Upcoming Events
Views expressed by speakers do not necessarily reflect the views of Blacksburg Books.
Neuroscience Gong Show
Join us for an interactive neuroscience lecture!
Click through for more details.
Author event with Jason Higgins
Winner of the 2025 Oral History Association Book Award
Winner of the Albert Lee Sturm Award for Faculty Excellence
Finalist for the 2026 Veterans Studies Association Distinguished Book Award
The United States has both the largest, most expensive, and most powerful military and the largest, most expensive, and most punitive carceral system in the history of the world. Since the American War in Vietnam, hundreds of thousands of veterans have been incarcerated after their military service.
Identifying the previously unrecognized connections between American wars and mass incarceration, Prisoners after War reaches across lines of race, class, and gender to record the untold history of incarcerated veterans over the past six decades. Having conducted dozens of oral history interviews, Jason A. Higgins traces the lifelong effects of war, inequality, disability, and mental illness, and explores why hundreds of thousands of veterans, from Vietnam to Afghanistan, were caught up in the carceral system. This original study tells an intergenerational history of state-sanctioned violence, punishment, and inequality, but its pages also resonate with stories of survival and redemption, revealing future possibilities for reform and reparative justice.
Virginia Fantastic & Shenandoah Fantastic!
Join us for an evening with authors from Shenandoah Fantastic and Virginia Fantastic!
Shenandoah Fantastic invites you to experience the mysterious, the supernatural, and the humorous. Ride a ghost train to Mount Jackson. Visit the trolls that live beneath Luray Caverns. Experience a bird revolution in Singers Glen. And meet time travelers at the Shakespeare Center. Whether you’re a long-time resident or a curious traveler, this anthology promises to captivate and thrill, offering a glimpse into the Valley where the ordinary meets the extraordinary.
Virginia Fantastic is full of stories that weave strange and wondrous speculative fiction that reimagines the Commonwealth of Virginia as a land of mystery, magic, and the unexpected.From the misty peaks of the Blue Ridge to the haunted shores of the Chesapeake Bay, we seek flash stories that infuse Virginia’s iconic landscapes, history, and culture with the supernatural.
Author event with Phillip Gibbs
Author Phillip Andrew Gibbs explores Roanoke's early criminal underworld and how civic leaders and law enforcement struggled to free the city from its wild, wicked, and unrepentant reputation.
During the 1880s, the new city of Roanoke attracted a large and diverse workforce and a multitude of merchants and investors. But like the Western cow towns and mining camps of the same period, the city also attracted sex workers, professional gamblers, charlatans, and common thieves. By the early 1900s, Roanoke had become well known for its brothels, saloons, gambling halls, and rampant lawlessness.
Despite a campaign to clean up the city, Roanoke was unable to shake its unsavory image. This was particularly true after Virginia went dry in 1916. With easy access to the moonshine whiskey that had long been produced in the surrounding mountains, bootleg kingpins boldly transported illegal liquor into the city and used violence to protect their operations.
Chocolate Spike Pop-Up
Chocolate Spike will be in store with a selection of barks, truffles, and more!
T-shirt 20!
All day, wear your Blacksburg Books t-shirt (any style) and get 20% off almost everything in the store!
Consignment items are excluded, but everything else is fair game!
Tote bag 20!
All day, bring in your Blacksburg Books tote bag and get 20% off books!
Consignment books are excluded, but everything else is fair game!
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!
This event happens on the fourth Friday of every month (which isn’t always the last Friday).
May Book Club - Sky Daddy
Join us over at Moon Hollow Brewing to discuss Sky Daddy, the age-old story of girl meets… airplane.
An evening with Nic Brown: The Violent Femmes’ Violent Femmes
Through rare access to the Violent Femmes and their archives, this book investigates the creation of such iconic songs as "Blister in the Sun", "Kiss Off", "Add it Up" and "Prove My Love", as well as the album's recording process.
