Read Up Richmond
DALE BRUMFIELD
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 14
6:00 PM
Read Up Richmond challenges people to read differently, to read outside one’s own lived experience to develop an understanding of the world. This program is an opportunity for people from different walks of life to come together in the library to learn together, to enter into a conversation with the larger community, to share the same space, making Richmond a more connected, more civil place. This program is made possible through the generous support of the Richmond Public Library Foundation and the Friends of the Richmond Public Library.
This Year's Guests
S. A. Cosby
S. A. Cosby is an Anthony Award-winning writer from Southeastern Virginia. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Razorblade Tears and Blacktop Wasteland, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, was a New York Times Notable Book, and was named a best book of the year by NPR, The Guardian, and Library Journal, among others. When not writing, he is an avid hiker and chess player.
Dale Brumfield
Dale Brumfield is the author of twelve books. His latest is “Closing the Slaughterhouse: The Inside Story of Death Penalty Abolition in Virginia.” This follows “Railroaded: the true stories of the first 100 people executed in Virginia’s electric chair,” “Theme Park Babylon,” “Naked Savages,” both novels, and “Virginia State Penitentiary: A Notorious History,” about the iconic prison that sat in Richmond from 1800 to 1991. His other history books, “Richmond Independent Press” (2013) and “Independent Press in D.C and Virginia: An Underground History” (2015) chronicle the rise and fall of Virginia and D.C.’s underground and alternative press in the 1960s and ’70s. Both were nominated for Library of Virginia Literary Awards in nonfiction.
PAST GUESTS
2022
Marlon James
Njelle Hamilton
Marlon James was born in Jamaica in 1970. He is the author of the New York Times-bestseller Black Leopard, Red Wolf, which was a finalist for the National Book Award for fiction in 2019. His novel A Brief History of Seven Killings won the 2015 Man Booker Prize. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for fiction, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for fiction, and the Minnesota Book Award. It was also a New York Times Notable Book.
Dr. Hamilton is Associate Professor of English and Africana Studies at the University of Virginia, and the book review editor of Anthurium Caribbean Studies Journal. The author of Phonographic Memories: Popular Music and the Contemporary Caribbean Novel (Rutgers 2019), Hamilton specializes in 20th and 21st century Caribbean literary and cultural studies, with particular focus on narrative theory and fiction craft.
2021
Kiese Laymon
Mira Jacob
Kiese Laymon’s bestselling memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir, won the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in nonfiction, the 2018 Christopher Isherwood Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media, and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times.
Mira Jacob is a novelist, memoirist, illustrator, and cultural critic. Born in New Mexico to parents who emigrated from India, she uses her dual-culture background to navigate the ebb and flow of politics and modern culture. Her first novel, The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing, was critically acclaimed, short-listed for India’s Tata First Literature Award and longlisted for the Brooklyn Literary Eagles Prize.
2020
James McBride
Kiki Petrosino
James McBride is an award-winning author, musician, and screenwriter. His landmark memoir, The Color of Water, published in 1996, has sold millions of copies and spent more than two years on the New York Times bestseller list. Considered an American classic, it is read in schools and universities across the United States.
Kiki Petrosino is the author of four books of poetry: White Blood: a Lyric of Virginia (2020), Witch Wife (2017), Hymn for the Black Terrific (2013) and Fort Red Border (2009), all from Sarabande Books. She teaches at the University of Virginia as a Professor of Poetry.
2019
Jesmyn Ward
Alex Kotlowitz
MacArthur Fellow and two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward has been hailed as the standout writer of her generation, proving her fearless and toughly lyrical voice in novels, memoir, and nonfiction. Ward’s writing, largely set on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi—where she grew up and still lives—includes a memoir, Men We Reaped, and the novels Where the Line Bleeds; Salvage the Bones; and most recently, Sing, Unburied, Sing. She is also the editor of the critically acclaimed anthology The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race.
Bestselling author Alex Kotlowitz is recognized for his unflinching portrayals of race and poverty in America. For more than three decades, Kotlowitz has brought an acute and empathetic lens to on-the-ground reporting in many forms of media—print and radio journalism, documentary film, and books.