Virginia Festival of the Book

We had so much fun representing Virginia at The Library of Congress' National Book Festival!
📚 We hosted Virginia's Great Reads author, Mojgan Ghazirad at the booth for a book signing of The House on Sun Street, which sold out at Politics and Prose Bookstore by the end of the day. 📚
🎉 We met readers and writers from across the country, and shared lots of leftover goodies from the 2024 Festival. 🎉
🍬 And, our team handed out over 2,500 pieces of saltwater taffy from Virginia Beach. What a sweet weekend! 🍬

Reading the submissions guidelines and FAQs before sending in your application? Very mindful! Very demure!
VaBook.Org/Submit

📣 We're still accepting submissions to the 2025 Virginia Festival of the Book! 📣

Apply by August 29th. For guidelines and the submissions portal, visit VaBook.org/submit

Love seeing Amor Towles and new University of Virginia Press titles mentioned!

University of Virginia Press The website for the University of Virginia Press

Each year, as part of the National Book Festival, The Library of Congress's 56 Affiliate Centers for the Book select one book for Young Readers and one for Adult Readers to celebrate the people and places around our nation.

Virginia's 2024 "Great Reads for Great Places" selections are Mojgan Ghazirad's "The House on Sun Street" and Kelly Ann Jacobson's "Robin and Her Misfits". Both authors were featured in the 2024 Virginia Festival of the Book.

**An incorrect version of this graphic was posted yesterday. We apologize for this mistake and regret any confusion it may have caused.**

In case you missed it! There are still two spots remaining in our upcoming letterpress intensive.

Join us for the launch of “MORNINGSIDE” with author Aran Shetterly, in conversation with Dr. Andrea Douglas, Executive Director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center. This event is free and open to the public.

Learn more: https://loom.ly/RGX1Uno

Amor Towles has multiple feathers in his cap.
Towles' work has received wide acclaim since the release of his breakout novel, “Rules of Civility”. His second novel, “A Gentleman in Moscow”, spent 59 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list before being adapted for a television series starring Ewan McGregor. Amazon selected his third novel “The Lincoln Highway” as the Best Book of 2021, and his most recent short fiction collection, “Table for Two” became an immediate bestseller.

Don’t miss your chance to see this literary giant in Charlottesville on October 16th! 🔗 https://loom.ly/NL1SmII

📚✨ Join us for an engaging conversation between bestselling author Amor Towles and University of Virginia President Jim Ryan. Mr. Towles’ novels, including “Rules of Civility” and “A Gentleman in Moscow”, have captivated millions. His new collection of short stories, “Table For Two”, became an immediate bestseller. Don't miss this free event, made possible by Brown Advisory.

🎟 Tickets are available now at TheParamount.net

Much has been said about the golden age of gospel music in the 1940s and 50s. But what about the gospel music that came later when hip-hop and soul were dominant? University of Virginia Corcoran Department of History Professor Claudrena Harold’s book, When Sunday Comes, takes us to the Black record shops, churches, and businesses that transformed gospel after the Civil Rights era and nurtured the music that was an essential cultural and political expression for African Americans.

Listen to Claudrena on last week's episode of With Good Reason Radio "When Sunday Comes".

We're headed to Washington, D.C. on Saturday, August 24th, for the 24th annual The Library of Congress National Book Festival! Hope to see you there!

The Library of Virginia announced yesterday that poet and lawyer Reginald Dwayne Betts, founder and CEO of Freedom Reads , will be presented with the Library’s honorary Patron of Letters degree, the Library of Virginia’s highest honor.

Dwayne spoke at the Virginia Festival of the Book in 2011, 2016, and 2021. We are inspired by his story and Freedom Reads' mission: "to inspire and confront what prison does to the spirit. We bring beautiful, handcrafted bookcases into prisons, transforming cellblocks into Freedom Libraries. The Freedom Library is a physical intervention into the landscape of plastic and steel and loneliness that characterizes prison. In an environment where the freedom to think, to contribute to a community, and even to dream about what is possible is too often curtailed, Freedom Reads reminds those inside that they have not been forgotten."

To date, Freedom Reads has opened more than 300 Freedom Libraries in prisons nationwide.

Congratulations, Dwayne!

Hey Charlottesville! If you had fun at the 2024 Virginia Festival of the Book, It's not too late to vote for us as your favorite local festival 📚🎉
Cast your ballot at vote.c-ville.com

Our 2024 Virginia Festival of the Book featured over 130 bestselling authors from across the nation—including dozens from here in Virginia! Do you want to join us in igniting curiosity and understanding through the power of literature? Make a gift before our fiscal year ends: https://loom.ly/ZXUwHOA

This past weekend, Virginia Center for the Book members travelled to Cumberland County's Juneteenth celebration for the launch of Veronica Jackson's "A Permanent Record". Based on the historic Pine Grove School and its community, the installation was unveiled at the Bright Hope Community Center.

