Upcoming Events
Views expressed by speakers do not necessarily reflect the views of Blacksburg Books.
Pet Costume Contest!
Our Pet Costume Contest is back! Here's how it works:
Anytime in the week before Halloween (23rd-30th), bring in your pet dressed in their best costume and we'll snap a photo. On Halloween we'll post all of the photos on our social media and let people vote for the best costume. The pet with the most votes will win a gift card, and the two runners-up will get some Blacksburg Books merch!
Full disclosure - this event is mostly just for us because we want to see your pets.
Author event with Mindy Quigley
Agatha-Award-winning author Mindy Quigley will be here to discuss the sixth and final book in the delectable Deep Dish Mystery series!
Chef Delilah O'Leary is going where no deep dish pizza chef has gone before: a swanky wellness retreat, where she's agreed to cater for a crowd of the who's who. Instead of cashing a fat check for an easy gig, though, she encounters a diabolical plot with more layers than one of her signature pies.
The exclusive event, hosted by superstar guru Rhiannon Frost, promises inner transformation--but when a spiteful attendee turns up dead during the guided meditation, Delilah smells more than incense in the air. Every guest has a motive...and access to a sinister walled garden brimming with exotic poisonous plants.
With her restaurant short-staffed, and her boyfriend, Detective Calvin Capone, splitting his time between bartender duties and undercover sleuthing, Delilah's got her hands full. Can she slice through the lies before the killer strikes again? Or will this luxe getaway turn into a one-way trip to the great beyond?
You can preorder your copy HERE!
Author event with Erika Meitner
The seventh collection by award-winning poet Erika Meitner, Assembled Audience explores what it means to be human in an increasingly precarious world.
In these poems, people come together—over meals, at the beach, in protest and prayer and celebration, through vital acts of witness and collective mourning. Amid instability and peril, embodied gathering is not only a survival mechanism, but a form of resistance. Provocative and engaging, our speaker is a peripatetic philosopher, at once a Cassandra and a Pied Piper who brings us into the urgencies of the present moment: climate change, the pandemic and its aftermath, gun violence, xenophobia, fracking, eroding reproductive rights, and the moralized pressure to “stay present” amid disorder and danger. Over and over, we return to the hard work of existing in the Anthropocene—despite all of our knowledge, everything is perilous, and safety is an illusion.
Brutally honest and lyrically dexterous, fusing Whitman’s generous expansiveness with Erika Meitner’s signature virtuosic electricity and wit, Assembled Audience reminds us that forced optimism and bland platitudes won’t save us—but luck and wonder might.
Sixth Annual Spooky Book Fair
Iiiiiiiiiiiit's baaaaack - our biggest event of the year! We’ll be set up at Moon Hollow Brewing with hundreds and hundreds of books for spooky season!
It's like the Scholastic Book Fair, but for grownups.
And spooky.
And with beer.
Thrillers? Yep!
Dark fantasy? Sure!
Sci-fi? Yasssss.
Cozy witchy stories? Yup!
Monster romance? Heck yes!
True Crime? You betcha.
Disquieting body horror? Of course!
Bleak postapocalyptic epics? You know it!
Love gone wrong? Always.
Weird literary fiction that doesn’t really make sense but fills you with dread? Our favorite!
And so much more!
Moon Hollow will have drink specials, Wizard Fray will be doing tarot readings, we’ll have raffles and prizes, and we’ll also have a selection of spooky book-adjacent fun stuff for sale - think stickers, tote bags, tarot cards, and other fun stuff.
And because this year's Spooky Book Fair is actually ON Halloween, there'll be a costume contest as well! Contest at 7 with prizes for:
- Best individual costume
- Best group costume
- Best literary costume
Lots of fun and hopefully no murders - don’t miss it!
Banned Book Club - American Psycho
Join us over at Moon Hollow Brewing to discuss American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.
In this modern classic, Ellis explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other.
