VQR held a reading for poets Charles Wright and Charles Simic as a part of the Virginia Festival of the Book weekend before last. The hour-long event was recorded by the festival, and is provided here for for your listening and dancing pleasure.
00:00-05:04: Introduction by Ted Genoways
05:20-34:11: Charles Wright
34:46-1:08:00: Charles Simic
A week ago, the four authors inaugurating the VQR Poetry Series were assembled for the first time, as a part of the annual Virginia Festival of the Book. The four authors read from their respective books, and we had the good sense to record the event.
00:00-03:05: Introduction by Ted Genoways
03:15-15:37: Jennifer Chang (The History of Anonymity)
15:50-29:42: Kevin McFadden (Hardscrabble)
29:58-39:29: Cecily Parks (Field Folly Snow)
39:36-51:02: Patrick Phillips (Boy)
51:25-57:54: Q&A
VQR editor Ted Genoways was a guest of the Columbia School of Journalism’s Delacorte Lecture Series on February 14, where he spoke for a little over an hour about the Virginia Quarterly Review, the first half of which we have excerpted here as a podcast. Ted spoke frankly about the realities of publishing a small literary journal, though admittedly that’s because he didn’t actually know that he was being recorded.
There are two remaining stops on the “South America: Untold Stories” reading tour, co-sponsored by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, to mark the release of the Fall issue of VQR. If you will be in St. Louis or Carbondale, Illinois, on Monday or Tuesday of next week, please come and join us (further info here). However, if you can’t make either of those events, then check out the nifty webcast of the Berkeley event. While you’re at it, check out video companion to Kelly Hearn’s essay on drilling in the Peruvian Amazon that aired recently on PBS’s Foreign Exchange.
John Casteen and Jennifer Chang, two poets whose first books are forthcoming in the newly launched VQR Poetry Series, will read at 7:30 p.m., this Wednesday, October 3, in the Wailes Lounge at the Florence Elston Inn and Conference Center at Sweet Briar College (driving directions here) as part of the “First Wednesdays” Reading Series.
If you’re not already familiar with their work, you should check it out. You’ll find poems by Casteen here, here, and here. And some by Chang here, here, and here. I hope to see you there; it’s going to be good.
This past Saturday afternoon, photojournalist Ashley Gilbertson appeared in Charlottesville as part of the Festival of the Photograph, giving a talk co-sponsored by VQR and The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative. Gilbertson read his essay and gave a slideshow of “Last Photographs,” a photo-essay forthcoming in this summer’s issue of VQR.
The essay documents three episodes from his work for the New York Times in Iraq, which illustrate the change in his understanding of his purpose there; where he first felt compelled to make a change in Americans’ perception of the war, he has now come to feel he’s “just recording history now, documenting the decline.”
Among the attendees was Ben Shaw, who very recently returned from his third tour of duty in Iraq as a Sergeant with the US Marines. Shaw’s first two tours included duty in Fallujah and in Baghdad. He re-enlisted for a voluntary third tour as a training officer for the Iraqi army and police force.
Ashley Gilbertson (left), photo by Dexter Filkens.
The work of Ashley Gilbertson, an award-winning photojournalist, will be featured in the Summer issue of VQR (due July 1), in a portfolio titled “Framing the War: Photographs from Iraq.” Along with Gilbertson, the issue features work by photographers Carolyn Cole and Chris Hondros. Gilbertson, Cole, and Hondros are all past winners of the Robert Capa Gold Medal for war photography from the Overseas Press Club of America.
We’re also excited to announce that Gilbertson will also be in Charlottesville, VA on Saturday, June 9 at 1:30 p.m. at The Bridge to discuss his recent work covering the Iraq War. Ashley’s talk is free and open to all and is sponsored by The Bridge and VQR. It’s part of the inaugural Festival of the Photograph, a three-day celebration of photography.
For a preview of Ashley’s talk on 6/9 and his essay in the Summer issue, here’s an excerpt:
I didn’t want to go back.
When I began reporting from Iraq in 2002, I was still a wild and somewhat naïve twenty-four-year-old kid. Five years later, I was battle-weary. I had been there longer than the American military and had kept returning long after most members of the “coalition of the willing” had pulled out. Iraq had become my initiation, my rite of passage, but instead of granting me a new sense of myself and a new identity, Iraq had become my identity. Without Iraq, I was nothing. Just another photographer hanging around New York. In Iraq, I had a purpose, a mission; I felt important. I didn’t want to go back, but I needed to—and for the worst possible reason: I wasn’t ready for it to end. After twelve months away, I had a craving that only Iraq could satisfy.
My wife didn’t like the idea. Neither did my shrink. “If you go back to Iraq now,” he warned, “you’ll probably keep going back.” To be completely honest—and I wasn’t being honest with myself then—part of me knew they were right. Still, I could easily rationalize my desire to anyone who asked. I told them that I wanted to have one last look, that I needed to shoot the place differently, outside the constraints of daily coverage; I said I wanted to photograph Iraq emotionally, to react to my feelings on the spot instead of bottling them up as I’d done in the past; I said I wanted to be sure that my book of war photographs was indeed finished, that the story had irrevocably turned. The only people who bought my justifications were my editors at the New York Times. They thought another rotation was a great idea.
I felt pretty confident, and a little champagne-drunk, when I fell asleep in the plane on the runway a few weeks later. An ice storm had crept up on the city, and there was no way to know when my flight would clear for takeoff from Kennedy. When I awoke eight hours later, I was still in New York. My buzz was gone, and so was my confidence. Other passengers were demanding to know when we were going to leave, but I had bigger, equally unanswerable questions. We took off for Amman, and I spent the twelve hours sleepless, wondering what I was doing, what exactly the story was I thought I was chasing, and how much luck I had left—if it hadn’t already run out completely.
Ashley’s complete essay with eighteen of his photos are in the Summer issue of VQR, due on newsstands July 1.
We were pleased to host PaulineChen, one of our favorite VQR contributors, yesterday for her reading as part of the Virginia Festival of the Book. Pauline read to a packed audience at the UVA Bookstore and we hope to have a podcast of her reading up within the next week. (To the right, Pauline poses with VQR editor Ted Genoways.) Later in the day, Pauline taped an interview with C-SPAN’s Booknotes BookTV and we’re told the interview should be broadcast in the coming weeks. Check their website for more info.
Pauline’s book Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality is doing extraordinarly well for a first book. It’s already made an appearance on the NYT Bestseller list and we hear it’s gone into its fifth printing. We love it when a talented and genuinely nice person gets the success they deserve!
We were pleased to host 
The Virginia Quarterly Review