Monica Ong’s ‘Planetaria’ asks us to look further

Monica Ong is a visual poet and author of the new book Planetaria. With a focus on family and diaspora as well as astronomy, the poems in Planetaria are tactile—not just visual but multidimensional. The book features a poem that takes the form of a wheel that’s viewed through a View-Master toy, a poem with […]

Writer Chet’la Sebree on poetry and chronic illness

Chet’la Sebree is the author of Blue Opening, a poetry collection published earlier this month, as well as Field Study, winner of the 2020 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, and other work. She is an assistant professor at George Washington University and teaches in Randolph College’s low-residency MFA program. She spoke […]

Author Tochi Eze discusses ancestral curses and diasporic identity

Tochi Eze is a Nigerian fiction writer and scholar whose debut novel, This Kind of Trouble, explores the relationships between language and power through intergenerational identity, mental health, colonialism, and the African diaspora. Spanning a century and told through multiple perspectives in Nigeria and the United States, the plot follows how choices made by the […]

Author Lydi Conklin sets up camp in “Songs of No Provenance”

Lydi Conklin’s first novel, Songs of No Provenance, was published earlier this month, and tells the story of Joan, a disgraced New York musician seeking reinvention by teaching songwriting at a teen writing camp in rural Virginia. Conklin is also the author of Rainbow Rainbow, a story collection that was long-listed for The Story Prize […]

On multiracial identity and the temporary insanity of writing

Danzy Senna’s latest novel, Colored Television, tells the story of Jane, a novelist and tenure-track professor, and her husband Lenny, a painter and teacher at a Los Angeles art school that’s described as “a white hipster playground.” As a self-identified mulatto woman married to a Black man, Jane is abundantly aware of issues of race […]

Science fiction and the stories we tell

Lincoln Michel’s new novel, Metallic Realms, is a skillful send-up of science fiction fandom and writing group dynamics, set in contemporary Brooklyn. Crafted as a book within a book, readers meet the members of a sci-fi writing group known as Orb 4 who are struggling to get along, pay rent, and work on a series […]

Tempting titles to seek out on Independent Bookstore Day

Independent Bookstore Day is on Saturday, April 26, and it offers the perfect excuse to stop by Charlottesville-area bookshops to find a title or two to enjoy amidst these tumultuous times. For inspiration, local booksellers share their reading recommendations below.—Sarah Lawson 2nd Act Books  Charlie Newman-Johnson, manager The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell “The plot, […]

New memoir cultivates reverence for our fellow animals 

In her book, Moonlight Elk: One Woman’s Hunt for Food and Freedom, Christie Green writes: “When the days are distilled into life and death moments and attuned to tiny toenail prints in the soil and subtle wind shifts, my old identities pale.” A sensuous exploration of the animal world and our place within it, Green’s […]

Ed Park explores metafiction and the nature of reality

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park is a complex kaleidoscope of a book that explores Korean history and diasporic identity, the nature of reality and dreams, and the drive (and dry spells) that are inherent in creative and political work.  The book offers an imagined history that overlaps with […]