Bringing them home
A public art event on place, histories, and tenderness
Saturday, April 25, 2026 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM EDT
Mt Zion & Oak Hill, Georgetown
Bringing them home
A public art event on place, histories, and tenderness
25th April 2-5pm: Meditations, walks, literature, public art
Mt Zion- Female Union Band Society & Oak Hill cemeteries, Georgetown
RSVP for free
An afternoon exploring place and history, featuring Polish writer and activist Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, alongside Mt Zion- Female Union Band Society Cemetery’s Director Lisa Fager, Oak Hill Cemetery’s Archivist and Collections Manager Laura Thoms, Director of GW’s Creative Writing program Lisa Page, poet Martheaus Perkins, and writer and Cheuse Director Leeya Mehta, with guided tours connecting literature, history, and place. As we visit these cemeteries we also acknowledge that many of us will never be found, never be buried, never be known perhaps; so how do we create the idea of home and last rites, how do we continue to form community across the world even when there is no closure? How do we carry history, and bring the lessons home? Inspiration comes from George Saunders and James Baldwin and the places we come from, the places we live in, and the places we are going.
What lessons will we share?
Come and hear us.
What lessons will you share?
Come tell us.
Curators:
Grzegorz Kwiatkowski and Leeya Mehta
Guides:
Lisa Fager and Laura Thoms
With Inspiration from:
George Saunders
James Baldwin & his official biographer, David Leeming
Featuring:
Lisa Fager, Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, Leeya Mehta, Lisa Page, Martheaus Lamar Perkins, Laura Thoms
Traveling Art:
Steven Luu, “the Travel Door Project”
Oak Hill Cemetery is the Georgetown National Landmark 1850s Historic Garden Cemetery, and still an active cemetery today. President Lincoln's young son Willie was interred in the Carroll Mausoleum at Oak Hill from 1862 to 1865 - his grief memorialized in George Saunder's novel Lincoln in the Bardo.
Mt Zion and Female Union Band Society Cemeteries started in 1809, and burials stopped in 1950. It was a stop on the Underground Railroad, UNESCO Slave Route Project Site of Memory, that was almost lost/destroyed by real estate developers. It is the site of Black Georgetown Foundation's project:
To rediscover two centuries of lost African American history in Georgetown and to develop a historic memorial park as a sacred space for quiet reflection, the respectful commemoration of the past, and to educate.
These cemeteries serve to preserve and create awareness of the heritage, contributions, and sacrifices these founders of Georgetown made during their lifetimes, and provide insight to their families and the community in which they lived during a time of deep segregation.
Schedule*
2:00pm: Mt Zion - Female Union Band Society Cemeteries, entrance @2501 Mill Road NW, DC 20007; off Q Street NW
Led by Director Lisa Fager
2:45pm: Walk 15 minutes to Oak Hill Cemetery, two long city blocks
3: 00pm: Continue at Oak Hill: entrance @30th and R Streets NW. Handicapped parking options on site.
Leaving 3:00pm: Oak Hill Cemetery walk from entrance to William “Willie” Lincoln’s head stone and back.
Led by Oak Hill Archivist and Collection Manager, Laura Thoms
The walk includes uneven surfaces and is hilly.
4:00pm: Reading and discussion at Oak Hill Cemetery Chapel, @30th and R Streets NW.
Meet outside at Katherine Graham’s gravestone or inside the chapel.
Led by writer, musician and human rights activist Grzegorz Kwiatkowski and Cheuse Center Director and writer Leeya Mehta. Readings from George Saunders and on James Baldwin. Featuring editor, writer and Director of Creative Writing at George Washington University Lisa Page and poet and author, Martheaus Lamar Perkins.
5:00pm: Program Ends.
Note: for those with special needs, it may be ideal to come straight to the literary program. We would like to include you and will make sure to give you a sense of place even if you cannot walk with us. Please email lmehta@gmu.edu for any help you need.
*This is an event that requests flexibility and a free afternoon. Please check back for updates by subscribing to our newsletter and also please RSVP so you can check the event updates on our web site and get notifications of location, weather plans, and time changes. On the day of the event please account for delays due to the nature of this event, which may involve variable walking times for all involved.
This series is part of the 10th anniversary festival of the Cheuse Center in April, featuring Colm Tóibín, Malte Herwig and Grzegorz Kwiatkowski. It is curated by Cheuse’s Director, Leeya Mehta. With special thanks to the Tenth Anniversary Committee, the Cheuse Board of Advisors, George Mason University, Mason Exhibitions, Goethe-Institut, Solasnua, Fairfax Public Library, the City of Fairfax, Arts Fairfax, Oak Hill Cemetery, Mt Zion - Female Union Band Society Cemetery and George Saunders.
***
An addition from our archives: hear Alan Cheuse review George Saunders
Alan Cheuse says:
George Saunders is the real thing, the successor to such dark comedians of ordinary speech as Donald Barthelme and Grace Paley. He's a Vonnegutian in his soul and, paradoxically, a writer like no one but himself.
More about the Tenth Anniversary:
The Cheuse Center’s tenth anniversary festival will have multiple events in April. We are pulling out all the stops, flying down multiple writers from across the world! In addition to the Cheuse Center, our dear co-sponsors – Mason Exhibitions, Goethe-Institut and Solasnua—will help us host these events across DC. We can’t wait for you join us in our beautiful regional cities. It’s a star-studded week of international writers, local archivists, artists, and scholars for conversations on literature, history and place.
