Emily Hodson Pelton, Winemaker [with video!]

“My first thought when I realized we were doing pretty good with this wine,” Pelton says of the 2009 Veritas Viognier that has earned her heaps of praise, “is ‘Thank goodness I have a lot of it!’” If, when she was studying infectious diseases in the far reaches of India, Emily Pelton couldn’t imagine becoming […]

Brad Wilcox, Sociologist

As if marriage and money weren’t complicated enough, Brad Wilcox will tell you that a recession can cut to the heart of a couple’s stability. That’s because money, apparently, leads to happiness.  HEAR MORE Click here to listen to an NPR interview with Brad Wilcox on postponing parenthood. Wilcox is the Director of the National Marriage Project. […]

Debbie Stockton, Farmer Advocate

For years, Debbie Stockton has been a visible part of the local movement for farmers’ rights. As an active member of Virginia Independent Consumer and Farmers Association (VICFA), she’s fought in the legislative trenches against what she sees as overzealous government regulation of small farms. In 2007, though, she went national with her message when […]

Scott Ransom, Astronomer at National Radio Astronomy Observatory

HEAR MORE Click here to hear the sound of a pulsar, spinning 600 times per second, as heard at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.   As a kid, Scott Ransom played with toy telescopes and visited space camp. He thought he wanted to be one thing: an astronaut. It wasn’t long before bad vision swept that dream from […]

Deborah Eisenberg, Short Fiction Writer

HEAR MORE Click here to listen to Eisenberg read from Twilight of the Superheroes.  Hand Deborah Eisenberg a stack of money—say, $500,000—and the author and UVA creative writing instructor will buy time. At least, that’s what she told the New York Daily News shortly after she was awarded one of 24 MacArthur “genius” grants last September. The prize­—a […]

George Beller, Cardiologist

SEE MORE Click here to watch a video explaining an echocardiogram.  When hundreds of students sit in their first cardiology class, they turn to one definitive book: Clinical Nuclear Cardiology: State of the Art and Future Direction. Now in its fourth edition, it was co-written by George Beller.  Beller is a heart expert. Not of the Dr. […]

Ted Genoways, Editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review

Ted Genoways says that there’s “no question” his own writing time is more structured now than when he first took the position as VQR editor.   Being arguably the best literary magazine in the country means more than outliving the rest of ’em, and Ted Genoways knows it. After he became the editor of the Virginia […]

Axis of C'ville, Ultimate Frisbee Team [with video!]

In a world where brawny sports like football and hockey rule the airwaves, one sport is waging a quiet revolution—quiet, except for the whirr of a plastic disc spinning through the air. America’s best ultimate frisbee team, where teams score points by catching the disc in the opposing team’s end zone, is based here. A […]

Michael "Nick" Nichols, Photographer

Nichols’ full photograph of a 300′ tall, 1,500-year-old redwood demanded that he meticulously plan 84 separate digital photographs. The seamless composite is the only high-definition image of a full redwood ever taken. Few of us can claim to be the person who took the definitive photograph of anything but our children. Globetrotting photographer Michael “Nick” […]