Would you like to tell a story at our monthly gathering? Or be a listener? We welcome both! This month’s theme is: new beginnings.

For TELLERS:

We welcome your folktale, original writing, personal story, or family history piece. Please sign up to be a teller by noon Thursday before the Friday event. You do that by emailing us at info@blacksburgbooks.com.

Here are your rules:

1) No story will ever demean any group or individual using race, ethnicity, economic class, geographic region, political affiliation, religion, gender, etc.

2) Your story will be spoken; while we welcome original stories, if you wrote it, we want you to tell it rather than read it. Poems and songs are perfectly acceptable formats for telling a story.

3) Each month has a theme, which can be interpreted as you choose.The theme for next month will be given the month before at the event and available on the website.

4) Your story will be no more than 8 minutes long. At seven minutes, a staff member will hold up an object at the back of the group. She will repeat this at 7:30. At 8 minutes, she will hold up the object continuously. Please don't make us tell you what happens if you get to 8:30.

For LISTENERS:

1) Please avoid foods that rustle loudly in bags or result in messy crummy bits flying all over the store.

2) The stories you hear at the gathering might be sacred, funny, thought-provoking, or about difficult topics. They may contain words that would be bleeped out on the radio. They won't have trigger warnings. We hold space for each other as we honor the vulnerability and courage it takes to share.

3) Silence your cell phones.

4) Only stand up and move around during a story if it's an emergency.

Thanks! We look forward to having you!

BYO snacks and the gathering will run about an hour and fifteen minutes each month.

Storytelling begins promptly at 7:00 - please arrive prior to that time so that you can be seated and ready!

Denali Nalamalapu’s Holler is a debut graphic memoir—and living history of climate justice—based on the stories of six frontline resisters to the Mountain Valley Pipeline in Appalachia, offering a portrait of the diverse people and places of Appalachia, and the creation of a hopeful movement. Holler shares the stories of six ordinary people who became resistors of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a project that spans approximately 300 miles from northwestern West Virginia to southern Virginia—a teacher, a single mother, a nurse, an organizer, a photographer, and a seed keeper.

Climate activist, scientist, and writer Bill McKibben says: "Holler is a truly beautiful account of the beautiful people who have waged a beautiful fight for a beautiful piece of a beautiful planet. Read it and learn how to fight!"

Blacksburg Books will host the launch of Holler in which Denali will speak about the process of writing the book and how the book relates to the growing movement to stop fossil fuels and build a livable future.

Denali will be joined by one of the activists featured in the book, Desiree Flores Shelley. Shelley is a transdisciplinary researcher, ecologist, environmental and conservation educator and community organizer. Currently, she serves as a Indigenous Knowledge and Data Specialist for the Indigenous Conservation Council for the Chesapeake Bay and is pursuing a PhD in Plant and Environmental Science at Virginia Tech. Her academic research has centered on the nexus between Indigenous language revitalization and traditional foodways, as well as historical Indigenous land use and food forests practices in Appalachia and the applications of Indigenous knowledge in modern agroecology conservation and restoration efforts.

Desiree also dedicates her time to language revitalization efforts and land protection and conservation in her community through her work with the Yesa:sahį Language Project and the Southwest Virginia Agrarian Commons. She has a passion for seedkeeping and native plants. Most importantly, Desiree is a mom of three kids. She lives in the Roanoke area with her husband, family and lots of animal relatives on a small farm where she seedkeeps Indigenous heirlooms and implements regenerative Indigenous land use practices.

We’ll be out at the Blacksburg Farmers Market with all sorts of books about gardening, using fresh herbs & vegetables, landscaping, and other seasonal topics. Bring your old books and swap them for new ones, or give a donation and take a book or two!

At 4pm, Diane Flynt will be on-site to speak about the history of apples in Appalachia, plus some growing tips. Diane is an author, apple-grower, and founder of Foggy Ridge Cider, and we're HUGE fans of hers.

All donations benefit the Farmers Market SNAP program, which allows people to use their EBT cards at the market for fresh food.

Join us for light refreshments and engaging discussions with La Leche League leaders, lactation professionals, and nursing advocates. Come to ask questions, to make new connections, or just to chat!

Copies of the newly-revised The Art of Breastfeeding will be available for purchase, but no purchase is necessary - this event is free and open to everyone.

Would you like to tell a story at our monthly gathering? Or be a listener? We welcome both! This month’s theme is: small victories.

For TELLERS:

We welcome your folktale, original writing, personal story, or family history piece. Please sign up to be a teller by noon Thursday before the Friday event. You do that by emailing us at info@blacksburgbooks.com.

Here are your rules:

1) No story will ever demean any group or individual using race, ethnicity, economic class, geographic region, political affiliation, religion, gender, etc.

2) Your story will be spoken; while we welcome original stories, if you wrote it, we want you to tell it rather than read it. Poems and songs are perfectly acceptable formats for telling a story.

3) Each month has a theme, which can be interpreted as you choose.The theme for next month will be given the month before at the event and available on the website.

4) Your story will be no more than 8 minutes long. At seven minutes, a staff member will hold up an object at the back of the group. She will repeat this at 7:30. At 8 minutes, she will hold up the object continuously. Please don't make us tell you what happens if you get to 8:30.

For LISTENERS:

1) Please avoid foods that rustle loudly in bags or result in messy crummy bits flying all over the store.

2) The stories you hear at the gathering might be sacred, funny, thought-provoking, or about difficult topics. They may contain words that would be bleeped out on the radio. They won't have trigger warnings. We hold space for each other as we honor the vulnerability and courage it takes to share.

3) Silence your cell phones.

4) Only stand up and move around during a story if it's an emergency.

Thanks! We look forward to having you!

