Poets David Campos (American Quasar), Naoko Fujimoto (Glyph), and Aurielle Marie (Gumbo Ya Ya) employ not only the written word but also a visual vocabulary in their work. Linking text and image, they explore how we communicate. In conversation with Kevin McFadden.
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Thanks to our bookseller for this event, Fountain Bookstore. Attendees and supporters of the Festival are eligible for a 20% discount on speakers’ titles linked above until Thursday, March 31, 2022, using coupon code: YAYVABOOK22
“Campos’ fierce, direct contemplations turn ordinary anxiety into dramatic and memorable gesture; Montoya’s subtle but searing images frame human thought as embodied activity. Both text and image remind us that we exist vibrantly in those states of ambivalence, grief, and anger that we most fear: “What if the wreckage, / the carnage, the catastrophe, was your music?” —Katie Peterson, author of A Piece of Good News
“[Naoko Fujimoto’s Glyph] is a reading experience like no other. Poetry in the language of color, line, and shape. Poetry in the language of comics and collage. I just keep looking and re-looking, reading and re-reading.” – Kelcey Parker Ervick, author of The Bitter Life of Božena Němcová
“Aurielle Marie’s Gumbo Ya Ya is a hex, a homily, a house of reckoning and revolution sprung from a young Black woman’s willpower and wondrous capability. Diverse and daring in form, this gxrl gospel of gumbo serves molten exuberance on each page, defying expectation and launching us into new hope. Here is, indeed, a too-loud thing that cannot be contained by a room, but squeezes itself into our vision long and blued enough for our horizons to expand. Asé to this psalm and salvation of noise! Asé to this ritual in the creole of angels! Asé to each word!” —Tyehimba Jess, author of Olio
Sponsors
Virginia Festival of the Book staff, volunteers, partners, and attendees appreciate all of our sponsors. It is their crucial support, along with individual donors, that allows us to present the 2022 Virginia Festival of the Book almost completely free of charge. We appreciate the generous commitment from our Premier Sponsor, The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, and these major sponsors: Michelle and David Baldacci, Dominion Energy, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
