Our things literary.
Some of Roanoke’s favorite placemakers and city builders are taking a literary brush to Wasena’s commercial district. The project will cover a wall of the Wasena Getty Mart (1115 Main Street, SW), paying tribute to local poet Maurice Ferguson. Ferguson is literary editor of Artemis Journal, and has long encouraged new voices and an active… Continue reading ★ Poetry and life in a creative community. Contribute to Wasena’s Mockingbird Mural Project today.
How do we talk with each other about divisive issues? Katherine Devine pulled this book group together after a conversation with Delegate Sam Rasoul. As "Sam's (Book) Club (on Civil Discourse)," we read The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt, and the group met twice. The group is going to continue reading books on improving the… Continue reading ★ New Connections Book Club – Next Book: HEALING THE HEART OF DEMOCRACY
Artemis Journal will launch its 25th issue at 6:30 PM on Friday, May 4, at the Taubman Museum of Art. This year's theme, "Women Hold Up Half the Sky," attracted poetry and prose to fill 200 pages, double the publication's usual length. Mike Allen covered the issue release in the Roanoke Times. You can also… Continue reading ★ Celebrate Artemis XXV at the Taubman Friday, May 4
Thank you independent bookstore owners. You take a risk to build community and business around books. Here in Roanoke, we've got Doloris Vest at Book No Further. While we appreciate her everyday, we're especially pleased to stop in on Saturday, April 28, for Independent Bookstore Day. Check out the schedule and download a coupon. The… Continue reading ★ Thanks, Doloris! Independent Bookstore Day – Saturday, 4/28
Carilion Clinic's Dr. Robert L.A. Keeley Healing Arts Program understands the power of words. At least two of the artists in residence have been writers; the Burden Boat transforms words of personal struggle in a ritual of community healing; and Poetry in the Waiting Room touches guests and patients across the healthcare system on a daily basis.… Continue reading ★ Marking National Poetry Month with Carilion Clinic’s Angela Charlton
Cathryn Hankla’s Lost Places: On Losing and Finding Home (Mercer University Press, 2018) collects essays on place, memory, and time, to explore the question, What is home? Meditations on landscape, identity, the body, our environment, and domestic spaces are woven with personal and family history upon a weft of literary, social, and art criticism. Hankla’s… Continue reading ★ On living and telling: Hankla’s Lost Places
Jim Minick will return to the region for Hollins University's Lex Allen Literary Festival on April 7, reading from his most recent work, Fire is Your Water. Minick is an assistant professor at Augusta University and core faculty in Converse College's low-residency MFA program. He formerly taught at Radford University and will also appear at the… Continue reading ★ Drawing from the beauty of this world: Jim Minick at Hollins’ Lex Allen Literary Festival April 7
Author and North Cross School alumna Liza Mundy will visit Roanoke on April 4. The author of Code Girls: The Untold Story of American Women Code Breakers of World War II (Hachette, 2017) will speak onstage at North Cross School with women’s history biographer Heath Hardage Lee from 2 to 4 PM. That evening Mundy will give a… Continue reading ★ Rebels with a cause: Heath Lee on groundbreaking women and Liza Mundy’s April 4 visit
The Roanoke Times' seasonal lifestyle magazine SWVA Living features an article on a suite of live literary events happening around Roanoke. "A New Chapter" by freelance writer Christina Nifong in the Spring 2018 issue features the folks behind Hoot and Holler (a monthly The Moth-like storytelling event), Words3 (poetry and prose read by local writers), and Soul Sessions (a… Continue reading ★ Behind the scenes of Roanoke’s live literary events in Nifong’s SWVA Living article
On Sunday, March 11, visitors and staff at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital looked on as Artist-in-Residence Meighan Sharp and Registered Dietitian-Nutritionist (and arts advocate) Angela Charlton installed 27 large-format framed poems in the gallery in the hospital lobby. Celebrating the 14th issue of Poems in the Waiting Room, Sharp and Charlton have curated a retrospective of the… Continue reading ★ Carilion Clinic Artist-in-Residence Meighan Sharp on the exhibition of Poems in the Waiting Room
BOOK CITY ★ Roanoke 