Archive: 2019 Virginia Festival of the Book
A Program of Virginia Humanities
Authors Cai Emmons (Weather Woman) and Jessica Handler (The Magnetic Girl) discuss their work, including their characters’ mysterious and other-worldly connections in these captivating novels involving climate change, mystics, manipulation, and the exploration of a woman’s power.
More »Tags: Fiction
Talley English (Horse), Michael Knight (Eveningland), and Kristyn Kusek Lewis (Half Of What You Hear) discuss their writing and intricately imagined characters, and the setting of the American South as an influence on their work.
More »Jefferson-Madison Regional Library’s Same Page community-wide reading series invites residents to discuss Lisa See’s novel, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane. Tea Girl examines identity through the lens of cross-cultural adoption and Chinese ethnicities set in suburban California and the Tea Mountains of Yunnan Province. See will read from her work and take community questions before signing books, which will be available for purchase onsite.
More »Tags: Book Club Picks, Fiction, JMRL/Same Page
Enjoy horrors and a happy hour with author Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls) in advance of his performance, Paperbacks from Hell LIVE.
More »Tags: Arts, Fiction, Humor, Nonfiction, Publishing / Books / Writing
Grady Hendrix (Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction) presents a mind-melting live performance based on his book, which chronicles the history of horror genre paperbacks.
More »Tags: Arts, Fiction, Humor, Language / Culture / Folklife, Nonfiction, Publishing / Books / Writing
Lee Smith (Dimestore), Adriana Trigiani (Tony’s Wife), and Douglas Brinkley (American Moonshot) take the stage to share memories and swap stories, reflect on the evolution of all things literary in the past quarter-century, and discuss their own work, past, present, and future.
More »Tags: Biography / Memoir, Book Club Picks, Fiction, Headliners, History, Humor, Nonfiction, Publishing / Books / Writing, Southern / Appalachian
Lisa See, author of (The Island of Sea Women) will speak at the annual Literary Luncheon on March 21, 2019.
More »Tags: Asian-American, Book Club Picks, Current Affairs / World Affairs / War, Fiction, Food / Beer / Wine / Travel, Gender, Global, Headliners
A.D. Hopkins (The Boys Who Woke Up Early), Anna Jean Mayhew (Tomorrow’s Bread), and Elaine Neil Orr (Swimming Between Worlds) discuss their powerful stories from the American South in the 1950s and 1960s, featuring well-drawn characters growing up and working through tremendous social changes.
More »Tags: African-American, Book Club Picks, Fiction, History, Southern / Appalachian
Robert Gipe (Weedeater), Mesha Maren (Sugar Run), and Tim Poland (Yellow Stonefly) discuss their uniquely Appalachian novels, featuring resilient yet realistic characters and stark yet captivating settings.
More »Tags: Fiction, Southern / Appalachian, Sports / Outdoors / Animals
Abigail DeWitt (News of Our Loved Ones) and Ed Pavlić (Another Kind of Madness) discuss their far-reaching fiction, featuring characters faced with global and personal turbulence.
More »Tags: African-American, Book Club Picks, Current Affairs / World Affairs / War, Fiction, Global
Alumni from UVA’s Creative Writing Program, Libby Burton (Soft Volcano), Laura Eve Engel (Things That Go), James McLaughlin (Bearskin), and Valencia Robin (Ridiculous Light) read from their newest works.
More »Melanie Hatter (Malawi’s Sisters) discusses her debut novel, which received the inaugural Kimbilio National Fiction Prize.
More »Tags: African-American, Fiction
Marina Perezagua (The Story of H), Christopher Tilghman (Thomas and Beal in the Midi), and Spencer Wise (The Emperor of Shoes) discuss how and why their novels transport readers to far-flung lands, through complex, multi-layered fiction featuring captivating characters.
More »Tags: Asian-American, Book Club Picks, Fiction, Gender, Global, Language / Culture / Folklife, LGBTQ
Greer Macallister (Woman 99), James McLaughlin (Bearskin), and Wil Medearis (Restoration Heights) discuss their new literary thrillers, which feature characters forced to defy boundaries in order to survive.
More »Tags: Book Club Picks, Crime Wave, Fiction, Gender, Social Justice, Southern / Appalachian, Sports / Outdoors / Animals
André Alexis (Days by Moonlight) and Alyson Hagy (Scribe) discuss their lyrical novels featuring fictional journeys that challenge reality by incorporating lycanthropic legends, Appalachian folktales, and other lore.
More »Tags: Book Club Picks, Fiction, Folklife, Southern / Appalachian
Silas House (Southernmost), Tammy Lynne Stoner (Sugar Land), and Michelle Young-Stone (Lost in the Beehive) discuss their novels, each a bittersweet journey of the heart full of characters seeking redemption through love.