One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.
Join us for drinks & discussion!
MFA Salon
Join us for an evening of poetry & prose from the up-and-coming writers of Virginia Tech’s MFA in Creative Writing program. This month will feature Lauren Emo, Kas Armstrong, and Nurain Ọládèjì, and everyone is welcome!
Everything is Everything - author event with Steven E. Jones
Join us as we host author and cultural critic Steven E. Jones as he discusses his new book, Everything is Everything, which explores American pop culture through the work of record producer Tom Wilson and the artists with whom he collaborated in the miraculous year 1966.
1966 was a transformative year in popular culture, and especially in popular music. It's the year when go-go dancing met the electric blues, bubblegum pop met underground rock, free jazz met psychedelia, and they all morphed into one another like fluid blobs in a liquid light show. Diversifying radio formats, including the emergence of "underground" FM stations, greeted an efflorescence of boundary-breaking artists, records, and songs, at once showcasing and encouraging fervent experimentation. At the center of these changes, by turns channeling and amplifying these vibrant energies, stood the profoundly influential, if subsequently unheralded, record producer, Tom Wilson.
It would be hard to find a figure more solidly located at the junction of the currents traversing America in 1966: a Black man working in almost exclusively white studio settings, Wilson played a vital role in an astonishing array of landmark records: after producing Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel in the previous year, in 1966 alone Wilson produced albums from Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention, The Velvet Underground, Hugh Masekela, The Animals, Sun Ra, and more. Any one of these would be a standout on most producers' resumes. Taken together, they testify to an influential career, and invite a new appraisal of a pivotal moment in American pop culture. As Jones reveals in this energetic account, Wilson's radical eclecticism, his embrace of diverse musical genres, was a response to the times, as was his engagement with the music industry as a whole and with the low and the high in pop culture. It was all part of making pop music in what he called "an era of complex mixed media," and what he meant by his often-repeated catch-phrase, "everything is everything."
Dying young in 1978, without leaving behind a significant archive of interviews or writings, Wilson has been unjustly overlooked. Everything is Everything provides a long overdue testimonial, celebrating him as an avatar of the most important trend in pop music in 1966: an exploding eclecticism, accompanied by a sometimes desperate search for authenticity.
Author event with Amanda Held Opelt
Join us for an evening with Amanda Held Opelt in support of her new book, Provisions: Finding Home Through the Food Folklore of the Appalachian Table, a sensory celebration of Appalachian culinary traditions and a call to reclaim the lost rituals, recipes, and food folklore of the places you call home.
Amanda Held Opelt’s childhood was shaped by the shared, multi-generational table that brought everyone at her Granny’s 100-acre farm to breakfast over buttered biscuits, fried brook trout, wild honey, and blackberry jam. But as she came of age at the peak of the nineties’ diet culture, her relationship with her body became fraught, and she began to resent the culinary culture of her Appalachian heritage. It wasn’t until her own daughter was born that she realized another body depended upon her nourishment. That was when she set out to learn how to cook and reclaim her ancestor’s food traditions.
In Provisions, Opelt devotes herself to attending local sorghum boil parties and apple festivals, interviewing farmers, foragers, and herders, and recreating the meals she remembers her Granny serving at her own table. She confronts the false food narratives that dominated the religious landscape of her Southern, conservative roots. Along the way, she rediscovers the joy of eating, and with newfound faith learns to love her body again and the places it calls home.
A love letter to Appalachia as much as a corrective to the mountain culture “hillbilly” and “tradwife” tropes, Provisions is a heart-forward exploration of the ways food draws us all into sustenance, healing, community, and delight. Opelt charts our broken relationship with food through body image, consumer culture, political stereotypes, and forgotten history, as well as the vitality that can be ours again as we:
- reconnect with our roots and learn to cook from our ancestors' recipes and table traditions,
- unlearn our individualism and take our place at the table of nourishing community,
- and come home to joyful embodiment.
