VIRGINIA FESTIVAL OF THE BOOK

In celebration of our 30th Anniversary, the Virginia Festival of the Book is hosting our very first “Festival Friday,” on and around the Downtown Mall. We’ve invited bookshops and other businesses and venues to stay open a little late, and to offer something bookish for our Festival guests. Imagine the concept of “First Friday,” but with a literary spin, and during a different part of the month. There will be music, art-making inspired, poetry prompts, and more.

A girl whose connection with her grandmother’s Korean cooking transports her in time, in Flora Ahn’s A Spoonful of Time. A small-town kid battles a big-name radio host over books that mysteriously disappear from local library shelves in Kimberly Behra Kenna’s Jett Jamison and the Secret Storm. A kid with strange powers discovers that both loneliness and friendship are real in Laurel Snyder’s The Witch of Woodland.

Event March 22, 2024 5PM – 7:30PM In celebration of our 30th Anniversary, the Virginia Festival of the Book is hosting our very first “Festival Friday,” on and around the Downtown Mall. Event March 24, 2024 1PM – 3PM Panelists will read aloud from anonymous submissions of the first 100 words of original, unpublished manuscripts, then discuss story elements that work, suggest story elements that could be improved, and answer questions from the audience.

Event March 24, 2024 11:30AM – 1PM Along with other farmers, Brooks Lamb—author, farmer, and advocate—discusses farmland loss from suburban sprawl, rampant agricultural consolidation, and racial injustice among farmers of color in his new book Love for the Land. Event March 22, 2024 4PM – 5PM The Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia is hosting their annual meeting during the Festival.

Addie Tsai (any/all) is a queer nonbinary artist and writer of color who teaches creative writing at William & Mary. They also teach in Regis University’s Mile High MFA Program … Adriana Trigiani is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, including The Shoemaker’s Wife.

Cultural critic Clarkisha Kent found that as a dark-skinned, queer, first generation American facing anti-Blackness, homophobia, and respectability politics, the pursuit of “high self esteem” seemed oxymoronic. Psyche A. Williams-Forson, Professor and Chair of American Studies at the University of Maryland, has studied how racism operates in the practice and culture of eating.

On a summer’s day, Camp Holiday Trails is a place of joy for kids with medical needs. But on this spring night, terror awaits as four writers of horror fiction: NYT bestsellers Grady Hendrix, Stephen Graham Jones, and Paul Tremblay, as well as three-time Bram Stoker Award recipient Sarah Langan, read from their spine-chilling novels in the dark. Between tales, divine your future with metaphysical author and tarot card reader Sasha Graham.

Acclaimed authors Quan Barry (When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East), Rebecca Makkai (I Have Some Questions for You), and Jung Yun (O Beautiful) gather to explore what happens when we return to our past—to the family, friends, and familiar places who formed us—and find ourselves changed. Barry is a poet and playwright, author of the novel We Ride Upon Sticks, and the Lorraine Hansberry Professor of English at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

What shoots a song to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 list? From the Beatles to Bob Dylan, from Prince to K-pop, Stereogum senior editor Tom Breihan’s new book, The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music, spins stories from decades of sounds and ponders the playlists of the future. Grab a beer and listen to song samples and a fascinating talk. In conversation with Jack Hamilton, UVA Assistant Professor of Media Studies and American Studies.

Event March 24, 2023 7:30PM – 8:30PM Ticketed Event Three NYT bestselling authors with new books—Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Meghan O’Rourke, and Matthew Quick—share what it means to find the light. Event March 26, 2023 12PM – 1PM John Charles Thomas’s memoir “The Poetic Justice” reflects his twin loves of the law and of poetry, keeping readers rooted to the urgent issues that rock our communities.