for someone in need.
We’re also thrilled to unveil our new Pay-What-You-Can model for both our bookstore and cafe. This means you can visit us and contribute what you can afford towards a meal or a book. Your support helps us ensure that everyone has access to nourishing food and meaningful reading materials.
Come celebrate with us, be a part of our new beginning, and help us continue making a positive impact in our community. Together, we can build a brighter future and extend our reach even further.
We can’t wait to see you on August 30th and beyond!
Join us every second Saturday of each month to share stories, music, poetry, discussion, performance and most of all, community. We are bringing back open mic nights and we will love the crowd and any performer!