Open Mic Poetry Night
Come to read your own original poetry, something by your favorite poet, or come just to listen. Musicians are also welcome to jam with the poets. No advance registration required and everyone is welcome!
Author event with Matthew Salesses
From the critically acclaimed author of The Sense of Wonder and Craft in the Real World comes a deeply personal, poignant memoir, weaving together Salesses' multiple identities: adoptee, Asian American, husband, father, and, finally, widower.
Matthew Salesses has spent his career writing about the power of storytelling, but he wasn't prepared for the story of his own life to fall apart. A Korean American adoptee, Salesses grew up unsure of who he was--until he fell in love and started a family with a native Korean, Cathreen. But when Cathreen was diagnosed with stage four stomach cancer, the map they made together suddenly led nowhere. After her untimely death, Salesses realized he would need new paths, new stories, new philosophies, new ways of understanding the world, to navigate the unknown landscape of loss.
To Grieve Is To Carry Another Time is a stunning, thought-provoking meditation on what grief can offer the grieving, illuminating the way to embracing yourself, finding your community, and even loving and changing the world.
Author event with Mark V. Barrow, Jr. - Gator!
Join us for an evening with Mark V. Barrow, Jr., as he discusses his new book, Gator! The Making of America’s Iconic Reptile, from First Encounters to Florida Man, which examines what this intriguing—and unsettling—apex predator reveals about Americans’ attempts to control and connect with the natural world.
Both a flesh-and-blood critter and the stuff of legend, the alligator inspires as much awe as it does fear. While this apex predator survives mainly on fish, birds, snakes, turtles, and small mammals, it will consume almost anything, including pets, livestock, and—in rare cases—humans. Though dreaded as a man-eater, the alligator has also been cast as a lucrative commodity, a popular roadside attraction, a prized hunting trophy, and even an unlikely household pet.
Gator! tells the riveting story of this iconic predator. Historian Mark V. Barrow, Jr.—a native of Florida, a state famous for its alligators—traces the reptile’s ancient lineage from the age of the dinosaurs to its current status as a cherished mascot and regional icon. He explores its role as a surrogate species, offering vital clues about the health of ecosystems, as well as its profound cultural weight as a totem for Indigenous communities, a mythical sewer-dweller in New York lore, and a disturbing tool of racial oppression used to dehumanize African Americans. Once over-hunted, the alligator has long been celebrated as a triumph of the federal Endangered Species Act. Barrow delves into the nuances of this comeback, one that offers both a cautionary tale of market-driven exploitation and a conservation success story.
An entertaining history of one of North America’s most charismatic animals, Gator! explores how this reptile became a Florida emblem and a national enigma, transforming humans and alligators in the process.
A Court of Splintered Harmony - Midnight Release Party!
We’re teaming up with The Maroon Door for an ACOTAR 6 Midnight Release Party! Doors open at 9:30, activities start at 10, and you’ll get your book at midnight!
If you preordered the book from us then entry is FREE! If not, it’ll be $10 at the door.
Enjoy free snacks and themed drinks & menu for purchase. Fancy dress encouraged!
Tote Bag 20!
Bring in your Blacksburg Books tote bag and get 20% off all books in the store!
This is a great chance to get your holiday shopping done early and make your TBR a little longer!
October Book Club - Rebecca
Join us at Moon Hollow Brewing to discuss Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Rebecca is a psychological thriller that ushered in the modern gothic genre (and that also has one of the most famous first lines of literature). Once you’ve read this one you’ll see its influence everywhere.
Book Club members receive 10% off drinks!
T-Shirt 20!
Wear your Blacksburg Books t-shirt (any design) and get 20% off everything in the store!
This is a great chance to get your holiday shopping done early and get yourself a lil’ treat!
Patricia Grace King in conversation with Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry
Join us as we welcome Patricia Grace King, winner of the 2026 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, in conversation with local award-winning author Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry.
