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Category: Washington DC

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Pic of the Week: It’s Bloomin’ Time

Posted by: Erin Allen

This week marks the beginning of the National Cherry Blossom Festival, an annual event held in Washington, D.C. to commemorate the gift of some 3,000 Yoshino cherry trees given to the city in 1912 as a symbol of friendship between Japan and the United States. The grounds of the Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building are home …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Pic of the Week: Hedge Coke Honored as Witter Bynner Fellow

Posted by: Erin Allen

On Wednesday, poet Allison Hedge Coke was honored as the 2016 Witter Bynner Fellow. She was selected and introduced by Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress, Juan Felipe Herrera. In his selection, Herrera said he sought to honor Hedge Coke “for her precision of Earth, of suffering in and out of …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Pic of the Week: Read Across America

Posted by: Erin Allen

“You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read with a child.” ~ Dr. Seuss On Wednesday, children gathered at the Library’s Young Readers Center for “Read Across America” day, which also coincides with the birthday of Dr. Seuss. The National Education Association’s signature program is now in its …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Pic of the Week: My Life in Medicine

Posted by: Erin Allen

Louis W. Sullivan, former secretary of Health and Human Services, discussed his new book, ”Breaking Ground: My Life in Medicine” (University of Georgia Press, 2014), on Wednesday during an author talk presented by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. A video of the presentation will be available in the coming weeks. Sullivan spent …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Pic of the Week: Combating Illiteracy

Posted by: Erin Allen

 The Library of Congress on Wednesday honored the recipients of the Library of Congress Literacy Awards – three groups working to alleviate the scourge of illiteracy in this country and around the world. Recipients were First Book ($150,000 David M. Rubenstein Prize), United Through Reading ($50,000 American Prize) and Beanstalk ($50,000 International Prize).The Literacy Awards, first announced in January 2013, help …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

All This Jazz

Posted by: Mark Hartsell

The human voice is music’s only pure instrument, jazz singer Nina Simone once wrote – it has notes no other instrument possesses. “It’s like being between the keys of a piano,” Simone wrote in a draft of an unpublished autobiography recently discovered in a Library of Congress collection. “The notes are there, you can sing …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Pic of the Week: A Party of Pulitzers

Posted by: Erin Allen

Thirteen Pulitzer Prize winners visited the Library last week while in Washington for festivities celebrating the esteemed award. Steve Benson, who won the prize for editorial cartooning in 1993; former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove (poetry, 1987); Jennifer Egan (fiction, 2011); Paul Giblin (local reporting, 2009); Joan Hedrick (biography, 1995); David Levering Lewis (biography, 1994 and 2001); Jeffrey Marx (investigative reporting, 1986); Philip Schultz …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Pic of the Week: Willie Nelson on PBS Tonight!

Posted by: Erin Allen

Make sure to tune in to PBS tonight for the star-studded concert tribute to Willie Nelson, the 2015 recipient of the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. The concert airs on PBS stations nationwide at 9 p.m. ET on (check local listings). The program also will be broadcast at a later date via the American …