RICHMOND, VIRGINIA – The Library of Virginia is excited to announce the Carole Weinstein Author Series for 2025. This year’s series will feature bestselling and award-winning authors discussing Appalachian migration, a racially charged murder case in 1968, the culinary history of five generations of Black country cooks, the hilarious story of one woman's determination to live a creative life that matters, and more topics. Each book talk will be held from 6 to 7:30 p.m. in the Library’s Lecture Hall. Register at www.lva.virginia.gov/public/weinstein.

The Carole Weinstein Author Series showcases the literary arts by bringing both new and well-known authors to the Library of Virginia to share the stories that define the Commonwealth. Free and open to the public, the series focuses on Virginia authors and Virginia subjects across all genres. Each book talk is followed by a lively Q&A with audience members and an author signing of their books. 

The series is made possible through generous support from the Carole Weinstein Endowment for Virginia Authors. Weinstein Series books can be purchased through the Virginia Shop at the Library of Virginia or online by visiting www.thevirginiashop.org. 

The 2025 Carole Weinstein Author Series schedule is as follows:

KATRINA M. POWELL
“Beginning Again: Stories of Movement and Migration in Appalachia”
Thursday, April 10 

Author and professor Katrina M. Powell is the founding director of the Center for Refugee, Migrant and Displacement Studies at Virginia Tech. Her research focuses on narratives of displacement, autobiography, and ethics in research methodologies. She is author of several books, including “The Anguish of Displacement: The Politics of Literacy in the Letters of Mountain Families in Shenandoah National Park,” “Identity and Power in Narratives of Displacement” and “Performing Autobiography,” and the editor of “Beginning Again: Stories of Movement and Migration in Appalachia.” Powell is also co-director of the Monuments Across Appalachian Virginia project, funded by the Mellon Foundation.

About “Beginning Again”
“Beginning Again: Stories of Movement and Migration in Appalachia” is composed of oral histories that share narratives of refugees, immigrants and generations-long residents in Appalachia, highlighting the ways that communities resist and complicate stereotypes about the region and create spaces of belonging, home and connection. This book seeks to provide a more nuanced picture of Appalachia to counter the damaging myths that circulate about groups of people. Powell will discuss the book’s narratives and oral history methodology, and the importance of understanding personal histories in relation to public history.

DAVID BALDACCI
“A Calamity of Souls” & “Strangers in Time”
Thursday, May 15 

David Baldacci is a global #1 bestselling author and one of the world’s favorite storytellers. His books are published in over 45 languages and in more than 80 countries, with 150 million copies sold worldwide. His works have been adapted for both feature film and television. 

Born in Richmond, Baldacci received his bachelor’s degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and his law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law, after which he practiced law in Washington, D.C. He is also the cofounder, along with his wife, of the Wish You Well Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting literacy efforts across the United States. 

About “A Calamity of Souls” & “Strangers in Time”
The courtroom drama “A Calamity of Souls” is set in the tumultuous year of 1968 in southern Virginia, where a racially charged murder case sets a duo of white and Black lawyers against a deeply unfair system as they work to defend their wrongfully accused Black defendants. Over a decade in the making, the book takes the reader through a world that will seem both foreign and familiar. In Baldacci’s latest novel, “Strangers in Time,” set in London in 1944, a bereaved bookshop owner and two teenagers scarred by World War II find healing and hope in one another.

ADRIANA TRIGIANI
“The View From Lake Como” and 25 Years of “Big Stone Gap”
Thursday, July 24

Adriana Trigiani is the New York Times bestselling author of 21 books of fiction and nonfiction published in 38 languages. In 2023, President Sergio Mattarella of Italy named her Cavaliere dell’Ordine della Stella d’Italia. She is an award-winning playwright, television writer/producer and filmmaker. Among her screen credits, Trigiani wrote and directed the major motion picture adaptation of her debut novel, “Big Stone Gap.” Trigiani grew up in Appalachia, in the mountains of Southwest Virginia, where she cofounded the Origin Project, an in-school writing program serving over 2,700 students. Trigiani is honored to serve on the New York State Council on the Arts. She lives in Greenwich Village with her family. She received an honorary Patron of Letters degree from the Library of Virginia in 2024. 

