A young gay man who blackmails a closeted Congressman. A Nigerian boy and a neighborhood eccentric who’s either crazy or endowed with magic. A goalie named Jesus.

Those are some of the characters in this week’s Fiction Issue, the District-set contents of which come largely  from our second annual short-story contest. You can read the whole thing here or grab one—-bedside reading!—-from one of these. But if you want the full Washington City Paper Fiction Issue experience? Then you’ll come to Politics & Prose on Sunday, Jan. 19, when three of the issue’s contributors will read their stories. Novelist Louis Bayard, whom we asked to anchor the issue, is the best-selling author of The Pale Blue Eye and The Black Tower. (His contribution is the pulpy “Chesapeake.”) He’ll be joined by two of our contest winners: Koye Oyedeji (“Mr. Tuck“), who teaches creative writing at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts and won a Mayor’s Arts Award in 2012; and Rion Amilcar Scott (“Jesus Saves“), who teaches English at Bowie State University.

The event, which is free, begins at 5 p.m.