I’ve been reading some of Ruth Rendell’s work lately. That sounds innocent enough, doesn’t it? Just picked up a couple of her latest, enjoyed the experience, had a nice day, eh? The fact is I have, over the past […]

Meet Anna Bryant, a local painter/Montessori teacher/mother/wife/friend of mine. Currently, her exhibit, “Daily Feast”, is running at New Dominion Bookstore. I advise you to stop by when you’re downtown, but try […]

I’m very happy to be a guest blogger because I can write about two things that are very important to me, Virginia Writers Club (VWC) and our annual VWC Symposium at Piedmont Virginia Community College on […]

Born in Brussels, Belgium in 1934, Anne Slaughter grew up in the shadow of World War II. As a seven year old in 1942, Anne and her younger brother escaped with their mother to safety in England, there joining […]

WRITERS SYMPOSIUM SET FOR AUGUST AT PVCC
Kathleen Grissom, New York Times bestselling author of The Kitchen House, will be the keynote speaker at a symposium, “Navigating Your Writing Life,” on August 3rd at Pie […]

Two young Virginia artists are worth watching.

Laura Bell, a 2012 graduate of the University of Virginia and a native of Pennington Gap, Virginia, has shown her work across the state and has a current show, […]

I have a shelf at home where, up until recently, I kept the books I hadn’t yet read. It was three shelves, actually, stacked with the volumes I hadn’t had the time or chance to peruse. Many of the books have been […]

I recently read a critique in New York magazine by Jerry Saltz about a current MoMA exhibit, “Photography and The American Civil War.” The piece mentioned Alexander Gardner, a Scottish-born war photographer famous […]

From what Fern can tell it looks like a fight. Fern’s watching through a back screen door which makes the scene look like a pointillist painting. Grace flies across the kitchen floor at Philip, something in her h […]

She adjusted the nasal cannula in his nostrils. She couldn’t hear the oxygen moving through the tubing.

“Is that better?”

He nodded, saving his breath for breathing.

“The flight of stairs was a lot.” S […]

The Universe May Expand Forever
 
The fan blades spin large in your pupils,
imperturbable peepers as a pilot’s.
I am reflected in the corner of your eye,
feeding you, and we are just mesmerized, aren’t […]

Rob Browning “always loved art,” and had parents who recognized his young talent, buying him books to encourage a budding interest in drawing and painting. Browning, a native of Nahor, a village in Fluvanna Cou […]

From her window as a child, Robin Braun could look beyond the grassy yard out to the Chesapeake Bay. The water, its tides and artifacts, would fascinate her from then on. Today an accomplished artist, […]

If You’re Here With Us, Give Us a Sign of Your Perversion
My wife is a ghost hunter. Actually, my wife considers herself more of a Paranormal Anthropologist. But, essentially, she’s a ghost hunter. And if tha […]

That’s the kind of remark that librarian Ruth Kneale encountered often in her research showing that all the old stereotypes of her profession – you know: they’re a mousy, prim, timid and bespectacled lot – persist […]

Something I’ve noticed about public discourse over the past decade or so is the habit or need to assume or force our real lives and events to fit into the arcs and tropes of fictional stories. This happens to […]

Some years ago in Key West’s Gallery on Greene, I saw a unicorn — sculpted from wire entwined with bits of china, crystal and beach glass — gliding like a giant mobile, catching the light, gently riding t […]

At one point in the graphic novel Maus, Art Spiegelman’ chronicle of his father’s life before WWII and in Auschwitz, and the author’s own difficulty dealing with that history, Spiegelman is speaking with his […]

But do we? Do you still get letters?  Sometimes I find myself wishing I did.

Of course I get mail. Everybody gets mail. But is the monthly statement from Belk’s to be considered a letter? I don’t think so. I kn […]

I calculated as my hair fanned across the scorched, crumbly asphalt: 5.5 pineapple vodkas since 12:13pm, four in the privacy of my kitchen, one and a half since I had been out in the sun, and a beer. I was a […]