David Schwartz, our Third Thursday Reader, discusses his Ant Car.
Sep 232011
Oct 212010
October 21, 2010 David Mills has lived as writer-in-residence in Langston Hughes’ home and has been a VCCA fellow twice. He has won fellowships from Breadloaf and NYU’s Henry Jame Fellowship and had poems published in Fence, Jubilat, Callaloo and forthcoming in Ploughshares. He has also written for Rollling Stone, The Washington Post, the Boston GLobe and has recorded some of his poetry on RCA jazz saxophonist Steve Coleman’s album “Black Science.” Mills’ will read from his new book “The Dream Detective”, which is a small press bestseller.
“David Mills is a poet of lyric comic mystic worldly independence. His work ranges from meditative to satirical to gently outrageous, a reflective and varied wit running (punning) through his poem-by-poem characterizations of mind,” writes Anselm Berrigan.
Sep 162010
September 16, 2010 Lisa Tracy will read excerpts from her new book: Objects of Our Affection: Uncovering My Family’s Past, One Chair, Pistol, and Pickle Fork at a Time. In her book Lisa Tracy invites us into the rich history of a military family characterized by duty, hardship, honor, and devotion—qualities embodied in the very items she chronicles. Here she shares with us a collection unlike any other: silver gewgaws, mismatched cake plates, silk tapestries, dueling pistols that once belonged to Aaron Burr (no, not those pistols), a stately storage chest from Boxer Rebellion–era China, even a chair in which George Washington may or may not have sat. Tracy lovingly describes were collected over the course of centuries by ancestors posted all over the globe, cherished and passed down to her generation as an emblem of who her forebears were, what they had done, and where they had been.
http://www.lisatracyauthor.com/
Apr 172008
April 17, 2008 Kevin McFadden is the author of Hardscrabble, an inaugural selection in the VQR Poetry Series. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Antioch Review, Denver Quarterly, The Iowa Review, Shenandoah, and in other publications. His essays and critical work have appeared in Quarterly West, The Hollins Critic, The Virginia Quarterly Review and Agni Online. Associate Program Director of the Virginia Festival of the Book, he lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
March 20, 2008 R. Rex Stephenson and Tina Hanlon (both from Ferrum College) will bring Appalachian folk tales to life at Riverviews. Stephenson writes and performs folktales adapted from traditional Blue Ridge Mountain stories. Hanlon’s extensive academic background on the subject of Appalachian folktales will provide a revealing introduction to the topic and an enlightening compliment to Stephenson’s reading/performance.
Nov 152007
November 15, 2007 Casey Clabough a professor at Lynchburg College will read selections from his current book, The Warrior’s Path: Reflections Along an Ancient Route. This work recounts his footjourney from Maryland to the Smoky Mountains following his ancestors’ path.
Feb 152007
February 15, 2007
Steven Faulkner will present excerpts from his latest book, Waterwalk: A Passage of Ghosts. This book chronicles the 1000 mile canoe journey Faulkner and his 16-year-old son Justin took along the route of French explorers Marquette and Joliet. Tired, hungry, lost, lonely, fogbound, canoe-wrecked, unable to make their way in the darkness, they have a wonderful time. They are inexperienced paddlers and take nothing but a few supplies and a couple books. Waterwalk is a journey into the heart of this continent 300 years ago, a modern exploration of the quiet waterways that weave their way through America, and a portrait of a father-son relationship
Apr 202006
April 20, 2006 Jeanne Larsen is the author of James Cook in Search of Terra Incognita: A Book of Poems, Brocade River Poems: Selected Works of the Tang Dynasty Courtesan Xue Tao, three novels, Silk Road, Bronze Mirror, and Manchu Palaces, and most recently Willow, Wine, Mirror, Moon: Women’s Poems from Tang China. She co-edited Engendering the Word: Feminist Essays in Psychosexual Poetics, and is the winner of many grants and awards. Her creative nonfiction, essays, poems, poem translations, and short fiction appear regularly in various magazines nationwide. Larsen is the director of the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing and Professor of English; B.A., Oberlin College; M.A. Hollins College; Ph.D., University of Iowa.
Jan 192006
January 19, 2006 J.C. Hallman’s 
work has appeared in GQ, The Los Angeles Times, and a variety of literary magazines. He is the author of The Chess Artist, a nonfiction adventure through the chess subculture, and The Devil is a Gentleman, a creative biography of the philosopher William James, told through narratives of Hallman’s journeys to a variety of modern religious movements. The Devil is a Gentleman is due out this spring from Random House
Nov 172005
November 17, 2005 Brenda E. Sartoris grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, graduating from Millsaps College with a BA in English in 1962. She went on to graduate school at Louisiana State University, and after receiving a PhD degree in medieval British literature, taught a variety of English courses at Mississippi State University for 20 years. When her husband was relocated to Lynchburg, Virginia, in 2001, she retired from her position as Manager of Technical Information Services with Lockheed-Martin, and began to write full time. In 2003-2004, she lived in Paris, France, where she began her first novel and became a “regular” at the Monday night poetry readings at Shakespeare and Company. She has published some of her poetry in various “little” magazines over the years, and has also published travel articles in the Baltimore Sun newspaper. She continues to write both poetry and fiction and lives in Paris 3 or 4 months each year
