LITERARY / SPOKEN WORD
SUB ROSA: A LITERARY SOIREÉ
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Produced by: Esther Productions Inc. & MidnightRose
Featuring award-winning authors reading and in conversation: Diana Tokaji & Bernardine “Dine” Watson
Join us in the tunnels of Dupont Underground for Sub Rosa: A Literary Soiree, an evening of readings and conversation featuring award-winning authors Diana Tokaji and Bernardine “Dine” Watson. Guests will enjoy complimentary hors d’oeuvres alongside a cash bar.
Event & Ticket Details
Date: Wednesday, December 16, 2026
Time: 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM EST
Location: Dupont Underground — 19 Dupont Circle NW, Washington, DC 20036
Featured Authors: Diana Tokaji & Bernardine “Dine” Watson
Perks: Free hors d’oeuvres; cash bar available
Cost: $20
Contact: estherproductionsinc@gmail.com
About the Authors
Diana Tokaji is a performance artist and writer whose spoken word and choreography have been featured in London, San Francisco, and DC, where her Capital Fringe Festival productions won Pick of the Fringe. She is the author of Six Women in a Cell, winner of the Best Indie Book Award for Nonfiction, and Surviving Assault – Words that Rock & Quiet & Tell the Truth, a Next Generation Book Award finalist. Now publishing a rush of new work, Diana has two books just out: Her Enlarged Heart, a chapbook of defiant poems, and Moose on a Red Swivel Stool, a collection of story poems. In 2020, she won the Sonia Sanchez-Langston Hughes Prize, judged by Richard Blanco. Her essays and poems have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Solstice Literary (2022 essay finalist), Frontier Poetry (2024 award), Madwomen in the Attic(2025 Patricia Dobler Poetry Award), The Origami Poems Project, Dismantling Press’s RAGE, WellSpoken, and on a bus in Virginia that displayed her winning poem. Diana is a Certified Yoga Therapist supporting female and non-binary survivors of assault and trauma. Six more books are forthcoming, including Book of Essays Before I Die and SPOKE: Poems of Squid, Cellmates, Love.
Bernardine “Dine” Watson is a nonfiction writer and poet who lives in Washington, D.C. Dine’s memoir, Transplant,the story of her battle with kidney disease, won the 2023 Washington Writers’ Publishing House prize for nonfiction and appeared on National Public Radio’s 2023 list of “Books We Love.” Dine was selected by Poets & Writers magazine as one of their “5 over 50” debut authors for 2023. Her poetry has been published in many local and national journals including Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Bourgeon/Mid-Atlantic Review, Gargoyle Magazine, WWPH Writes, and Dark House Books. In 2023, two of her poems were nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Dine is a member of the 2015 class of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Poet in Progress Program and the 2017 and 2018 classes of the Hurston/Wright Foundation’s Summer Writers’ Workshop for Poetry. She is a member of the Washington Writers’ Publishing House board of directors. Dine has written on social policy issues for major foundations, nonprofit organizations, and The Washington Post. She is married to journalist Joe Davidson.
Plan Your Visit: For directions, accessibility, parking, and venue policies, please visit dupontunderground.org/plan-your-visit.