Winner one of the world’s most prestigious prizes for a story collection, Patricia Grace King’s brand-new book, Those Who Vanish, is set in Guatemala during its decades-long conflict, throwing together martyrs and missionaries, guerrillas and gringos, and peace workers and refugees.
Perfect for lovers of historical fiction with international settings, or for anyone interested in stories that explore faith, violence and survival, or the various reasons people leave home.
Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry has published over fifty stories and received eleven Pushcart Prize nominations. Kristina is the winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction, the Fellowships in Fiction from the Sewanee and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She's the recipient of the 2026 CRAFT Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. Her first collection of stories, What Isn’t Remembered, was awarded the 2021 Prairie Schooner Book Prize, long-listed for the PEN/ Bingham Prize, and shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize. Her debut novel, The Orchard, was a finalist for the 2023 Chautauqua Prize and was picked by the New York Post as one of the best books of the year.
Gardening Book Swap & Diane Flynt talk!
It’s our annual Gardening Book Swap at the Blacksburg Farmers Market! Bring your old gardening books and swap them out for new-to-you gardening books. Don’t have any to trade? Buy any of the books on a donation basis - all funds go to the Farmers Market SNAP program.
Extra bonus - at 4:30 Diane Flynt, author of Wild, Lost, Tamed, Revived and founder of Foggy Ridge Cider, will speak about the surprising history of apples in the South.
Extra extra bonus - all of the regular Wednesday Farmers Market vendors will be on hand with delicious, handmade, local goodness!
MFA Salon
Join us for an evening of poetry & prose from the up-and-coming writers of Virginia Tech’s MFA in Creative Writing program. This month will feature Ashlyn Peralta, Liz Tresidder, and Sandra Riffler, and everyone is welcome!
Book launch with Cassie Miller - Meet Me on Mistletoe Lane
Cassie Miller returns! Join us as we host Cassie for the launch of Meet Me on Mistletoe Lane - Will she fall for the big-city guy, or swoon under the mistletoe for her hometown friend? A holiday romance with all the warmth and charm of your favorite Hallmark Christmas movie!
Gianna Mancini is a Christmas romantic. She loves everything about the holiday— especially the Mullings Creek Holiday Market that opens every year in the center of town. While Gianna adores her small-town life, she still dreams about traveling the world and getting away from her overbearing family. But on the same day she receives an acceptance to a study abroad program, the town’s beloved market owner unexpectedly passes away, leaving the property to a literal Scrooge from NYC! The town has just thirty days to convince the new owner not to sell. His flirtatious son, James comes up with a plan: he and Gianna can fake date so she can bring her holiday flair closer to his family. While Gianna is on board with whatever it takes to save their beloved market, Sam—who has been secretly pining after Gianna for years—is not so keen on James snuggling up with his best friend next to the Christmas tree. But as the lines between Gianna and James begin to blur during gingerbread contests and candy cane hunts, so do the lines of friendship between Gianna and Sam under the glow of the town’s holiday twinkle light display. Soon both boys are ready to be under the mistletoe with Gianna. Who will be her first real Christmas kiss? The future of the market and her town just may depend on it.
Preorder your copy here!
Author event with Gaelynn Lea
Gaelynn Lea is a folk musician, Broadway composer, and disability advocate born with osteogenesis imperfecta. Lea’s warm, funny, deeply-felt memoir - It Wasn’t Meant to be Perfect - addresses love and faith, sexuality and mortality, the frustration and the joy of difference. She shows how disability inspires and enables unique and indispensable contributions to the world, and reminds readers to think creatively, fight for what they love, and savor the journey.
Author event with Blake Gore
Blacksburg’s own Blake Gore will be here to take you on a journey through Hidden Wonders of the World, a one-of-a-kind seek-and-find book featuring 20 intricately detailed works of art inspired by the world’s most iconic travel destinations. Blake is an internationally-renowned miniature artist and each scene is a masterpiece of hidden surprises, challenging your eyes while transporting you across the globe.
