We're honored to host poets Jeff Mann, Hilda Downer, and Brit Washburn for readings from this collection.

Had I a Dove gathers the voices of 80 poets in a moving anthology responding to the devastation of Hurricane Helene, which struck North Carolina and neighboring states in September 2024. Edited by acclaimed North Carolina poet Hilda Downer, these poems bear witness to loss, resilience, and the enduring spirit of Appalachian communities. Ranging from elegiac to hopeful, the collection is a testament to nature’s power and humanity’s ability to endure and rebuild.

Importantly, proceeds from the book will support Hurricane Helene relief efforts, offering both art and tangible aid to those most affected.

Please attend!

Mildred Kiconco Barya, a North Carolina-based writer and poet of East African descent, teaches and lectures globally. Hands in Clay is her fifth full-length poetry collection. Her previous poetry books include The Animals of My Earth School (Terrapin Books), which was listed among Brittle Paper Notable African Books of 2023 and received honorable mention in the 2024 Eric Hoffer Poetry Award. Barya is the recipient of the 2025 Jacobs/Jones African American Literary Prize and the 2020 Linda Flowers Literary Award. She has served as the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for the North Carolina Poetry Society and her work is published in the New England Review, The Cincinnati Review, Shenandoah, Tin House, The Forge, and elsewhere.

Praise for Hands in Clay

If one’s hand is in clay, it means one is caught in a flux, a thickness that is somehow also seductively light. The hand and heart of this poet are drenched in a clay so rich with minerals and meaning, hazard and hope, they teach us how to make and unmake, to dream while staying awake, and to rejoice even as one grieves. Guided by the wisdom of ancestors and the not-yet-born, by goats and tea leaves and strangers in traffic, Mildred Kiconco Barya’s “lusty and persistent” poems show us how “everything is through—as in veil, if not vale.” Though the journey is from life to death to rebirth, “the fog is omnipresent” and “[e]very few seconds, the celestial / bodies exchange positions”: matter and time are recyclable, and experience ever renewed.

–Aditi Machado, Material Witness

Our biggest event of the year! We’ll be set up at Moon Hollow Brewing with hundreds and hundreds of books for spooky season!

Thrillers? Yep!

Dark fantasy? Sure!

Sci-fi? Yasssss.

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, 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, and other fun stuff.

Tomato Cat will be there with sweets and Moon Hollow will have drink specials and you should definitely come!

Costumes encouraged!

Our banned book for October is Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya.

Join us at Moon Hollow Brewing to discuss! Get 10% off your drink when you tell them you’re with book club!

Would you like to tell a story at our monthly gathering? Or be a listener? We welcome both!

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!

The Center for Humanities presents “World War Zoos: Humans and Other Animals in the Deadliest Conflict of the Modern Age," a lecture and Q&A with Professor John M. Kinder.

As Europe lurched into war in 1939, zookeepers started killing their animals. On September 1, as German forces invaded Poland, Warsaw began with its reptiles. Two days later, workers at the London Zoo launched a similar spree, dispatching six alligators, seven iguanas, sixteen southern anacondas, six Indian fruit bats, a fishing cat, a binturong, a Siberian tiger, five magpies, an Alexandrine parakeet, two bullfrogs, three lion cubs, a cheetah, four wolves, and a manatee over the next few months. Zoos worldwide did the same. The reasons were many, but the pattern was clear: The war that was about to kill so many people started by killing so many animals. Why? And how did zoos, nevertheless, not just survive the war but play a key role in how people did, too?

A harrowing yet surprisingly uplifting chronicle, Kinder's World War Zoos traces how zoos survived the deadliest decades of global history, from the Great Depression, through the terrors of World War II, to the dawn of the Cold War. More than anything before or since, World War II represented an existential threat to the world's zoological institutions. Some zoos were bombed; others bore the indignities of foreign occupation. Even zoos that were spared had to wrestle with questions rarely asked in public: What should they do when supplies ran low? Which animals should be killed to protect the lives of others? And how could zoos justify keeping dangerous animals that might escape and run wild during an aerial attack?

Zoos in wartime reveal the shared vulnerabilities of humans and animals during periods of social unrest and environmental peril. World War II-era zoos offered people ways to think about and grapple with imprisonment, powerlessness, and degradation. Viewed today, the story of zoos during World War II can be read as an allegory of twenty-first-century crises, as the effects of climate change threaten all life across the planet.

A one-of-a-kind history, World War Zoos is the story of how the world's zoos survived the deadliest conflict of the twentieth century--and what was lost along the way.

This event is free and open to all.

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

For TELLERS:

We welcome your folktale, original writing, personal story, song, or family history piece. If you’d like to be a storyteller, you can either email us at info@blacksburgbooks.com or you can sign up when you get here that evening. Preference will be given to those who sign up in advance.

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!

Our banned book for September is The Color Purple by Alice Walker!

Join us at Moon Hollow Brewing to discuss. Get 10% off your drink when you tell them you’re with book club!

It’s our Tote Bag 20 sale! Bring in your Blacksburg Books tote bag and get 20% off books!

Consignment books are excluded, but that’s only like 1% of the store. :)

Steppin’ Out threw off our schedule, so you get two events in one evening!

From 7-8 we'll have storytelling - come to listen or to tell a brief story. We welcome your folktale, original writing, personal story, or family history piece. Poems and songs are also welcome! Aim for 8 minutes or less. This month’s theme is: surprises. Good, bad, whatever!

Then from 8-10 it's just unstructured hanging out. What's a "Third Place", you ask? It's a social space separate from work or home, a comfortable place where you can relax and socialize (for free!) So bring a craft, a snack, a friend, or just yourself and come hang out!

The August pick for our Banned Books Club is The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.

We will meet at Moon Hollow Brewing to discuss! Get 10% off your drink when you tell them you’re with book club!

The July 4th holiday threw off our schedule, so you get two events in one evening!

From 7-8 we'll have storytelling - come to listen or to tell a brief story. We welcome your folktale, original writing, personal story, or family history piece. Poems and songs are also welcome! Aim for 8 minutes or less.

Then from 8-10 it's just unstructured hanging out. What's a "Third Place", you ask? It's a social space separate from work or home, a comfortable place where you can relax and socialize (for free!) So bring a craft, a snack, a friend, or just yourself and come hang out!