25th Annual Virginia Festival of the Book Opens March 20

The 25th annual Virginia Festival of the Book opens on Wednesday, and will feature five days of readings and panel discussions featuring authors ranging from bestselling authors to debut writers as part of a Virginia Humanities event that has become the largest community-based book event in the mid-Atlantic region. Arts & Sciences faculty will participate in a series of Festival readings and discussions this year, both as featured authors and as panel moderators. For more information on the Festival, visit www.vabook.org. 

A chronological list of Virginia Festival of the Book events featuring UVA faculty, including Commonwealth Professor of English Rita Dove’s festival-concluding conversation with Esi Edugyan and John Edgar Wideman is included below.

Wednesday, March 20

Poetics of Existence: A Reading
2–3:30 p.m., New Dominion Bookshop
Poets Steve Cushman (English, How Birds Fly), Molly Minturn (University Communications, Not In Heaven), and Kristen Staby Rembold (Music Lesson) read from their new collections.

#Charlottesville: Perspectives on August 2017
2-3:30 p.m., Central JMRL Library, McIntire Room (201 E. Market St.)
Claudrena Harold (History, Carter G. Woodson Institute) and Louis Nelson (Architecture, Charlottesville 2017) join Hawes Spencer (Summer of Hate) in a discussion of the historic events of Aug. 11 and 12, 2017, when alt-right hate groups descended on Charlottesville. Examining the roots, aftereffects, and opportunities for healing stemming from those events, their work also shows that our past is very much a part of our present.

Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America
4–5:30 p.m., Jefferson School African American Heritage Center
Alissa Quart (Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America) discusses her reporting, research, and personal experience covering the financial pressures on American families stemming from rising medical and childcare costs, harsh employment policies, underemployment, and more, in conversation with Allison Pugh (Sociology). Quart will also discuss her work with the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. Live-streaming provided by WVPT WHTJ WCVE PBS.

Tech Wars: How Social Media Undermines Democracy
6:30-8 p.m., Garrett Hall
Kathleen Hall Jamieson (Cyberwar) and Siva Vaidhyanathan (Media Studies, Antisocial Media) discuss ways in which social media challenges contemporary democracy by undermining responsible journalism and supporting innumerable tools for false messages and interference in U.S. elections, among other tactics.

Thursday, March 21

Coloring Outside the Lines: Explorations in Text and Pattern
10-11:30 a.m., Harrison Institute/Small Special Collections
Creative Writing’s Jane Alison (Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative) and Lois Farfel Stark (The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times) explore the joys of breaking the bounds of their chosen media, the narrative and the image, to challenge our conventional understandings of history, art and form.

Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island
3:30-4:30 p.m., Clark Hall 108
Author and journalist Earl Swift (Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island) will read from his latest work and discuss the history of, and contemporary stories from, the 200-year-old crabbing community in the middle of Chesapeake Bay as it faces extinction. This program is an Environmental Sciences departmental seminar, moderated by Stephen Macko (Environmental Sciences).

Speaking Fearlessly: Tressie McMillan Cotton
4-5:30 p.m., Jefferson School African American Heritage Center
VCU assistant professor of sociology Tressie McMillan Cottom, whose work has been featured by The Washington Post, NPR’s “Fresh Air,” The Daily Show and The New York Times, will read selections from Thick, her collection of essays, in conversation with Deborah McDowell (Carter G. Woodson Institute, English).

Laughing at the Devil – An Invitation to Look at Evil Through the Eyes of a Medieval Visionary
4–5:30 p.m., Harrison Institute/Small Special Collections
Duke University’s Amy Laura Hall (Laughing at the Devil) will discuss ways the writings of Julian of Norwich, a medieval anchorite and visionary, encourage contemporary readers to look evil in the eye – evil such as war, torture, racial terror, sexual violence – and consider ways such trauma might be transformed into hope and resistance. The program will include a reading and a conversation moderated by Heather Warren (Religious Studies).

Friday, March 22

UVA Creative Writing Alumni Reading
10–11:30 a.m., UVA Bookstore
Alumni from UVA’s Creative Writing Program, Libby Burton (Soft Volcano), Laura Eve Engel (Things That Go), James McLaughlin (Bearskin), and Valencia Robin (Ridiculous Light) read from their newest works.

Rebels with a Cause
10-11:30 a.m., Jefferson School African American Heritage Center
Hal Crowther (Freedom Fighters and Hell Raisers: A Gallery of Memorable Southerners) and Charles Marsh (Religious Studies/Can I Get a Witness? Thirteen Peacemakers, Community Builders, and Agitators for Faith & Justice) discuss their collections of biographical essays on unexpected and underappreciated leaders in struggles for justice and equality, in a conversation moderated by Phyllis Leffler (History). 

Environmental Elegies: Sharing the World with Plants & Animals
10-11:30 a.m., City Council Chambers (605 E. Main St.)
Clinton Crockett Peters (Pandora’s Garden) and Susan Hand Shetterly (Seaweed Chronicles) discuss the flora and fauna with which humans share the world, and how they influence and interact with our lives in integral and unexpected ways, in a conversation moderated by Stephen Macko (Environmental Sciences).

