With such an emphasis on Irish theater in Washington, you would think that no Blarney Stone had been left unturned, at least in terms of Irish playwrights. But Garry Hynes, the pioneering Galway-based director who put Enda Walsh and Martin McDonagh on the map, has yet another playwright she’d like to introduce to international audiences: [...]

Every author who speaks at the National Book Festival enjoys an extra benefit onstage, one that doesn't come with the typical reading or appearance. No, on the National Mall, each author gets a straight man—somebody who has to stay poker-faced while the writer gets to crack wise. In this case, the straight men are the [...]

In which the author briefly discusses five new books he’d read, if time permitted.

1. The Wild Things (Fur-Covered Edition), by Dave Eggers.
Another in adventure in meta by postmodernist Dave Eggers, this novelization of high modernist Maurice Sendak's ubiquitous children's book is also based on a screenplay for the recent film that Eggers wrote with postmodernist [...]