From the bustling streets of Tokyo to the serene canals of Amsterdam, every page invites you to explore breathtaking locations packed with tiny secrets waiting to be discovered. Whether you’re hunting for a sneaky sloth in Costa Rica or a lost baguette in Paris, Hidden Wonders of the World transforms sightseeing into a game of discovery.
Perfect for puzzle lovers, travel enthusiasts, and art aficionados alike, this beautifully illustrated book is a celebration of wanderlust and wonder. The book also includes a beautifully crafted, wooden camera-shaped magnifying glass for an extra layer of fun
Threshing Day - Midnight Release Party!
We’re teaming up with The Maroon Door for a Threshing Day Midnight Release Party! Doors open at 9:30, activities start at 10, and you’ll get your book at midnight!
If you preordered the book from us then entry is FREE! If not, it’ll be $10 at the door. Preorder here!
Enjoy free snacks and themed drinks for purchase. Fancy dress encouraged!
Open Mic Poetry Night
Come to read your own original poetry, something by your favorite poet, or come just to listen. Musicians are also welcome to jam with the poets. No advance registration required and everyone is welcome!
Audiobook walk!
Love walking? Love audiobooks? Like hanging out with people but not necessarily talking to them? Well we've got an event for you! Join us for our first audiobook walk - meet at Blacksburg Books, pop in your earbuds, and take a stroll together. We'll do an easy 40-minute loop and who knows - maybe we'll have a few prizes to hand out.
Rain date is September 26, same time, same place!
Banned Book Club - Persepolis
Join us over at Moon Hollow Brewing to discuss Persepolis - one of the New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. Often banned and challenged due to graphic violence, strong language, and political viewpoints, and authoritarian governments have banned it for challenging state narratives.
In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the coming-of-age story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. The intelligent and outspoken only child of committed Marxists and the great-granddaughter of one of Iran's last emperors, Marjane bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country.
Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life. Marjane's child's-eye view of dethroned emperors, state-sanctioned whippings, and heroes of the revolution allows us to learn as she does the history of this fascinating country and of her own extraordinary family. Intensely personal, profoundly political, and wholly original, Persepolis is at once a story of growing up and a reminder of the human cost of war and political repression. It shows how we carry on, with laughter and tears, in the face of absurdity. And, finally, it introduces us to an irresistible little girl with whom we cannot help but fall in love.
MFA Salon
Join us for an evening of poetry & prose from the up-and-coming writers of Virginia Tech’s MFA in Creative Writing program. This month will feature Dylan Evrr and Jamie Dawson, and everyone is welcome!
September Book Club - Remarkably Bright Creatures
Join us at Moon Hollow Brewing to discuss Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt - a grieving widow who cleans a local aquarium forms a friendship with a remarkably intelligent octopus, who then uses his sleuthing skills to unravel the mystery surrounding the disappearance of the woman's son.
Book Club members receive 10% off drinks!
Open Mic Poetry Night
Come to read your own original poetry, something by your favorite poet, or come just to listen. Musicians are also welcome to jam with the poets. No advance registration required and everyone is welcome!
We’re especially excited to welcome anyone who’s never attended before but who’s taking part in The Sealey Challenge - come read your favorite(s)!
Beth Howard in conversation with Denali Nalamalapu
Beth Howard shares her story of growing up in Appalachian Kentucky—the economic struggles, trauma, and ever-present sexism along with the loving care of her close-knit rural community. These complex people shaped Howard’s sense of justice and solidarity, and taught her about the inextricable bonds working-class people share, despite our differences. But her childhood also left her with emotional wounds that threatened to destroy the life she built for herself. While healing her wounds is deeply personal, there’s no separating it from the people and place that made her.
