Every good story needs an indomitable force that drives the narrative forward. In Pauls Toutonghi’s book Dog Gone, that force is a golden retriever mix named Gonker, who happens to be from this area. “I first heard the story of Gonker when I went to my in-laws’ house for the first time,” says Toutonghi, the […]
Every good story needs an indomitable force that drives the narrative forward. In Pauls Toutonghi’s book Dog Gone, that force is a golden retriever mix named Gonker, who happens to be from this area. “I first heard the story of Gonker when I went to my in-laws’ house for the first time,” says Toutonghi, the […]
Though books about dogs never go out of fashion, popular dog breeds change over time. After all, it wasn’t so very long ago that Labradoodles didn’t even exist and everyone wanted a dog like Lassie or Rin Tin Tin to help out in an emergency. A recent book by Bronwen Dickey, Pit Bull: The Battle […]
Throughout the last four centuries, publishers, editors and artists have created a vast range of textual interpretations of William Shakespeare’s works—from original printings and family-friendly versions to Romeo and Juliet translated into social media posts, complete with emojis. To commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, UVA’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library has […]
Hannah Barnaby’s second young adult novel, Some of the Parts, published in February, was “partly inspired by my own experience with sibling loss,” she says. Her brother, to whom the book is dedicated, died accidentally, and while the events in the novel differ greatly from Barnaby’s experience, she says the emotional journey of the protagonist […]
Most writers are preoccupied by a single theme that they revisit and explore in new ways again and again in their fiction. It’s what makes their work distinctive, their style dependable. For local Young Adult novelist Kristen-Paige Madonia, that theme is the threshold of adulthood. “All of my characters are 17,” she says. “It is […]
IX Art Park is a place where Charlottesville gets up close and personal with art. The art is big; it’s bright. You can write on the warehouse’s exterior walls and touch many of the sculptures. So it’s no surprise that First Fridays at IX is a bit different from First Fridays at other Charlottesville galleries. […]
Over the course of her writing career, which began at a weekly alternative newspaper like C-VILLE Weekly, Barbara Kingsolver has authored 14 books and won numerous awards, including the National Humanities Medal in 2000 and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in 2011. Her novel The Lacuna won the Orange Prize in 2010, and her memoir, […]
Book artist Lyall Harris doesn’t shy away from difficult and complex subjects, but dares to approach them more closely and pick them apart piece by piece to rebuild them. “Art is a language, a place to put things, to work stuff out,” says Harris. “My conduit.” Whatever her subject, recurring themes of identity and place […]
The idea for the Origami Yoda series began when Tom Angleberger stumbled across an origami Yoda on the Internet. “I was a huge fan of Star Wars—and an origami folder,” he says. So he tried to replicate the origami Yoda he found online. “The one I made was not as good as the one on […]
Every great rock ‘n’ roll photograph requires unseen talent behind the camera, and if you follow coverage of jam bands and the hippie scene, then it’s likely the person pressing the shutter is Jay Blakesberg. Since the mid-’80s Blakesberg has been shooting photos of music icons and breakthrough acts from Primus and U2 to Nirvana […]