For most of her life, Sharon Harrigan has been haunted by questions surrounding her father’s death: He died in Michigan when she was 7, and the exact cause was shrouded in a fog. Her debut memoir, Playing with Dynamite, is about finding the courage to ask questions, to question her own memory and ultimately to […]
Kathryn Erskine has lived in the Netherlands, Israel, South Africa, Scotland and Newfoundland, but she has called Charlottesville home for the last 14 years. This month marks the release of Erskine’s first picture book, Mama Africa! How Miriam Makeba Spread Hope with Her Song, and her sixth middle-grade novel, The Incredible Magic of Being. Though […]
This week two different organizations are bringing together people from various backgrounds to look at our community through a creative lens. One event will take place in a moonlit warehouse while the other will be on the sunlit Rivanna River. Here’s what they’re all about. Idea Factory 1740 Broadway St. September 29 Aidyn Mills, the […]
As the weather starts to turn cool, now is a good time to find a book to curl up with on those chilly, overcast days. Local author releases this season offer a wide array of subjects from which to choose, such as history, fiction, psychology and memoir. Here are some highlights: Lisa Jakub, Not Just […]
When Elizabeth Meade Howard’s father died at age 90, she found herself adrift without a beacon. Not only had she lost her parent, she’d lost her model for aging well. An award-winning journalist, she began to interview friends, neighbors and professionals she admired—some of them famous—inquiring what aging successfully meant to them. Her quest became […]
On August 12, when hundreds of white supremacists gathered here for the Unite the Right rally, ostensibly to protest the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue, our city suffered terrible loss. Just a few blocks away from the destruction, Black Lives Matter held an Art in Action event at Champion Brewing Company. Organizer Leslie […]
It began in a crowded Richmond parking lot. Local novelist Erika Raskin had an appointment to re-enroll in the master of social work program she had begun at VCU, and couldn’t find a parking space. As she drove in circles something shifted within her. She laughs and says, “I was like, ‘You know what? Screw […]
For Julio Agustin, an interest in the performing arts began with the piano classes he took in junior high school. “I was always musically inclined,” says the associate professor of musical theatre at James Madison University. He laughs when he remembers that he wanted to study either musical education or math education. When he failed […]
Woody Guthrie—father of Arlo Guthrie and author of “This Land Is My Land”—was born more than a century ago in Okemah, Oklahoma, on July 14, 1912. And yet, many of his political protest songs of the 1940s and ’50s are as relevant now as they were then. This week, the Heritage Theatre Festival brings Guthrie […]
BeCville, a community arts project centered on the city’s Strategic Investment Area (the intersection of Ridge Street, Belmont and Fifeville), has been more than a year in the making, led by Matt Slaats, executive director of PauseLab. Slaat’s premise for BeCville, funded by an NEA Our Town Grant called Play the City, is to use […]