Like everything in publishing, book reviews are in flux, with mainstream venues reducing reviews in exchange for fawning interviews and book roundups that feel like marketing fluff pieces. This panel of book critics will discuss why they write book reviews, the state of book reviewing today, the need for diversity in book reviewers and in books reviewed, and how criticism can help reshape an often myopic and inequitable industry. Featuring Alice Stephens, Martha Anne Toll, Ericka Taylor and Tope Folarin.

Join us at 7:00 PM on Friday, January 19, at New Dominion Bookshop (404 E. Main St.) for the January Charlottesville Reading Series event, featuring novelist Tope Folarin and poet Mara Adamitz Scrupe.

Book launch of Stephen Buoro’s The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa. A Politics and Prose virtual event

Lecture at Dumbarton Oaks Museum

Book release of Bright Unbearable Reality by Anna Badkhen

Pen/Faulkner Literary Gathering

Workshop at the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival

Moderated by Tope Folarin

Whiting Award winner Nadia Owusu joins Greenlight (virtually!) to launch the paperback edition of Aftershocks, a deeply felt memoir about the push and pull of belonging, the seismic emotional toll of family secrets, and the heart it takes to pull through. Owusu is joined in conversation by Tope Folarin, author of A Particular Kind of Black Man. Virtual.

The Writer’s Center welcomes four writers (who don’t focus on science fiction) to discuss the influence of Star Trek on their work, literary philosophies, and basic grammar. This virtual round-table discussion features novelist Tope Folarin, novelist Zach Powers, playwright Gwydion Suilebhan, and poet Gale Marie Thompson. Virtual.