Appalachia is often framed as a place to escape from, where people are hateful, lazy, and bring tragedy upon themselves. But in her quest to understand her home and her people, Howard uncovers the powerful history of white Appalachians fighting alongside Black and Brown people, pushing back against billionaires who gain power by using racism to divide them. Appalachia, she realizes, has not only been hit hard; it is the place to wage a freedom struggle.
Too many of us are denied the basic necessities of life: somewhere decent to live, good food to eat, health care that doesn’t break the bank, jobs that don’t kill us. As Howard reminds us, we haven’t got a chance—unless we organize.
In the midst of divisive rhetoric, violent repression, and grifters writing elegies, may this story be a song.
Denali Sai Nalamalapu, author of Holler, a graphic memoir of rural resistance against the Mountain Valley Pipeline, will join Beth in conversation about life in Appalachia.
Author Event with Wendy Welch AND cat adoption event!
When bookstore owner Wendy Welch was swept into the world of cat rescue, she found friends and felines in unusual places. The rescue operation coalesced within a rural Appalachian county that faced challenges in financial support and substance misuse. A plucky band of volunteers founded a nonprofit by thinking outside the box—while scooping inside the boxes. Appalachian Feline Friends associates soon found themselves learning to spell and treat coccidia; encountering members of the public who had great expectations; bottle-feeding orphaned infants; and figuring out how 300 cats per year could be spayed/neutered, vaccinated, and adopted. The antics and adventures of well-meaning, untrained do-gooders are by turns hilarious, heartbreaking, and heartwarming. Cat lover or people watcher, these stories showcase human nature’s finest moments.
Montgomery County Animal Care and Adoption Center will also be here with adoptable kitties!
Banned Book Club - Looking for Alaska
Join us to discuss the most banned & challenged book in the United States - Looking for Alaska by John Green.
Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award • A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist • A New York Times Bestseller • A USA Today Bestseller • NPR’s Top Ten Best-Ever Teen Novels • TIME magazine’s 100 Best Young Adult Novels of All Time • A PBS Great American Read Selection • Millions of copies sold!
First drink. First prank. First friend. First love.
Last words.
Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words—and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet François Rabelais called the “Great Perhaps.” Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young, who will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps.
Waldo Party!
Join us for the Grand Prize Waldo Party! We'll have cake and fun and prizes and a special guest!
Open Mic Poetry Night
Come to read your own original poetry, something by your favorite poet, or come just to listen. Musicians are also welcome to jam with the poets. No advance registration required and everyone is welcome!
July Book Club - Rosewater
Join us over at Moon Hollow Brewing to discuss Rosewater, an award-winning science fiction novel set in a near-future Nigeria centered around a mysterious alien biodome.
No sign-up is necessary - just show up! And Book Club participants get drink discounts!
Find Waldo Local!
Waldo is back in Blacksburg! From July 1st through 26th, search for Waldo in local businesses, get your card stamped, and win prizes!
We’ll cap off the search with a party here at Blacksburg Books on the 26th from 1pm-2pm with cake and prizes and fun!
Waldo will be hiding at the following locations:
Campus Emporium (either location!)
Our Daily Bread Bakery & Bistro
Pick up your stamp card at here Blacksburg Books starting July 1st - and then the search begins!
Find a map of all locations HERE!
Open Mic Poetry Night
Come to read your own original poetry, something by your favorite poet, or come just to listen. Musicians are also welcome to jam with the poets. No advance registration required and everyone is welcome!
Banned Book Club - Flowers for Algernon
Join us over at Moon Hollow Brewing to discuss the classic Flowers for Algernon, winner of the Hugo Award in 1960, when it was published as a short story, and of the Nebula Award in 1966 after it was expanded into a novel.
The story is told as a series of progress reports written by Charlie, the first human subject of an experimental surgery to increase intelligence. Often banned and challenged due to Charlie’s struggles to understand his sexual urges and for touching upon the issues of mental disabilities, human exploitation, and morality.
No sign-up is necessary and everyone is welcome!