Lost City Books Winter Reading Series

Lost City Books + The Line DC welcome you to attend our Winter Reading Series, the latest installment of a quarterly series where we invite talented authors doing exciting work in all different genres to join us and read aloud a piece of their choosing. We'll eat, drink, talk, and listen, meet fellow lovers of literature, discover new authors, and mark the changing of the seasons together.

Revel in the beginning of autumn with us while celebrating D.C.'s flourishing literary community!

about the authors

Tamar Shapiro’s debut novel, Restitution, was published in September 2025 and named one of the 49 Must-Read Books of Fall 2025 by Town and Country Magazine. Her writing has also appeared in Literary Hub, Poets and Writers, Electric Literature, and the Washington Independent Review of Books. After a decades long career as a housing attorney and non-profit leader in the community development field, Shapiro received an MFA in fiction from Randolph College in Virginia in January 2026. She grew up in both the U.S. and Germany and lives in Washington, DC with her husband, two kids, and the world’s best dog.

Chet'la Sebree is the author of the poetry collections Blue Opening, longlisted for PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry; Field Study, winner of the 2020 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets; and Mistress, nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Her debut essay collection TURN (W)HERE: A Geography of Home is forthcoming in 2026. She has received fellowships from the Hawthornden Foundation, Hedgebrook, MacDowell, and Yaddo and has been published in The Kenyon Review, The Yale Review, and Lit Hub among other venues. Currently, she’s an assistant professor at the George Washington University and serves as a faculty mentor in Randolph College’s Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing program.

Eli Erlick is an activist, author, and educator. In 2011, she founded Trans Student Educational Resources (TSER), an organization dedicated to transforming the educational environment for trans students. Since then, she has been at the forefront of social justice issues through her research, organizing, and cultural criticism. Her first book, Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950 (Beacon Press, 2025), uncovers thirty trans narratives that radically disrupt everything you've been told about trans people. Her second book, Belonging Through Exclusion: Understanding the Transgender Far Right (University of Chicago Press, 2026), explores why right-wing transgender people adopt their views – and what we can do to prevent others from joining them. Erlick's work and writing have been featured in hundreds of outlets, including The New York Times, Time Magazine, and The Washington Post. She lives in New York City, where she continues to fight for trans liberation.

Luke O’Neil is the author of the acclaimed political and literary newsletter Welcome to Hell World and the book of the same name. His first collection of short fiction and poetry, , was published in 2023, and the follow-up, We Had It Coming, in November 2025. He’s a former writer-at-large for Esquire and was a longtime journalist for The Boston Globe, The Guardian, and many other newspapers and magazines. He lives in Massachusetts.

The event will be held in the Banneker room of The Line hotel. Seating will be first come first served. Doors open at 7pm.

Contact [email protected] with questions.

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