Local women break through in fantasy and horror

‘‘My book came out last year a week before the presidential elections,” says Madeline Iva, author of the fantasy romance Wicked Apprentice. “What I came away with, standing in the blasted devastation of our liberal democratic psyche, was that I’d just written a book about a woman who ends up holding all the power—and people […]

Group of friends brings on Curse of the Slasher Nurse

A group of friends goes out to a secluded cabin in the woods—no other cabins within screaming distance, one of the friends claims—for a weekend of laid-back partying. As night falls and the group gets to some slightly drunken, scary storytelling, a tale about a woman who’s broken out of a psychiatric hospital becomes a […]

Movie review: The plotline grows hazy in Only the Brave

In 2013, one of the deadliest wildfires in recent history claimed 25 lives, 19 of whom were members of an elite squad of firefighters known as the Granite Mountain Hotshots. All but one lost their lives while struggling to contain the blaze, which appeared routine until wind and other factors allowed it to spread beyond […]

Ed Woodham reclaims public space with Art in Odd Places

Each year, UVA’s student-run Arts Board Committee invites an artist to the University of Virginia. This year, in collaboration with the visual studio arts program, the students have invited New York-based artist Ed Woodham, founder and director of Art in Odd Places, a collaborative arts festival. Woodham will give two talks this month on the […]

Second Street Gallery flirts with the dark side

Peter Benedetti never planned to make a deck of tarot cards. Instead, you might argue, the cards found him. “It’s not something I would normally do,” says the Brooklyn-based artist, who points to the abstract expressionist influence on the style of his inventive drawings and paintings. But a few years ago, during his daily research […]

Choose your own horror adventure app hits close to home

Halloween is right around the corner, and, for some of us, candy corn, costumes, haunted houses, horror movie marathons and monster mashing is celebration enough. But for those who like a little extra treat in their bag of Halloween tricks, two Charlottesvillians have developed Hellmouth, an interactive choose-your-own-horror-adventure audio tour. Head to the Downtown Mall, […]

ARTS Pick: Seth Glier

On Seth Glier’s new album, Birds, he processes grief through songcraft, touching on themes such as a broken criminal justice system, capitalism through fracking and the fragility of life. The Grammy-nominated artist, who’s been compared to Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel, made the record in a revamped textile mill in western Massachusetts following the death […]

ARTS Pick: Think & Drink

The first installment of Think & Drink, a new series from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, features NPR reporter Lulu Miller reading from her upcoming book, Why Fish Don’t Exist. Wes Swing accompanies her with his original compositions on the cello, followed by a Q&A on “the dangers of miscategorization, the infallibility of the […]

ART Pick: Will and Whit

Laura Lee Gulledge wrote her young adult graphic novel Will and Whit as a show of gratitude to Charlottesville, a place that helped her pursue her ambitions. Four years later, the story is coming to life in the form of a musical in the very town where it began. Using live drawing and shadow puppetry, […]