The self-titled debut from Milwaukee post-punk acoustic trio the Violent Femmes is one of those rare albums that seems to have altered the course of popular music and influenced just about everyone who heard it while also managing to operate almost entirely outside of the mainstream. Released in 1983 to little sales or attention, the band was so iconoclastic that it couldn't even engender support from Milwaukee's anti-establishment punk scene. Over the ensuing years, though, Violent Femmes managed to exert itself as an unstoppable cultural force, ascending the college radio charts and spreading through word-of-mouth.
Violent Femmes didn't sound like anything else when it was made, and it still doesn't sound like anything else. The album somehow exists both outside of time and as one of the most evocative and enduring artifacts of the alternative '80's.
Nic will chat about his book and answer questions. As always, this event is free and open to everyone!
Author Event with Jess Kimball
Jess Kimball will be here to discuss her new book, She Can Hold Her Own. Self-sufficiency and pace of life are among the things that distinguish Southern Appalachian female homesteaders from others in society. Through portraits and interviews, this book presents the experiences of women who are raising families, caring for animals, and sustaining households through practical knowledge, skill, and faith. Their narratives reflect lives shaped not only by physical labor, but by simplicity and deep connections to land and legacy. Combining documentary photography with extended, conversational interviews, the book offers a portrait of rural womanhood that is rooted in ancestral knowledge while also responding to present-day realities. It focuses on the spiritual and emotional dimensions of homesteading, situating these women within broader discussion of resilience, community, and choice. Rather than presenting a guide for rural lifestyles, the work serves as a study of the relationships between womanhood, labor, identity, and landscape.
Jess Kimball is a birthworker, writer, and artist whose work honors women’s stories, health, and ancestral knowledge. She lives on a small homestead in rural North Carolina, where her experiences as a doula and her deep connection to land and community inspire her writing.
Indie Bookstore Day!
Join us for our FIFTH 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 also have a raffle for a $50 gift card!
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!
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!
Poetry event with Michael Hettich
In this heartfelt, heartbreaking collection, Michael Hettich reaches into the wilds to find some measure of the eternal that might wedge itself between himself and the unthinkable: the death of his beloved. He calls upon memory as if to rewind their lives together and forestall the inevitable. He immerses himself in the forces that might provide some solace, might somehow outlast the darkness, the silence. In language as vivid as the pulsing life around him—the swollen creeks, the mountains; sky, stars, and wind; birds and bears—he contains those elements and lets them speak.
—Marie Harris, Desire Lines
Michael Hettich has published more than a dozen books of poetry, most recently The Halo of Bees: New and Selected Poems, 1990-2022 which won the 2024 Brockman-Campbell Book Award from the North Carolina Poetry Society. His other honors include several Individual Artist Fellowships from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, The Tampa Review Prize in Poetry, the David Martinson / Meadowhawk Prize, a Florida Book Award, the Lena M. Shull Book Award from the North Carolina Poetry Society, and the inaugural Hudson-Fowler Prize from Slant magazine at the University of Central Arkansas. His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in many journals and anthologies. He holds a Ph.D. in literature and taught for many years at Miami Dade College. He lives in Black Mountain, North Carolina.
Author event with Emily Matchar!
Join us for an event with returning author Emily Matchar, author of In the Shadow of the Greenbrier!
The Lost Girl of Craven County tells the story of a young Jewish woman in depression-era Appalachia uncovering secrets of the past. A decade into the Depression, Millicent Green is a 25-year-old "old maid" living with her marriage-obsessed mother and domineering older brother in the stiflingly small Jewish community of New Bern, North Carolina. Smart and prickly, she’s struggling to find her place in the world following the loss of her beloved younger brother, and with him, her dreams for the future. One humid August day, Millie is sent to run an errand and discovers a young woman unconscious on the ground. This mystery woman, mute and without identification, will upend Millie’s life. Together, they set out on a quest that will lay bare some of the 20th century’s most shameful episodes. From a historic river town to the hinterlands of rural North Carolina, The Lost Girl of Craven County delves into the impossibility of burying secrets forever.
