In Voice Machines: The Castrato, the Cat Piano, and Other Strange Sounds, Bonnie Gordon explores the castrato as a cultural phenomenon and a critical mode of inquiry into the technological relationships that have existed between humans, machines, sounds, and instruments, from early modern to contemporary times. We interviewed the UVA professor of music and co-director […]
“Minds are different and healing them is likewise so,” writes Kay Redfield Jamison in her latest book, Fires in the Dark: Healing the Unquiet Mind. She adds, “It is the healer’s order to restore the mind to soundness: to repair and mend it, to pry it from disease, to reassemble.” These are the seeds from […]
A queer mountain lion in “ellay” is the narrator of Open Throat, the new novel by Charlottesville’s own Henry Hoke. If that doesn’t pique your interest, we interviewed Hoke to take a deeper dive into his fifth book, which has garnered widespread attention and acclaim, and tops many of the year’s best-of lists. C-VILLE: […]
“It is one thing to understand in theory that our healthcare system is broken … and an entirely different thing to have your hands in the leaky dam of that broken system every day,” writes Sarah DiGregorio, author of Taking Care: The Story of Nursing and Its Power to Change Our World. Beginning with a […]
“You can’t eat ’em if you don’t find ’em. And you can’t find ’em if you’re not outside. I know that’s where I’ll be,” writes Frank Hyman in his latest book, How to Forage for Mushrooms Without Dying: An Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Identifying 29 Wild, Edible Mushrooms. An avid outdoors enthusiast, Hyman has foraged […]
In the opening pages of the new zine, Under the Table and Screaming: Volume 1, musician Gina Sobel says, “If you run into a friend who just left the Tea Bazaar, you ask them, ‘Oh, were you just at the Tea Bazaar?’” This is a reference to the distinctive smell of the Twisted Branch Tea […]
In The Good Ones, Polly Stewart’s new novel of literary suspense, a woman’s family and friends struggle to find answers about her disappearance in a small Blue Ridge town. Set almost two decades after Lauren disappeared, leaving behind a bloodied washcloth and little more, the novel centers on her old friend, Nicola, the protagonist, who […]
“In the human body: trillions of cells, 78 organs, five senses. Though sight was neither the first nor the last to evolve, it is the pinnacle sense in my mind. The eye is the eminent organ. Next to it, the hidden organs quiver, the minor senses falter.” So begins the forthcoming book, Small Pieces, a […]
A deeply researched book, The House Is on Fire is Richmond-based author Rachel Beanland’s gorgeous new historical novel, constructed out of the archives and her own narrative license. Set in Richmond, Virginia, in 1811, the book traces four characters and their communities as they struggle in the aftermath of the historic fire that destroyed the […]
Poet, pediatrician, and public health researcher Irène Mathieu follows her three award-winning poetry collections with milk tongue, a new book of poetry. Referencing the milky covering that can occur on an infant’s tongue after feeding, milk tongue is a collection that explores parenthood, family, and the intricacies of existence in this world, filled with Mathieu’s […]