BOOKMARKS & INKBLOTS

Mission Statement:

Virginia Living strives to highlight Virginian authors who were born here as well as those who have decided to call the commonwealth home. We also endeavor to promote some of the best Southern Writing around. Homegrown authors like William Styron, Edward P. Jones, Ann Beattie, and Claudia Emerson join literary legends like William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, and Mark Twain (among others obviously) and rub elbows with their Southern contemporaries—such as Cormac McCarthy, Barbara Kingsolver, Jesmyn Ward, and Tayari Jones (etc. etc. etc.).

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We also want to show our support for local bookstores: Chop Suey Books in Richmond, Peach Street Books in Cape Charles, McKays Used Books in Manassas, Old Town Books in Alexandria, Bluebird Bookstop in Crozet, Too Many Books in Roanoke, New Dominion Bookshop in Charlottesville, and so many more. Furthermore, we are teaming up with bookstore employees as well as graduate students from Virginia university programs to publish online reviews twice a month.

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We are currently reviewing: prose, poetry, and nonfiction.

FEATURED ARTICLE

Hang the Moon

by Jeannette Walls

2023 / Scribner / pp.368 / $28

Virginia Living: You moved here from New York City. What was it about Virginia? 

Jeannette Walls: We could live anywhere, but Virginia feels like home more than any place I’ve ever lived. My husband was the one who said, if you’re going to be a writer, you should get out of New York City. I will always love New York, but it feels like an old boyfriend with whom I broke up amicably. With Virginia, it’s a love affair. People step up for you here. When my husband broke his arm, three people showed up to ask, “what needs mowing?"

Your novel is set in the fictional Virginia town of Caywood. Where is it? 

In the Blue Ridge foothills. I borrowed heavily from Franklin County. There was a famous female moonshine runner there. Willy Carter Sharpe could take a mountain road at open throttle. She also got herself arrested a few times.

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Full Interview: HERE

Bio: Jeannette Walls graduated from Barnard College and was a journalist in New York. Her memoir, The Glass Castle, has been a New York Times bestseller for more than eight years. She is also the author of the instant New York Times bestsellers The Silver Star and Half Broke Horses, which was named one of the ten best books of 2009 by the editors of The New York Times Book Review. Walls lives in rural Virginia with her husband, the writer John Taylor.