Books are the ultimate means of travel. Through them, we explore the globe, navigate time, and visit alien and imagined worlds. Books immerse us in the experiences and cultures of others and help us feel connected. Though books can take us anywhere, we get to be locals for the upcoming Virginia Festival of the Book, taking place right here in town March 20 to 23. ¶ Far-flung and Virginia authors and artists come together to offer a wide variety of readings, panels, and events—most of them free. Check out our event recommendations below and visit the 2025 Festival of the Book schedule for a full listing. ¶ Remember, there are myriad ways to support authors and other artists. Buy their books when you can or borrow them from the library. If your library or bookstore doesn’t have the book, request it. Write reviews when you enjoy a book, follow folks you admire on social media, and spread the word about books you find compelling. Authors will appreciate your support.
Celebrating Women in Music: A Festival Kickoff Party
March 20, 7pm | Level 10
“Right now is an exciting time for women in music, as we’re seeing women oftentimes at the center of the mainstream conversation,” says author and WNRN Content Director Desiré Moses. “Pop heavyweights like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé are breaking touring records, while artists like Chappell Roan are ushering in a new cultural frontier.”
In 2017, Moses (a C-VILLE Weekly contributor) joined other female writers, music journalists, and radio hosts to participate in NPR Music’s “Turning the Tables.” The series reexamines the history of popular music with a focus on the voices and accomplishments of women.
“It’s no secret that women in the music industry have been marginalized or overlooked,” says Moses. “Take Sister Rosetta Tharpe, for example. She’s been dubbed the ‘Godmother of Rock and Roll,’ but think about how often her story is buried by discussions about the genius of Elvis Presley or Chuck Berry.”
With time, “Turning the Tables” blossomed into a larger multimedia project that led to the creation of How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History from NPR Music. The book combines archival interviews and essays drawn from “Turning the Tables.”
“It’s a compilation that not only celebrates women making music, but also those women who write about, think critically about, and love music,” explains Moses. “I’m honored to be included among more than 100 contributors to the book.” Moses wrote essays on the importance of Stevie Nicks’ Bella Donna, Etta James’ Rocks the House, and Spice Girls’ Spice.
The kickoff party will feature live music from Suz Slezak (David Wax Museum, The Golden Hours) and Lauren Plank Goans (Lowland Hum, The Golden Hours), and discussion with Moses and the musicians.
Moses says, “Suz and Lauren are extremely talented, hard-working women who will shed light on the intricacies of being touring musicians.”
Mae Mallory, World, Defense Committee, and World Revolutions
March 21, noon | New Dominion Bookshop
“I was compelled very forcefully to write this book,” says author, historian, and ethics scholar Paula Marie Seniors of her book Mae Mallory, the Monroe Defense Committee, and World Revolutions: African American Women Radical Activists.
In grad school, others urged Seniors to write about her unique upbringing once they heard about her family’s activism and close relationship with Mallory. Mallory’s involvement with the Negroes with Guns movement resulted in her imprisonment in Cleveland. Seniors’ parents co-founded the Monroe Defense Committee, with Mallory’s daughter and others, to fight Mallory’s extradition to Monroe, North Carolina. Their work together to protect Mallory ended up bonding their families.
While in her first faculty position, Seniors told new friend Carole Boyce Davies about her family’s connection with Mallory as well as her mother’s activities with the World Workers Party and Black Panthers.
“Carole’s like, ‘You know your story is not the ordinary childhood?’ Because I’m thinking that everybody had this type of childhood, right?” Seniors says. “Marching against the Vietnam War, marching to prevent wars overseas. [Carole] said, ‘That’s a very unique situation you’re talking about. This is not common.’”
In Mae Mallory, the Monroe Defense Committee, and World Revolutions, Seniors weaves together personal stories and theoretical frameworks in her portrayal of African American women engaging in radical activism.
“They had ginormous FBI files,” Seniors says, referring to Mallory, her parents, and others they knew, “over 3,000 pages.”
She describes photos in her mother and Mallory’s files taken without their knowledge at private events, meaning that they were likely taken by friends, revealing the level of scrutiny they endured. Seniors’ mother never wanted her to experience that kind of surveillance.
“I just want people to learn,” Seniors says, “and to not be fearful of learning.”
Champagne and Cake with Louis Bayard and Emma Donoghue
March 21, 4pm | Omni Hotel
“So many people, particularly Americans, don’t even know that Oscar Wilde had a family,” says author Louis Bayard, “that he had a wife and two sons.”
This limited view of Wilde persists because, as Bayard puts it, “He’s been passed down to us as the great gay martyr of late Victorian England.” The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts shows readers a fictionalized version of that less well-known facet of Wilde’s life.
“It’s another kind of outing, to introduce him as a family man,” says Bayard. “He adored his children, adored his wife and their marriage.”
To be able to bring readers into private rooms with the Wildes authentically, Bayard researched the family, period, and setting for three months. He and event partner Emma Donoghue share those research chops.
