Not a bad lineup for the Bethesda Literary Festival, which hasn’t succumbed to mid-size-city lit-fest syndrome (i.e., scads of children’s authors and self-published poets). Among the locals on the docket for the fest, which runs from April 18-20: novelist Thomas Mallon, poets Stanley Plumly and E. Ethelbert Miller, journalists Philip Dine and Helen Thomas, and much-argued-over CakeLove owner Warren Brown. —Mark Athitakis