In a world of rapidly diminishing third-place spaces, Kramers – also known as Kramerbooks – is celebrating its 50^th anniversary as a beloved cultural Washington, D.C. institution.

Founded in 1976 in the heart of Dupont Circle at the nation’s bicentennial, Kramers is a bookstore, café, restaurant, bar, corner store, gathering place, and multi-generational site for locals, visitors, readers, sippers, and noshers.

Originally owned by Bill Kramer, Henry Posner, and David Tenney, Kramers began first as a bookstore called Kramerbooks, and soon added its coffeeshop and rebranded as Kramerbooks & Afterwords Café. In 2016, the trio sold Kramers to Steve Salis, who expanded the bookstore and rebranded the eatery portion as All Day Café.

As Kramers turns 50, the beloved bookstore and café will honor its rich legacy this month with a milestone anniversary celebration, merchandise, and a look ahead to its next chapter as one of D.C.’s defining cultural gathering places. 

The big community day is Oct. 24, bursting with community programs:

·       Relume, a local woman-owned home goods and accessories brand, will offer custom book stamping for attendees; 

·       Aslin Beer Company will offer guests of age a curated on-site beer tasting; 

·       DuPont Little Flea Market will activate a small pop-up vintage market on site, offering a variety of vintage goods from various vendors; 

·       The store will partner with Everybody Wins DC, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing child literacy through volunteer-led reading and mentoring programs, donating 20% of all bookstore sales that day. Visit kramers.com to RSVP.

Finally, the shop is throwing a 50^th anniversary celebration on Oct. 22, bringing together community leaders and longtime patrons for an event honoring the bookstore’s rich legacy and continued impact on the city.

The 50^th anniversary excitement eclipses prior celebrations: for the store’s 20^th anniversary, for example, the store gave away one free slice of “three truffle” chocolate cake to customers.

“Kramers has been part of the cultural heartbeat of Washington for 50 years, and that kind of legacy is incredibly rare,” said Salis, who is CEO of Catalogue hospitality, which also runs D.C. favorites like Ted’s Bulletin, Federalist Pig, Honeymoon Chicken, and Sidekick Bakery. “What makes it special is that it has never been just a bookstore — it’s a place where people gather, discover ideas, share meals, and feel connected to the city around them.”

Dupont Circle has always been a center of D.C.’s cultural legacy. The neighborhood continues to evolve, even today, as the Connecticut Avenue deckover project progresses, just outside the doors of Kramers. Just as the neighborhood has changed, Kramers has grown and evolved as well. But its identity as a center of curiosity and connection has remained the same.

Kramers was one of the first bookstores in D.C. – and the nation – to introduce a café on premises. For several years, Kramers would transport bagels from New York daily, unable to source bagels of quality locally. While today Kramers operates regular hours, generally 8 a.m.-10 p.m., for many years it was open 24 hours (literally an All Day Café) on the weekends, not closing its doors once to neighbors and friends. Kramers also branched out across the river, opening two short-lived spots in Arlington. Both are now closed.

Being located in D.C., Kramers has played host to plenty of celebrities: Barack Obama stopped by during his time in office; and Monica Lewinsky shopped there as well. Other celebs who have dropped by include Maya Angelous, Andy Warhol, and Toni Morrison.

In 2020, Salis – after suggesting that he might relocate Kramers from Dupont Circle –  refreshed the restaurant, bringing in a new chef and a vibrant new menu with French influences and natural wine pours, plus menu favorites like Crab Deviled Eggs, Chicken & Waffles, and Goober Pie.

Salis recognized the challenges of operating a bookstore and café against the multitude of buffeting headwinds.

“The biggest challenge has been finding ways to evolve while protecting what makes Kramers unique. The bookstore landscape has changed dramatically, and the restaurant business has become increasingly competitive, with rising costs across the board,” he says. Kramers remains relevant by meeting customers where they are: selling a selection of “banned books,” hosting weekly book clubs and trivia nights, alongside poetry readings, writing workshops, and author talks. It even stays open late for special midnight-release parties, and now offers bookstore memberships for especially eager readers.

Kramers has endured because it’s more than the sum of its parts. Reflecting the diversity of the neighborhood, the curated books selection, and the creation of safe spaces for all kinds of readers, Kramers looks forward, Salis says, “to remain a cultural hub for D.C. for the next 50 years and beyond. We’re excited about continuing to grow and evolve while preserving the spirit that has made Kramers special for generations.”

The 2026 Miss Gay Maryland America pageant was held at Hub City Brewery in Hagerstown, Md. on Saturday, Oct. 10. Jalah Nicole was crowned the winner, and Maria Posa was named first alternate. Both competitors qualify for the Miss Gay America pageant in Atlanta in January.

(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)

Spooky season is here, making it a fantastic time to talk about queerness and horror. More precisely, it’s a chance to explore how the horror genre emerged and transformed our perspective on queer identity. 

Horror is far more political than most people realize. 

Personally, if sci-fi was the genre that helped me understand what it feels like to be different, it was horror that truly allowed me to explore queer relationships and queer rage.

Let’s dive into how horror as a book genre has evolved — moving from portraying queer and transgender identities as monstrous threats to becoming a space where queer people can process our own fears, rage, sexuality, and trauma: from the deeply queer undercurrents of vampire fiction to the liberating “monstrosity” of trans rage.

The ‘monstrosity’ of transness

It’s 2026, so let’s begin with the elephant in the room — or rather, the biggest conservative scapegoat in our community (thanks for actual political monsters). But trigger warning: trauma crawls to the surface like a monster breaking through.

