My Washington, D.C. event will be at the wonderful bookstore Politics & Prose, on Saturday, Oct. 20. I’ve been doing events mainly at jazz festivals so far, with excellent local booksellers — but this will be my first reading and signing at an actual bookstore. I’ll confess that it’s a thrill to see my event on the same monthly calendar as Susan Orlean, Camille Paglia and Jill Lepore.

Stephen Voss/NPR

It’s also a thrill to be sitting down for this event with Lauren Onkey, senior director of NPR Music. Before joining the team last fall, Lauren was the dean of Humanities at at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Oh. Prior to that, she spent seven years as Vice President of Education and Public Programs at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

I first met Lauren, briefly and surreally, onstage at the 9:30 Club during NPR Music’s monumental 10th anniversary show. We had a more leisurely hang at this summer’s Newport Jazz Festival. It’s going to be a lot of fun to talk about Playing Changes, and more broadly about the state of contemporary jazz, with someone so astute, perceptive and curious. D.C. folks, this is going to be a really good one.