“[The Paris Express] was triggered by spending a year in Paris, and the apartment we happened to rent was in Montparnasse,” says author Emma Donoghue. “I knew very little about that part of Paris, so I Googled it and saw this extraordinary photograph from 1895. I was transfixed by this crazy image of a steam train plunging out of the window and straight down to the ground.”
That fateful web search resulted in an express ride of a book that features a diverse cast of characters, some based on real people involved in the French railway disaster, while others are completely fictional. With so many potential passengers, Donoghue had to be judicious in her selections.
“It’s a very, very deeply researched novel, but I really tried to be very strict with myself,” Donoghue explains. “If somebody wasn’t earning their place on the train, I pushed them off.”
Searching for Jimmie Strother: A Tale of Music, Murder, and Mystery
March 21, 5pm | McGuffey Art Center
“They used to have a term called songsters or musicianers that referred to members of the Black community [who] were overall performers. They had to be very versatile,” says author Gregg D. Kimball. “That’s one thing that’s really notable about Jimmie Strother’s recordings. He does spiritual music. He does blues. He does some labor songs, so it’s a really interesting mix.”
That versatility drew Kimball to Strother as a book subject, as did the struggles he endured as a blind Black man in the South born in 1881. One of the things that Kimball hopes to draw attention to are messages in Strother’s songs related to those struggles. For example, in “Thought I Heard My Banjo Say,” Strother refers to leaving a drinking place by sundown.
“That’s a message,” says Kimball. “He was traveling around in the time when Black people did really have to think about where they were because sundown towns and counties were dangerous for them.”
Recognizing these messages can help listeners contextualize the songs in time and place as well as revealing more about Strother himself. Musician-scholar Corey Harris will join Kimball to pair discussion and music.
“To work with Corey Harris is a real honor for me,” Kimball says. “I’ve admired him as a performer and as a scholar for a long time. He is a continuation of the musicianer tradition that flows through Black music, so I think he will be able to articulate musically a lot of the key ideas in the book.”
The 2025 Carol Troxell Reader with Evan Friss
March 21, 6pm | New Dominion Bookshop
When Evan Friss was in New York City studying American history, his girlfriend took a job at Three Lives & Company, a small independent bookstore in the West Village. He vicariously became acquainted with the behind-the-counter perspective of the bookshop.
“I fell in love with a bookseller, and, as a result, I ended up falling in love with bookstores,” says Friss, author of The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore.
“I got to know the people, the community, the regulars, the customers, and all the stories,” Friss explains. “I had this kind of close-to-insider’s perspective to see how different and special these places were.”
As a historian, Friss researched bookshops with academic rigor. He drew on a wide variety of sources, from personal diaries and letters to municipal documents and archival collections, to depict the bookshops and booksellers he features in his book. He also includes some personal experiences, writing about Three Lives & Company.
“Having an investment in the subject and being passionate about it can, hopefully, make the work more intimate, personal, full—and enjoyable from the readers’ perspective,” says Friss.
The Bookshop begins in colonial America through to the present day, following the role bookstores have played and continue to play in American culture.
“In many ways, bookstores are more vital than they’ve ever been before as we humans tend to live more insular lives in the 21st century and third spaces become rarer,” says Friss.
Friss hopes to motivate people to take a trip to their local bookstore and visit others when traveling.
“I hope that people will feel inclined to go for a good browse,” Friss says. “Browsing the books can be an almost transcendent experience.”
In Her Own Words: The Power of Women’s Mental Health Narratives
March 22, noon | Jefferson School African American Heritage Center
Generational trauma and mental health are at the forefront in Jody Hobbs Hesler’s novel Without You Here, about a young woman’s journey to reckon with her own mental health after a deeply beloved aunt’s suicide.
“One thing [that inspired my novel] was the story of a friend who was in a difficult marriage,” says Hesler. “She had a history of mental health issues, and she was afraid to leave the marriage because she was afraid her kids would go to her husband because of her mental health history. It was heartbreaking.”
Hesler says it was important to her to “write a story that addressed how, no matter what people are struggling with, they’re still complete and that their love actually still has merit and worth in the world.”
Nonfiction authors Sarah LaBrie and Suzanne Scanlon join Hesler on the book festival panel.
LaBrie’s memoir No One Gets to Fall Apart delves into her experiences with depression, her mother’s schizophrenia, and beyond. Scanlon’s Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen chronicles her own experiences in the New York State Psychiatric Institute and what followed.
“I feel really honored,” Hesler says of sharing the panel with LaBrie and Scanlon. She’s just finished reading both of their books, and says they’re “wonderfully written stories of difficult experiences that these women have gone through. And I just hope, in their company, that they feel like my book did service to some of the things where there’s Venn diagram overlap [with my novel’s content] and their experiences.”
Hesler will also participate in The Write Start: Moseley Speed Critique on March 23 at Jefferson-Madison Regional Library Central. Panelists will critique the first hundred words of original work submitted ahead of the session.
