We’re pleased to share a second round of 2023 Virginia Festival of the Book panels with you.
And just in case you missed it, here’s what we have announced so far:
- Ross Gay: Same Page Community Reads Selection & Featured Virginia Festival of the Book Author Announced
- 2023 Schedule Sneak Peek
- Two Newbery Authors Join 2023 Festival
Locations and other details for these events will be available when the full schedule is announced. Subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to stay up to date with Festival news and announcements.
Romance Salon with Tracey Livesay
Thursday, March 23 | 11:30 AM
Romance author Tracey Livesay meets with readers and fellow writers in an informal salon to discuss her novel American Royalty. American Royalty is the first novel in a new series that reimagines the love story of Prince Harry and Megan Markle.
In conversation with Katie Baldwin.
SciFi Salon with Lucinda Roy
FRIDAY, March 24 | 12:30 PM
Distinguished Virginia Tech professor Lucinda Roy meets with writers and readers in this informal salon to discuss her latest book. Flying the Coop is the second book in the Dreambird Chronicles trilogy in which Roy explores “a future world where racial conflict and the urban/rural divide have turned the country into the Disunited States.”
Handsome, Durable, and Inexpensive: The ‘Modern Library,’ 1925-1959
FRIDAY, March 24 | 4:00 PM
The Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia is hosting its annual meeting, announcing the publication, in conjunction with the UVA Library, of an online bibliography of the Modern Library, the most important American reprint series of significant works of literature and thought published in the twentieth century.
A tour of the site will feature a talk by David Vander Meulen, Professor of English at UVA and editor of the journal of the Bibliographical Society of UVA, Studies in Bibliography. Vander Meulen is preparing a history of the work of the illustrator and former Charlottesville resident Warren Chappell.
Crowns & Claws: Coming of Age in YA Fantasy Fiction
Saturday, March 25 | 4:00 PM
Debut authors Emily Thiede (This Vicious Grace) and Andrew Joseph White (Hell Followed With Us) discuss their Young-Adult Fantasy/Dystopian novels. This Vicious Grace follows Alessa as she tries to harness her own powers to save her home, finding love, friendship, and betrayal along the way. In Hell Followed With Us, trans boy Benji is infected with a bioweapon and finds refuge in a queer group of teens bent on surviving in a post-apocalyptic landscape.
Presented in partnership with WriterHouse.
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Emily Thiede -
Andrew Joseph White
Poets in Other Forms
SUNDAY, March 26 | 2:00 PM
What draws poets to write in other forms? How do we distinguish between prose and verse, fact and fiction? And how useful, ultimately, are these distinctions?
In this panel, three poets discuss their forays into prose. Quan Barry, award-winning novelist, poet, and author of We Ride Upon Sticks, discusses her latest novel When I Am Gone. Lisa Russ Spaar, author of many volumes of poetry, discusses her debut novel Paradise Close. Acclaimed memoirist and poet Meghan O’Rourke discusses her poetry and recent book The Invisible Kingdom.
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Lisa Russ Spaar -
Quan Barry -
Meghan O’Rourke
Origin Stories: Race, Religion, and Family in Virginia Memoirs
SUNDAY, March 26 | 4:00 PM
These memoirs from VA professors explore the many routes that these writers took through their lives. Matthew Vollmer (All of Us Together in the End) engages with his Seventh-Day Adventist upbringing. Sofia Samatar (White Mosque) goes on a secular pilgrimage in an exploration of identity.
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Matthew Vollmer -
Sofia Samatar
