Don’t be basic! Stay calm and get your nerd on to welcome the New Year!

Click here to get tickets

Featuring live music and performance by:

Featuring live music and performance by:
DJ Ayescold, The CooLots, Lethal Bark feat. Tom Toles, Chocolate City Burlesque

Tickets include 2 drink tickets, food, and live entertainment.  Ticket proceeds go to support Capital Area Food Area and DC Youth Slam Team.

Busboys and Poets is throwing the quirkiest new year’s bash in DC – all to benefit the Capital Area Food Bank and DC Youth Slam Team! Fight hunger and help young poets thrive as you welcome the new year with the hottest DJs, live entertainment, games, food, 2 drinks per person with additional drink specials all night – and more.

Come dressed as YOU – and if YOU is nerdy, even better!

#NerdyNYE #NerdsDoNewYears

The Making of Busboys and Poets

A Seat at the Table: The Making of Busboys and Poets

We’re proud to announce A Seat at the Table: The Making of Busboys and Poets, the new memoir from our CEO and Founder, which reveals the vision, challenges, and triumphs behind opening Busboys and Poets. Packed with misadventures, unexpected triumphs, and insights on race, business and politics, Andy Shallal’s memoir takes us on a “How I Built … Continued

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For Langston Hughes on His 123 Birthday

Speech given on February 1, 2024 in Havana, Cuba In 1927 Langston Hughes walked into a Cuba amid an emerging community of artists, intellectuals, and radicals.  He saw a “sunrise in a new land [– a day – in his words]sic – full of brownskin surprises, and hitherto unknown contacts in a world of color.”  … Continued

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Palestine Week 2024

January 18, 2024 – January 25, 2024 In keeping with our ongoing mission of uplifting racial and cultural connections, Busboys and Poets is hosting Palestine Week (January 18 through January 25, 2024). This week-long series of events will offer a diverse range of programming featuring Palestinian food, music, dance, poetry, discussions, and other enriching events. … Continued

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Busboys and Poets Book Review: Set the World on Fire

In this substantial entry into the history of Black radical politics, Keisha N. Blain uncovers the legion of Black women that made waves in the growing Black nationalist and Garveyite movements of the early Twentieth Century. Black nationalism, which promotes the establishment of a Black nation state as the answer to racial oppression, first gained … Continued

Busboys and Poets Book Review: An American Sickness

Busboys and Poets Book Review: An American Sickness

We’ve all been in that situation, or know someone who has. You find yourself for whatever reason in need of medical attention: a surgery, an exam, etc. And after you leave, you receive the bill. But the bill is far larger than you anticipated and you have no idea why. Elizabeth Rosenthal knows why. An … Continued

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Split This Rock Poem of the Week: Doritt Carroll

intermittent apnea of unknown causation   I. the first time it happened i thought i was being strangled four fingers compressing each side of my throat no air II. have you ever eaten crabs? first you flip the breast tab up then you fold the crab back like the binding of a new book then … Continued