Six books I didn’t read in 2024

Earlier this fall, I had COVID and, among its other health impacts, one bears mentioning here: For a time, I lost the ability to read. That is, I couldn’t read anything longer than a sentence without losing the rest of the day to a blinding headache. As a fervid reader, this was crushing. I spent […]

A conversation around Black loss with author Jennifer C. Nash

As a writer and theorist, Jennifer C. Nash’s work is deeply connected to political and emotional realities of Black feminism, inviting readers to probe the space between theory and embodiment. She is the Jean Fox O’Barr Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University and the author of four books. Nash spoke to […]

Crozet Book Fest

With a bevy of book-centric activities to pique interest and inspire, the family-friendly Crozet Book Fest brings the rites of writing front and center. Friday features Bookish Trivia with Olivia to kick off a slate of events, followed by a Saturday full of panel discussions and more. Learn about the ins and outs of being […]

Author Stanley Stepanic

Halloween is just around the corner, and spooky vibes are swirling in the autumn air. Fans of fangs will want to sink their teeth into the fine historical fiction of Stanley Stepanic. The local author teaches courses on the Polish language and Eastern European film at UVA, as well as the history of vampires. Stepanic […]

Essaying our world

Nell Greenfieldboyce’s debut book, Transient and Strange: Notes on the Science of Life, delivers on the promise of its title. A carefully woven and emotionally resonant collection of creative nonfiction essays, the book is as much a cabinet of curiosities as it is a glimpse behind the curtain of motherhood in contemporary America.  “For nearly […]

Worthy journey

Though Emma Copley Eisenberg is known for her acclaimed true crime memoir, The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia, she received her MFA in fiction from the University of Virginia, where she was a Henry Hoyns/Poe Faulkner fellow. Her new novel, Housemates, is a queering of the classic road […]

Ecological wonder

“To tell you about the beauty, I must also speak of threat,” writes Greg Wrenn in Mother­ship: A Memoir of Wonder and Crisis. A complex exploration into personal and ecological trauma that also investigates alter­native healing and the cultivation of wonder, this book is as much a prompt for personal reflection as it is a […]

Murder farm

One of the biggest stories that shocked America 100 years ago—about a farm in Georgia where Black people were essentially enslaved and at least 11 men were murdered—is pretty much forgotten today. That will change with Earl Swift’s eighth book, Hell Put to Shame: The 1921 Murder Farm Massacre and the Horror of America’s Second […]

Pandemic dwellings

Drawing inspiration from The Decameron and One Thousand and One Nights, Fourteen Days is a “collaborative novel,” which brings to mind thoughts of exquisite corpses and shared Google Docs with a slew of anonymous animals. However, it is effectively a collection of short stories by 36 American and Canadian authors, edited by Margaret Atwood and […]