MFA Salon
The MFA Salon is back for the spring semester! Join us for an evening of poetry & prose from the up-and-coming writers of Virginia Tech’s MFA in Creative Writing program!
Email tsophia@vt.edu with questions and for accommodations.
Book Launch Celebration with Sophia Terazawa
Celebrate the publication of Sophia Terazawa's third book of poetry, Oracular Maladies. The event will include an author performance, book signings, and tarot card readings by request with a purchase of the book.
Please note that this event will take place at the Blacksburg Public Library.
April General Book Club
Our April book club pick is Agatha Christie’s A Murder is Announced! We’ll meet at Moon Hollow Brewing to discuss this whodunit. Books are available for purchase in store. Participants receive 10% off their drinks.
Author night with Kenneth R. Rosen
Join us for an evening with narrative journalist Kenneth R. Rosen to discuss his new book, Polar Wars: Submarines, Spies, and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic, A gripping blend of travelogue and frontline reporting that reveals how climate change, military ambition, and economic opportunity are transforming the Arctic into the epicenter of a new cold war, where a struggle for dominance between the planet's great powers heralds the next global conflict.
Russian spies. Nuclear submarines. Sabotaged pipelines. Undersea communications severed in the dark of night. The fastest-warming place on earth--where apartment buildings, hospitals, and homes crumble daily as permafrost melts and villages get washed away by rising seas--the Arctic stands at the crossroads of geopolitical ambition and environmental catastrophe. As climate change thaws the northern latitudes, opening once ice-bound shipping lanes and access to natural resources, the world's military powers are rushing to stake their claims in this increasingly strategic region. We've entered a new cold war--and every day it grows hotter.
In Polar War, Kenneth R. Rosen takes readers on an extraordinary journey across the changing face of the far north. Through intimate portraits of scientists, soldiers, and Indigenous community leaders representing the interests of twenty-one countries across four continents, he witnesses firsthand how rising temperatures and growing tensions are reshaping life above and below the Arctic Circle. He finds himself on the trail of Navy SEALs training for arctic warfare, embarks on Coast Guard patrols monitoring Russian incursions, participates in close-quarter-combat training aboard foreign icebreakers in the Arctic sea ice, and visits remote research stations where international cooperation is giving way to espionage and the search for long-frozen biological weapons.
Kenneth R. Rosen is a narrative journalist who travels the world to write in-depth stories about the impact of major geopolitical issues and conflict on individual lives. He was a 2025 Ira A. Lipman Fellow at Columbia University.
Rosen received the 2022 Kurt Schork Freelance Award for his reporting from Ukraine, Syria, and Malta, which the judges called “courageous multifaceted investigative work.”
He is a two-time finalist for the Livingston Award in international reporting and, among other honors, he received the 2018 Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award for War Correspondents for his reporting from Iraq and was a finalist in 2019 for his reporting from within Syria.
April Banned Book Club
Join us to discuss Pumpkin by Julie Murphy! Banned for: LGBT content, drag queens, openly gay main character
Author event with Jeffrey Bennett
Join us for an evening with Jeffrey Bennett as he discusses his new book, The Black Belt of Virginia: Untold Stories of African American History, which contains powerful stories left out of most history books.
Bennett reveals the hidden legacy of Black Virginians. From 1865 to 1877, over 80 Black politicians served across the state. Learn about a brave Black woman who spied on Confederate President Jefferson Davis while disguised as an enslaved worker.
See the history of more than seventy Black communities lost in Virginia. Read the story of a 135-year-old church and the meaning behind land passed down through generations. These stories show the strength and impact of Black families before and after slavery.
Perfect for history lovers and older readers, this collection brings forgotten voices back to life. This event is free and open to everyone!
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!
**CANCELED*** Author event with Kevin Moffett & Matthew Vollmer
***THIS EVENT IS CANCELED***
Stay tuned for a rescheduled event later in the Spring.
Kevin Moffett will read from his novel Only Son, which was longlisted for the National Book Award, and Matt Vollmer’s going to surprise us. This event is free and open to everyone!