More »Tags: Book Club Picks, Fiction, LGBTQ, Southern / Appalachian
Alex Jennings (New Suns), Erik A. Otto (Detonation), and V.E. Schwab (Vengeful) discuss their latest science fiction work and the roles the genre can play in entertaining and questioning contemporary reality.
More »Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction / Fantasy
In a compelling one-on-one conversation, bestselling and award-winning authors Laurie Halse Anderson (SHOUT) and Jason Reynolds (Long Way Down) discuss their relationships to writing and reading, the impact that storytelling and books have had on their lives, and the ways in which their work is meant to be a call to action for readers.
More »Tags: African-American, Biography / Memoir, Book Club Picks, Fiction, Gender, Health / Mind / Body, Poetry, Publishing / Books / Writing, Social Justice
The Virginia Festival of the Book and Virginia Film Festival are pleased to present a special screening of The Public, a narrative film that explores issues of homelessness and mental illness in America and sets the drama inside one of the last bastions of democracy-in-action: the public library.
More »Tags: Fiction, Headliners, Social Justice
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Friday Black), John Lingan (Homeplace), and Mathangi Subramanian (A People’s History of Heaven) give short readings of their work during this annual “late-night” Festival program. Jesse Jarnow (Wasn’t That a Time) and Tim Mohr (Burning Down the Haus) will deejay.
More »Tags: African-American, Arts, Asian-American, Book Club Picks, Fiction, Food / Beer / Wine / Travel, Headliners, History, Humor, Language / Culture / Folklife, Music, Nonfiction, Publishing / Books / Writing, Southern / Appalachian
Author Esi Edugyan (Washington Black) and narrator Dion Graham will discuss the creative process between author and performer with moderator Andi Arndt.
More »Tags: African-American, Fiction, Publishing / Books / Writing
Authors Eugenia Kim (The Kinship of Secrets), Tatjana Soli (The Removes) and Mathangi Subramanian (A People’s History of Heaven) discuss heartbreaking subjects that explore the ability to survive hardship and struggle.
More »Tags: Asian-American, Fiction
Don Winslow (The Border) will speak at the annual Crime Wave Brunch on March 23, 2019.
More »Tags: Crime Wave, Current Affairs / World Affairs / War, Fiction, Headliners
Hilda Eunice Burgos (Ana María Reyes Does Not Live in a Castle), Angela Dominguez (Stella Diaz Has Something to Say), Mia García (The Resolutions), and K.K. Pérez (The Tesla Legacy) discuss their books and the importance of Latinx fiction for young readers.
More »Tags: Fiction, Language / Culture / Folklife, Latinx, StoryFest / Youth
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Friday Black), Karen Bender (The New Order), and Chaya Bhuvaneswar (White Dancing Elephants) discuss their powerful collections of short stories, ranging from the lyrical and meditative to the bizarre and darkly dystopian.
More »Tags: African-American, Asian-American, Book Club Picks, Family / Aging, Fiction, Gender, Language / Culture / Folklife, Science Fiction / Fantasy
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Friday Black) discusses his highly-acclaimed collection of short stories with Ron Charles, book critic and feature writer at The Washington Post. Readings from the work will be interspersed throughout the conversation. Book sales and signing will follow. FREE to attend and open to …
More »Tags: African-American, Book Club Picks, Fiction
Join the National Book Foundation at Virginia Festival of the Book for readings from this year’s National Book Award finalists in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and youth, including Leslie Connor (The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle), Rebecca Makkai (The Great Believers), Diana Khoi Nguyen (Ghost Of), and …
More »Tags: Book Club Picks, Fiction, Headliners, Nonfiction, Poetry, StoryFest / Youth
The Charlottesville Chapter of The Links Incorporated presents its sixteenth annual Celebration of the African American Literary Tradition, including brunch, musical and spoken word performances by community youth, a tribute to book festival authors, book sales and signing. Tickets required.
More »Tags: African-American, Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry
Belgian authors Kristien Hemmerechts (The Woman Who Fed the Dogs) and Annelies Verbeke (Thirty Days) discuss their latest novels—stories that are gritty yet humanizing—which mark the first of their titles to be made available in English translation.
More »Esi Edugyan (Washington Black) and John Edgar Wideman (American Histories) discuss the meanings of race, violence, and freedom, as explored in their acclaimed fiction. Edugyan and Wideman each received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for an earlier novel; they are accompanied in conversation with Award jury member Rita Dove.
More »Tags: African-American, Current Affairs / World Affairs / War, Fiction, Headliners, History, Social Justice, Southern / Appalachian