Place & Politics in Music: Cultural Histories
Noon–1:30 p.m., CitySpace (100 5th St. NE)
Jesse Jarnow (Wasn’t That a Time) and John Lingan (Homeplace) discuss their research and  the revelations they had while trying to tell histories associated with music legends Patsy Cline and Pete Seeger, in a conversation moderated by Jack Hamilton (Media Studies, American Studies).

Civil War: Places, Politics, and Armies
Noon-1:30 p.m., Harrison Institute/Small Special Collections
Historians J. Matthew Gallman (co-editor of Civil War Places), Stephen E. Maizlish (A Strife of Tongues), and Elizabeth R. Varon (History, Nau Center for Civil War History/Armies of Deliverance) discuss their newest work, explorations of the American Civil War, slavery, and pre-war politics. George Gilliam (History) is moderating.

Fiction: Seeking New Lives, Elsewhere
Noon-1:30 p.m., Central JMRL Library – McIntire Room
Marina Perezagua (The Story of H), Christopher Tilghman (English/Thomas and Beal in the Midi), and Spencer Wise (The Emperor of Shoes) discuss how and why their novels transport readers to far-flung lands, through complex, multi-layered fiction featuring captivating characters. 

Political (Dis)harmony: Music & Social Movements
2-3:30 p.m., Jefferson School African American Heritage Center
Jesse Jarnow (Wasn’t That a Time), Tim Mohr (Burning Down the Haus), and Imani Perry (May We Forever Stand) discuss the roles played by music and musicians in organizing social movements, past and present. Moderated by A.D. Carson (Music).

The Socio-Economic Politics of Food & Family
2-3:30 p.m., Harrison Institute/Small Special Collections
Co-authors Sarah Bowen, Joslyn Brenton, and Sinikka Elliott discuss their collaborative work researching and writing Pressure Cooker: Why Home Cooking Won’t Solve Our Problems and What We Can Do About It, based on extensive interviews and fieldwork in the homes and kitchens of a diverse group of American families. Moderated by Allison Pugh (Sociology).

The Attractions of Power: Latin America
4-5:30 p.m., UVA Bookstore
Herbert Tico Braun (History/La nación sentida), and Daniel Chávez Landeros (Nicaragua and the Politics of Utopia) discuss power in Latin American politics. This program will be presented in English and Spanish. Moderated by Fernando Operé (Spanish).

Native Lives: Past and Present
4-5:30 p.m., CitySpace (100 5th St. NE)
Join the Department of Anthropology’s Jeffery L. Hantman (Monacan Millennium), and authors Susan Harness (Bitterroot), and Greg Smithers (Native Southerners) for a discussion concerning early American history, being born Native and raised outside of the community, and contemporary representation of Native American narratives. 

Superheroes, Starships, and Superintelligence: Mind-Bending Sci-Fi
6-7 p.m., Central JMRL Library – Mcintire Room 
Alex Jennings (New Suns), Erik A. Otto (Detonation), and V.E. Schwab (Vengeful) discuss their latest science fiction work and the roles the genre can play in entertaining and questioning contemporary reality.  Moderated by Njelle Hamilton (English).

Saturday, March 23

Complicated Lives in the Civil Rights Era
10-11:30 a.m., Jefferson School African American Heritage Center
John Edwin Mason (History) moderates a discussion with Raymond Arsenault (Arthur Ashe: A Life), Frye Gaillard (A Hard Rain) and Preston Lauterbach (Bluff City), who examine multiple views of lives and stories of a critical time in American history through biography, personal history, and a little-known story. 

Pursuing the Writing Life: Residencies, Grad Programs, and More
2–3:30 p.m., Omni Hotel – Ballroom A 
Gary Dop, Trudy Hale, Cathryn Hankla, Joy Heyrman, and Jeb Livingood (Creative Writing) offer an overview of Virginia’s university-based creative writing programs, writer residencies, and writing retreats.

Sunday, March 24

Belgian Fiction: Good & Evil in Translation
1-2:30 p.m., New Dominion Bookshop 
Belgian authors Kristien Hemmerechts (The Woman Who Fed the Dogs) and Annelies Verbeke (Thirty Days) discuss their latest novels—stories that are gritty yet humanizing—which mark the first of their titles to be made available in English translation. Moderated by Emily Gadek (Religious Studies).

A World Built on Bondage: Racism and Human Diversity in Award-Winning Fiction
3-4:30 p.m., Jefferson School African American Heritage Center
Rita Dove (English) moderates a discussion with Esi Edugyan (Washington Black) and John Edgar Wideman (American Histories) about the meanings of race, violence, and freedom, as explored in their acclaimed fiction. This discussion of their work, reflections on historic injustices, and writing that helps make the American story a complete story will be the official closing program of the Festival, and seeks to support and celebrate diversity while working towards understanding the invasive and structural roots of racism. Following the discussion, speakers will welcome audience questions.