Imagine two scenes:

Fifteen-year-old me, a trans teenager who didn’t yet know they were trans, was reading Thomas Harris’s “The Silence of the Lambs” (1988) for the first time (yes, for me it was first the book, then the movie.) I “encountered” Buffalo Bill, a serial killer who used human skin to make a female costume because he wanted to be a woman. How did I feel? Cringed out, humiliated, and even more determined to hide. And I wasn’t yet permitted myself to think that I’m trans, but I felt terrible without knowing why. It was one more message from mass culture: if you think you belong to a gender different from the one assigned to you at birth, you are a “psycho.” The intersection of ableism and transphobia is striking in stories like this. People with mental illnesses, who in real life are much more often victims than aggressors, are portrayed as dangerous to society, while transness is presented as a mental illness.

Now imagine an adult me, a couple of years after coming out as trans, reading Andrew Joseph White’s young adult horror novel “Hell Follows with Us” (2022). It portrayed actual monsters and a trans boy, Benji, turned into a monster by his cultist family. I felt joy and sympathy for Benji, who stood up against the apocalyptic cult that destroyed humanity, despite his parents raising him to destroy what was left of the human race. His trans rage and rebellion felt justified, and the main character never felt like a pathetic freak.

This is the main difference between classical portrayals of trans people in horror and the changes made by trans authors and creators reclaiming the genre.

When Harris wrote “The Silence of the Lambs” and Jonathan Demme directed the movie (1991), the story made it clear that Buffalo Bill was not a “real” trans person and that real trans people were harmless. But this raises an important question: how can we decide who is a “real” trans person and who isn’t if someone’s gender identity differs from the one assigned to them at birth? The trope of an aggressive, perverse person who “wants to be a woman” has existed throughout modern fiction, with the “Psycho” (1960) movie being another famous example, that stigmatizes cross-dressing and gender non-conformity and, by association, trans women.

Aggressive trans characters and trans characters in serial-killer fiction have every right to exist. White’s young adult horror novel “You’re No Better” (2026), which is coming out this October, features a trans autistic boy trying to prove that he is nothing like his famous serial-killer father. There is also the transgender novel “Manhunt” (2022), featuring two trans women, Beth and Fran, who survive by hunting men transformed into monsters.

Honestly, I’m currently querying a vampire novel with a trans teenager who runs from his transphobic MAGA family and has literally become a monster, so it would be hypocritical of me to object to controversial or monstrous trans characters. They can be violent — but not because they are trans. They can be driven to become monsters by society, but not because of their supposed “perversion.”

Trans horror written by trans and trans-friendly authors can help process rage and alienation. Many trans horror authors reclaim the label of “monstrosity” without turning their characters into caricatures, perverted villains, or pathetic creatures, as often happened in more classical, cis-hetero normative horror.

Queer romance and forbidden love

For me, “The Vampire Chronicles” by Anne Rice was my first introduction to non-judgmental, queer-centered fiction as a teenager. As Rice famously observed, all her vampires are bisexual, and it was remarkably brave to publish books in the 1970s and 1980s where queer families, desire, and drama were simply part of the plot without any silly sensationalism. The 1994 film adaptation of “Interview with the Vampire” was the movie through which many people I knew who weren’t into queer stories first saw these dynamics onscreen. And the new AMC’s “Interview with the Vampire” (2022-current) TV series is, in my opinion, one of the best representations of messy queer relationships between traumatized people, addressing family trauma and the intersection of race and queerness. I recommend it even more than “reality-based” shows such as “Heated Rivalry” or “Queer as Folk.”

Gothic literature has always had a queer undercurrent. From Lord Byron’s homoerotic image of the undead to the lesbian desire of “Carmilla” and the obsessive relationships surrounding “Dracula” (book published in 1897), vampires have long been associated with forbidden desire, sexuality, and relationships outside social norms. “Carmilla,” published in 1872 by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, still resonates with the lesbian community today. “Carmilla” is unapologetically queer, declaring romantic passion for the human woman Laura without hiding her desires. Of course, “Carmilla” is literally a monster — but how else could an author write a forbidden queer love story in 1872?

New retellings of “Dracula” and “Carmilla” have become even more increasingly queer. Kat Dunn’s “The Hungerstone” (2025)  is a sapphic story about feminine agency and the relationship between Carmilla and Lenore, a bisexual British woman in Industrial-era Sheffield, framed around sapphic emancipation and forbidden love. “Dracula” has also inspired plenty of retellings, most notably S. T. Gibson’s “A Dowry of Blood” (2021) — an explicitly polyamorous, bisexual retelling told from the perspective of one of his brides. It explores abuse and the importance of breaking codependency in queer relationships — a topic underrepresented in more “serious” fiction.

Vampires have also become a cross-cultural way to speak about queerness. For example, Dawn Chen’s “A Vampire in Beijing” that will be published in 2027, offers a sapphic story about the modern Chinese queer community and its unique struggles.

Together against the monsters

Another major trope in queer horror is queer people, especially queer youth, fighting monsters together. Those monsters may be supernatural, as in “The Dark We Know” (2024) by Wen-Yi Lee or “This Raging Sea” (2025) by De Elizabeth, where groups of bisexual, queer kids fight side-by-side with an old evil. Ultimately, these external threats represent a conservative society, oppressive stereotypes, and real-world mental health struggles.

Although horror historically mostly exploited queerness for sensationalism — harming real-world queer people in the process — today it has transformed into one of the most effective spaces to explore queer identity and trauma in our own language.