About “The View From Lake Como” and “Big Stone Gap”
Trigiani’s latest novel, “The View From Lake Como,” presents the hilarious story of one woman's determination to live a creative life that matters. Recently divorced from “the perfect husband,” Jess Capodimonte Baratta moves into her parents’ basement to hide and heal. When her family endures an unexpected loss, the shock unearths long-buried secrets that force Jess to question her loyalty to those she trusted. Fueled by her lost dreams, she takes fate into her own hands and escapes to her ancestral home, Carrara, Italy, determined to write a new story on her own terms. “Big Stone Gap,” the first novel in Trigiani’s beloved series set in the Blue Ridge Mountains, was published 25 years ago and has since been made into a major motion picture written and directed by Trigiani herself. Set in 1978, the book features Ave Maria Mulligan, the 35-year-old self-proclaimed spinster of sleepy Big Stone Gap, Virginia. She’s also the local pharmacist, the co-captain of the rescue squad, and the director of “The Trail of the Lonesome Pine,” the town’s long-running outdoor drama.

CRYSTAL WILKINSON
“Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks”
Thursday, Aug. 14

Crystal Wilkinson, a recent fellowship recipient of the Academy of American Poets, is the award-winning author of “Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts,” a culinary memoir; “Perfect Black,” a collection of poems; and three works of fiction — “The Birds of Opulence,” “Water Street” and “Blackberries, Blackberries.” She was inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame in 2025. Wilkinson is the recipient of an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry, an O. Henry Prize, a USA Artists Fellowship, and an Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence. Named Kentucky’s Poet Laureate from 2021 to 2023, she has received recognition from the Yaddo Foundation, Hedgebrook, The Vermont Studio Center for the Arts, The Hermitage Foundation and others. Her short stories, poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including most recently in The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, STORY, Agni Literary Journal, Emergence, Oxford American and Southern Cultures.

About “Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts”
“Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks” is a lyrical culinary journey that explores the hidden legacy of Black Appalachians through powerful storytelling alongside comforting recipes. An expert cook, Wilkinson shares nearly 40 family recipes rooted deep in the past, full of flavor — delicious favorites including corn pudding, chicken and dumplings, Granny Christine’s jam cake, and Praisesong biscuits — and brought to vivid life through stunning photography. Part memoir, part cookbook, it presents a culinary portrait of a family that has lived and worked the earth of the mountains for over a century.

LAURA E. HELTON 
“Scattered and Fugitive Things: How Black Collectors Created Archives and Remade History”
Wednesday, Sept. 3 

Laura E. Helton is an assistant professor of English and history at the University of Delaware, where she teaches African American literature, book history, archival studies and public humanities. Her research and writings chronicle the emergence of African diasporic archives in the United States and, more broadly, ask how information practices — material acts of collecting, collation and cataloging — scaffold literary and historical thought. She is a coeditor of the digital humanities project “Remaking the World of Arturo Schomburg,” a collaborative digital project with Fisk University and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. 

About “Scattered and Fugitive Things”
“Scattered and Fugitive Things: How Black Collectors Created Archives and Remade History” tells the stories of these Black collectors, traveling from the parlors of the urban north to historically Black college and university reading rooms and branch libraries in the Jim Crow South. Helton chronicles the work of six key figures: bibliophile Arturo Schomburg, scrapbook maker Alexander Gumby, librarians Virginia Lee and Vivian Harsh, curator Dorothy Porter and historian L.D. Reddick. Drawing on overlooked sources such as book lists and card catalogs, she reveals the risks collectors took to create Black archives. This book also explores the social life of collecting, highlighting the communities that used these collections from the South Side of Chicago to Roanoke, Virginia.

Find related images here:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/hx0n0gtdklvimzupvem9q/ACWhXEyRwgR8hTpAiqGYPv4?rlkey=pgpgpaqgsbnlbjozgbfzc57ft&dl=0

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