Audrey Rose The Bomb Shelter Sessions/Self-released Nashville-based singer-songwriter Audrey Rose strikes a chord on her latest EP, The Bomb Shelter Sessions. These five songs have a beautiful grittiness that conveys a young woman’s struggles, joys, pains, and moments of respite in a powerful way. “Rising Up” parlays a subtle acoustic opening into a raucous tune, […]
Audrey Rose The Bomb Shelter Sessions/Self-released Nashville-based singer-songwriter Audrey Rose strikes a chord on her latest EP, The Bomb Shelter Sessions. These five songs have a beautiful grittiness that conveys a young woman’s struggles, joys, pains, and moments of respite in a powerful way. “Rising Up” parlays a subtle acoustic opening into a raucous tune, […]
Catchiness. It’s the pop song writer’s holy grail. But what is it about a song that gets it lodged in hipsters’ heads? Is it a combination of the perfect melody and a poetic hook? The right balance of whistling and “woo-woos”? Perhaps a horn-driven chorus? Cowbell anyone? Whatever the formula, Detroit-based Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. […]
During the closing credits in Veronica Mars, there’s a text crawl that reads: “This movie would never have been possible without the endless faith and support of our fans around the world, and especially the 91,585 backers who pledged on Kickstarter to bring Veronica back to life. Thank you for never giving up, and for […]
Lyndia Porter had no idea that she was creating a new form of ministry when she sat down to write her stage play Man at a Crossroad. Performed by volunteers from across Virginia, the play explores the struggles of living a Christian life within a secular society. But unlike some stage performances, nothing here is […]
Each March, visiting and local literati of all ages and reading preferences fill Charlottesville for the annual Virginia Festival of the Book. History buffs and romance readers mingle with self-published writers and award-winning authors including John Grisham, Lois Lowry, and John Lewis. Attendees have lots of choices to make during the five-day festival (March 19-23). Elaborate transportation routes […]
Mary Buford Hitz was in her late 20s when Hurricane Camille’s devastating floods hit Nelson County on the night of August 19 1969, killing 153 people in a few hours and forever changing the mountain landscape. Hitz, a Richmond native who now lives in Charlottesville, was staying on family property in Afton that late summer […]
Though she cut her musical teeth in NYC’s Lower East Side among other notables in the anti-folk game, Diane Cluck now resides in Virginia—a fitting landscape for her lovely and lonely brand of intuitive songwriting. Her first release in eight years, Boneset is a collection of songs written during her hiatus and presented in loose […]
When a heart attack left Avery Chenoweth wondering how much time he had left, the author decided to self-publish for the first time. A Charlottesville resident since 1990, Chenoweth had already published Albemarle: A Story of Landscape and American Identity, Empires in the Forest: Jamestown and the Making of America, and the short story collection […]
For many years, The Hook ran a writing contest in conjunction with the Virginia Festival of the Book that was judged by John Grisham. With the newspaper’s closure last summer, it looked like local writers were out of luck if they wanted to compete for cash and readers. But WriterHouse, the local nonprofit dedicated to […]
The Virginia Festival of the Book began in a world with no Kindles, no iPads, and no online self-publishing. Barnes & Noble recently had arrived in Charlottesville and the death knell for independent bookstores promptly sounded. It was 1994, and a company called Amazon had just started selling books over the Internet. Two decades later, […]