We are focusing on the Washington DC region and the borderlands of rivers and peoples. Virginia's George Mason is home to the Cheuse Center where Alan Cheuse taught for 30 years. He was NPR's book guy, living in Washington, and like many of us who live in the region, from somewhere else. Son of a Ukrainian engineer from Stalin's airforce, Alan grew up in New Jersey.
By meditating on our home, in the region, the Cheuse Center is taking time to focus not just on international writers, and writers from America who face out into the world, but also on place.
Our flagship lecture will think back to former Washington Post publisher Agnes Meyer’s persuasive ‘rescue’ of Nobel prize winning German writer Thomas Mann from Europe. Meyer, who was of German origin, was the mother of newspaper legend Katharine Graham, who is buried in Oak Hill cemetery in Washington. Mann himself, had a Brazilian mother, and grew up in Munich.
On April 23rd, the lecture will be delivered by magical Irish storyteller, Colm Tóibín, whose book on Thomas Mann was "The Magician". He will be in conversation with Thomas Mann scholar and famed German writer Malte Herwig.
On the 24th, Malte Herwig will have his US premier of his documentary on his grandfather, a German soldier, as he searches for a Jewish child from the Holocaust in Poland. Herwig will be in conversation with Polish writer Grzegorz Kwiatkowski.
On April 25th our festival will end with a visit to Georgetown’s famous Oak Hill Cemetery where, since the mid 1800s the nation’s history stirs through the hills, including the original resting place of Lincoln’s son, "Willie". Winding paths lead us through memories of the city, including of the American Civil War. We will also walk through the neighboring cemetery of Mt Zion- Female Union Band Society Cemetery, a secular burial ground for African Americans, in historic black Georgetown.
As we see in person the nature of power, witness, and place, we will reflect on the complexity of our common human heritage, through literature, friendship and the importance of art in public life. Come join us as we literally walk through history!
Conversations and events with Grzegorz Kwiatkowski (Visiting Scholar in Residence)
April 21–25, 2026
Conversations will be located at the School of Art, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Polish poet and human rights activist Grzegorz Kwiatkowski joins us for a week of conversations.
The 2026 Cheuse Lecture: “Stories of Sanctuary” with Colm Tóibín
April 23, 2026 | 7:00–9:00 PM
Stacy C. Sherwood Community Center, 3740 Blenheim Boulevard, Fairfax, VA 22030, Fairfax, VA
In celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Cheuse Center, join us for this year’s Cheuse Lecture with Irish writer Colm Tóibín, in conversation with German intellectual Malte Herwig. In Stories of Sanctuary, Tóibín reflects on exile, identity, and what it means to seek, and create, refuge through literature.
More Info: https://cheusecenter.gmu.edu/events/17712
Parking map: https://www.fairfaxva.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/19533/638139572124230000
Film Premiere: Malte Herwig’s “The Girl with the Golden Hair”
April 24, 2026 | 6:30–9:30 PM
Goethe-Institut, 1377 R Street NW, Washington, DC
Join us for the US premier of The Girl with the Golden Hair. This powerful documentary follows Malte Herwig’s search to uncover the story behind a haunting WWII photograph that was in his grandfather’s possession. His grandfather, a gold medalist in the Los Angeles Olympics, served the German army, occupying Poland at the start of the War in 1939. The screening will be followed by a conversation and reception. This event is in conjunction with Grzegorz Kwiatkowski’s residency. Kwiatkowski and Herwig’s works overlap in ways that will make for a stimulating conversation. RSVP.
Bringing Them Home
A Literary Reading & Guided Cemetery Tour (Georgetown)
April 25, 2026 | 2:00–5:00 PM
Where: Mt Zion - Female Union Band Society Cemetery, and Oak Hill Cemetery, Georgetown
An afternoon exploring place and history, featuring Polish writer and activist Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, alongside Mt Zion - Female Union Band Society Cemeteries’ Director Lisa Fager, Oak Hill Cemetery’s Archivist and Collections Manager Laura Thoms, Director of GW’s Creative Writing program Lisa Page, poet Martheaus Perkins, and writer and Cheuse Director Leeya Mehta, with guided tours connecting literature, history, and place. As we visit these cemeteries we also acknowledge that many of us will never be found, never be buried, never be known perhaps; so how do we create the idea of home and last rites, how do we continue to form community across the world even when there is no closure? How do we carry history, and bring the lessons home?
RSVP: https://cheusecenter.gmu.edu/events/18088
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Event Bookshelf:
- Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, “Crops"
- Lisa Page (co-editor), “We Wear the Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America” See a Review in the Kenyon Review. https://kenyonreview.org/reviews/we-wear-the-mask-edited-by-brando-skyhorse-and-lisa-page-738439/
- Martheaus Lamar Perkins, “The Grace of Black Mothers”
- George Saunders, “Lincoln in the Bardo”
- Colm Tóibín, “The Magician”.
- Listen to Alan Cheuse’s review of Colm Tóibín's Nora Webster:
- Alan Cheuse’s reviews of George Saunders:
- Malte Herwig’s books in English include “The Woman Who Says No: Françoise Gilot on Her Life With and Without Picasso."
- Leeya Mehta, "A story of the world before the fence."