MFA Salon
The MFA Salon is back for the spring semester! Join us for an evening of poetry & prose from the up-and-coming writers of Virginia Tech’s MFA in Creative Writing program!
Email tsophia@vt.edu with questions and for accommodations.
Book Club collab with VT Neuroscience - Never Enough, chapters 7-11
Join us for a discussion of the bestselling book Never Enough by Judith Grisel.
From a renowned behavioral neuroscientist and recovering addict, a rare page-turning work of science that draws on personal insights to reveal how drugs work, the dangerous hold they can take on the brain, and the surprising way to combat today's epidemic of addiction.
Students and faculty from Virginia Tech's Neuroscience Department will join the discussion. Please note that there are TWO meetings to discuss the book - February 25th and March 18th. Come to either or both - everyone is welcome!
Baseball Obscura: Author Event with David J. Fleming
Join us for a night of talking baseball with David Fleming, author of Baseball Obscura 2026!
David Fleming’s Baseball Obscura 2026 combines analytics with engaging essays and opinions: the annual book features in-depth team essays, player rankings, and reflections on subjects as far reaching as the Speedway Classic, baseball’s fraught entanglement with sports betting, and how fans might claim a seat at the table during next year’s labor negotiations. Packed with insights and humor, Baseball Obscura is the thinking fan's guide to baseball in 2026.
Click through for more details.
Mollie Ann Cox in conversation with Mindy Quigley
Join us for an event with two fantastic authors - Mollie Ann Cox and Mindy Quigley - to celebrate the release of Cox's second Eliza Hamilton mystery!
The widow of Alexander Hamilton faces another mystery -it’s December 1805, and Eliza Hamilton is determined to seek justice. One young woman is dead, another has vanished—both residents of a house where Eliza’s friend, Alice, lives among other craftswomen struggling to survive in a city unforgiving toward widows and orphans.
With no help from the constabulary because the young woman’s body was found in a bad part of town–and was dressed as a man–Eliza vows to protect the women and uncover the truth. She suspects a connection between the death and the disappearance, especially given that the young lady who disappeared went missing while searching for the woman who was later found dead.
As Eliza traces their last known steps, she unearths a hidden world of dangerous secrets lurking beneath the city—secrets that could tear apart everything she holds dear. This pulse-racing historical mystery will intrigue and delight anyone fascinated by the founding fathers and feminist history.
Mollie Ann Cox is the author of several popular mystery series, also writing under the pen named Maggie Blackburn and Mollie Cox Bryan. Her books have been selected as finalists for an Agatha Award and a Daphne du Maurier Award and as a Top 10 Beach Reads by Woman's World. She lives in Charlottesville, VA.
Mindy Quigley is the author of several books, including the Six Feet Deep series, the most recent installment of which has been nominated for an Agatha Award. She lives in Blacksburg, VA.
Author event with Cassie Miller!
My Life with the Walter Boys meets The Notebook in this small town baseball romance perfect for fans of Kasie West and Carley Fortune.
High school junior Eliza Crowley is known as the Princess of Fairfield, a farm town in North Carolina that loves two things--tradition and baseball. Although Eliza loves "the game," her life goal is to become a lighting designer on Broadway. Shaking off her reputation as the rich girl and focusing on her town's community theater production are what she's set her sights on this summer, and nothing will stand in her way. That is until Reed Fulton, the grandson of a struggling Fairfield farmer, and ace pitcher of the Fulton Hawks, returns to town. Reed dreams of putting the catastrophe of last season behind him and leading the Hawks to a championship victory against the Crowley Cardinals. When his childhood friend turned stranger, Eliza, strolls back into his life, she makes his heart accelerate quicker than his fastball, and he's not sure he can stay away from the girl he's supposed to despise. Small-town summers and baseball draw Reed and Eliza together, even though the Crowleys and the Fultons are determined to run each other out of town. When the families make a deal to settle their thirty-year-long dispute once and for all, Eliza and Reed are stuck in the middle during the most important summer of their lives.