BYO snacks and the gathering will run about an hour and fifteen minutes each month.

Storytelling begins promptly at 7:30 - please arrive prior to that time so that you can be seated and ready!

Join us for our FOURTH Indie Bookstore Day—a national party held the last Saturday in April that celebrates independent bookstores across the country.

AGAIN this year we’ll be participating in the Libro.fm Golden Ticket Giveaway - find the Golden Ticket hidden in our store and win free audiobook credits!

We'll have IBD exclusives and freebies, and raffles to win all sorts of cool prizes!

And of course, there will be snacks. Join us!

Join us for a fun storytime with local author and VT Department of Education professor Gary Skaggs as he tells us Bosco’s story!

Bosco D. Beagle is a dog living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Bosco loves playing with the neighborhood children. One day, he loses a leg in an accident. Even though he feels the same inside, the children won’t play with him anymore because he looks different now. That makes Bosco sad. He misses his friends. One night, during a terrible thunderstorm, one of the children, Pepe, becomes lost. The neighbors search in vain, but Bosco tracks Pepe into the woods. Bosco finds Pepe and leads him home. When the other children find out that Bosco saved Pepe, they realize that Bosco is still their brave friend. Even though someone may look different, they deserve to be treated the same as everyone else and valued for who they are.

Celebrate Poetry Month and join us for a reading by Brit Washburn from her new book of poetry, What is Given. She will be in conversation with award-winning poet and author Ed Falco.

Brit Washburn’s tender and generous new collection of poems, What Is Given, shimmers with a fierce sense of gratitude for the daily stuff of our lives. In poems acutely aware of loss, Washburn comes back again and again to the redeeming beauty of the sensual world. These are poems infused with love and a profound trust in, as she titles one of her poems, “the radical hospitality of the senses.” With poetry that reminds us to be grateful for what is given, to be “astonished by the fox / we’d seen in passing” and thankful for “the peaches we ate/on the riverbank,” Washburn establishes herself as a necessary poet for our difficult times.

--Ed Falco, author of X in the Tickseed and recipient of the Robert Penn Warren Prize in Poetry.

Brit Washburn's Notwithstanding introduces a true talent, every well-crafted poem is as wise as it is earned. It is a book of love and loss and the sensuality of food and nature, qualities often blended in poem after poem. It's a book that stays home, “one season slipping into the next...” about which she says, “I’ve been through this before: I know how to eat and swim and sleep alone, how to savor a sensation without sharing it, how to carry on.” An exquisite sensibility at work here.

—Stephen Dunn, author of Whereas: Poems, (W. W. Norton & Company), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Brit Washburn is the author of the essay and poetry collections, and has been awarded an artist's grant by the Vermont Studio Center and for many years served on the boards of the Poetry Society of South Carolina and the Low Country Initiative on the Literary Arts (LILA). She co-directed the salon Poets House South and has worked as a freelance writer, editor, and indexer, a Montessori teacher, and instructor in the Great Smokies Writing Program at University of North Carolina Asheville. She is the mother of four and a student in the MFA program at Virginia Tech. Her work can be found in print and online via www.britwashburn.com.

Join Blacksburg friends and literary fans for a celebration of Louisa May Alcott’s American classic, Little Women. Participants will explore the novel’s timeless themes of friendship, romance, and family as we consider how and why four young girls growing up in Civil War America have enchanted readers around the world for almost two centuries. Dr. Ashley Reed, Associate Professor of English at Virginia Tech, will facilitate discussion and offer context from Alcott’s life and culture.

Bring your own well-worn copy of Little Women or purchase a new one through Blacksburg Books: customers who mention the book club will receive a 15% discount on their purchase of the novel.

Make sure to get tickets to see the VT School of Performing Arts production of the play at the Moss Arts Center, April 23-26!

AND go see the 1994 film adaptation at The Lyric Theater on Thursday, March 20 at 7:30 p.m.!

Books & plants and plants & books! We're celebrating the Spring Equinox by heading over to Blacksburg's new plant shop, Bonnie Charlotte's Botanicals, for a botanical pop-up.

We'll have plant-inspired books, including eco-horror, sci-fi, nonfiction about native flora and fauna, how-to guides for taking care of your plant friends, and botanically-adjacent cool stuff.

Join us!

Preorder the phenomenal fifth book in the Hunger Games series!

When you've been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch's name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He's torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who's nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he's been set up to fail. But there's something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.

Preorder here!

The Virginia Tech Wind Ensemble invites you and your family for an afternoon of musical fun at the Moss Arts Center. The program begins with Wild Symphony by Dan Brown (author of The Da Vinci Code), a wild adventure through the trees and across the seas with Maestro Mouse and his musical friends! This musical adventure is a magical blend of storytelling, music, and visual art, narrated by Virginia Tech’s own Patricia Raun, Virginia Tech Alumni Distinguished Professor of Theatre Arts.

Inspiring the kid in all of us, the concert will end with music from the original Star Wars trilogy written by John Williams.

Come early and interact with the Virginia Tech Mind Music Lab Robots, purchase the book Wild Symphony by Dan Brown to follow along during the concert, and participate in a “conduct me” with Virginia Tech students.

This compelling work highlights the life and legacy of Nannie Berger Hairston, who became a pioneer of social justice and civil rights when she and her family moved to Christiansburg, in 1953 and who by the time of her death in 2017 had become a powerful leader and icon.

The event will feature a discussion with oral historian and author Sheree Scarborough who used Nannie Hairston's own words to tell her story. Scarborough will share insights into Hairston's remarkable contributions while touching on the history of civil rights in the region. Don't miss this celebration of local history and activism!

This event will be held at the Christiansburg Public Library.