Visit https://loom.ly/LZWyNCo to learn more about this monumental project.

Juneteenth celebrations are just around the corner. Have you read Kalela William's blog post yet? Check out her list of reading recommendations before the launch of 'A Permanent Record' this Wednesday, in Cumberland.
https://loom.ly/fRd0gHw

Here are some facts about the historic Pine Grove School, and other Tuskegee Rosenwald schools, selected from Nina Wilder's feature article 'Letterpress Artwork Presents ‘A Permanent Record’ of Historic Pine Grove School Attendees'. You can read the piece here: https://loom.ly/LZWyNCo

Virginia Center for the Book resident artist Veronica Jackson's project, 'A Permanent Record', will be unveiled at the Bright Hope Community Center in Cumberland County on June 15, 2024, during the community’s annual Juneteenth Celebration.

On May 8th 2024, artist Veronica Jackson led a community sewing group in Cumberland County to complete six banners, as part of her project "A Permanent Record". The installation memorializes the students and faculty of the Historic Pine Grove School, a Tuskegee Rosenwald school.

Read more about "A Permanent Record" on the Virginia Humanities blog: https://loom.ly/LZWyNCo

Summer enrollment is open at the Virginia Center for the Book! Whether you're a new or experienced book artist, there's a workshop for you. Visit vabookcenter.org/events for more information.

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Month! To celebrate, Virginia Humanities' Director of Education Emma Ito put together a list of new books by authors. 📚 Read it here: https://loom.ly/_tsWfqo

2023-2024 AANHPI Releases You May Have Missed - Virginia Humanities In honor of AAPI Month, Emma Ito shares some new books by Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander authors you may have missed that came out in the last year.

With Good Reason Radio aired interviews with four 2024 Virginia Festival of the Book authors this April.

Centering stories of immigration and belonging, last week's episode "United We Stand" includes interviews with Festival authors SJ Sindu (VCU) and Addie Tsai (William and Mary), as well as Majo Delgadillo (JMU) and Yuemin He (Northern Virginia Community College).

"New Brownies", released on April 12th, begins with a segment about sociologist Karida Brown (Emory University) and artist Charly Palmer's reimagining of WEB DuBois' "The Brownies' Book", the first publication written for Black children. "The New Brownies' Book" was awarded an NAACP Image Award this past spring.

📷 Image credit: llustration by Nabi H. Ali from SJ Sindu's graphic novel "Shakti"; Tracy Murrell's "You Are My Spring I Am Your Fall", included in "The New Brownies' Book: A Love Letter to Black Families"

In case you missed it, we have sixteen recordings of panels online now! Revisit a favorite discussion or watch something new.
📼 Check them out here: vabook.org/by-tag/virtual-programming/

Last Thursday, the partnered with to host this year’s National Book Award winner, Arthur Sze, in conversation with Festival author Brian Teare.

The evening opened with a reading from Roanoke’s first-ever youth poet laureate, Elani Spencer. Natalie Green introduced the authors, who discussed poetry’s role in our understanding of the natural world. Audience participants raised questions about climate change before the book signing in the lobby of the historic

Thanks to all who joined us for this insightful conversation!

📸Photo credit: Patrick Perkins Photography.

Congratulations to 2024 Virginia Festival of the Book author McBride, who won a LA Times Book Prize in Young Adult Literature for her 2023 novel Gone Wolf!

Tomorrow night, celebrate the 2024 National Book Foundation Science + Literature honoree Arthur Sze at the The Grandin Theatre in !

Arthur Sze, author of “The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems” will be in conversation with Brian Teare, who joined us at the 2024 panel “Healing Words” with his lyric essay “Poem Written by a Man.”

Visit https://loom.ly/gN9UkHY to learn more and register for this free event!

Poetry and ecology converge in next week! 🌍🍃✍️

Join the National Book Foundation at the historic The Grandin Theatre for “Science + Literature: Nature’s Poetry & Peril” on Thu, 4/25 at 7PM.

Arthur Sze joins Brian Teare, 2024 author, in conversation on environmental poetry, and what we can read, write, and think through to save our endangered planet.

The event is free and open to the public. The program will be followed by a book signing. Learn more & register: https://loom.ly/gN9UkHY

Science + Literature: Nature's Poetry & Peril - Virginia Center for the Book Join National Book Award Winner Arthur Sze in conversation with Brian Teare on how poetry can help save our planet.