Storytelling
Our first Storytelling event of the new year was snowed out so let’s give it another try! Click through for more details.
March Banned Books Club
Join us to discuss Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler! Banned for: themes of racism, poverty, feminism, climate change
*Content warnings for violence and sexual assault.
Publication Day Book Launch Event with Shakespeare Okuni!
Join us for the launch of Shakespeare Okuni’s book of poetry, A Twist of Rotten Silk or Words to That Effect. The author and participants will read poems from the book - no preparation necessary. Then the author will take questions and facilitate a discussion about his poetry, the life of poems before and after they are released into the world, and what poetry means to each of us.
About the author: Shakespeare Okuni practiced with Footsbarn Travelling Theatre and the Werdyn Gypsy Horse Circus before running away from the circus to act and direct in England, France, Ghana, and Lebanon. He is the author of Black Box, a play for the actors of the National Theatre of Ghana, and Mabinogion, a libretto for string quartet, flute, and storyteller. With The Dreaming Chorus, a series of devised theatre workshops, he is developing a new piece drawn from William Shakespeareʼs unsettled plays. A Twist of Rotten Silk or Words to That Effect is his first book.
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! NOTE: at the end of the evening, two copies of Shakespeare Okuni’s A Twist of Rotten Silk, or Words to that Effect will be given away in advance of Okuni’s February 28th event!
Book Club collab with VT Neuroscience - Never Enough, chapters 1-6
Join us for a discussion of the bestselling book Never Enough by Judith Grisel.
From a renowned behavioral neuroscientist and recovering addict, a rare page-turning work of science that draws on personal insights to reveal how drugs work, the dangerous hold they can take on the brain, and the surprising way to combat today's epidemic of addiction.
Students and faculty from Virginia Tech's Neuroscience Department will join the discussion. Please note that there are TWO meetings to discuss the book - February 25th and March 18th. Come to either or both - everyone is welcome!
The Work of Hands and Hearts - Poetry and Prose from Patrick Dacey and Aaron Fagan
“The Work of Hands and Hearts” is an intimate literary event celebrating the dignity, struggle, and spirit of working people through poetry and fiction. Acclaimed poet Aaron Fagan and award-winning fiction writer Patrick Dacey will share selections from their work that explore labor, class, and the everyday beauty found in persistence. A Q&A will follow.
Bookdazzling!
THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT!
Our first one got snowed out, so let’s try this again!
Bring your favorite book and join us over at Moon Hollow for a night of sparkle! Participants will decorate and personalize books using gems, turning ordinary covers into dazzling works of art. You’ll get your own bedazzling kit to take home with you! BONUS: the event will be hosted by author extraordinaire Mindy Quigley!
This event is $25 and registration is required. You can register here!
MFA Salon
The MFA Salon is back for the spring semester! Join us for an evening of poetry & prose from the up-and-coming writers of Virginia Tech’s MFA in Creative Writing program!
Email tsophia@vt.edu with questions and for accommodations.
Y'allentine's Book Fair
HECK YEAH the Y'allentine's Book Fair is back, and all y'all are invited!
We'll be at Moon Hollow Brewing with SO MANY BOOKS.
Moon Hollow will have drink specials, Tomato Cat will have sweet treats, the gardener will be there to provide typewriter poetry, and Stonecrop Farm will be there with dried flower arrangements - it's your V-day one-stop shop!
Stop by for:
romantic love
twisted love
doomed love
obsessive love
terrifying love
all the other kinds of love
and fun!
Ron Peterson Jr. Author Talk and Q&A
Virginia-based true crime author Ron Peterson Jr. will be in store to discuss his newest book, Runaway Groom, before turning the floor over to the audience for questions!
Click through for more info!
Chocolate Spike Pop-Up
Chocolate Spike will be in-store slinging all kinds of goodies! Chocolate bark, truffles, chocolate-covered fruit! Swing by before the staff buys everything :)