Charlottesville Reading Series announces artists for June event

The Charlottesville Reading Series will host a fiction reading and musical performance on Friday, June 21, from 7-8 p.m. at New Dominion Bookshop in Charlottesville.

The event will feature an in-person reading by Helon Habila and original music by Orion Faruque. The event is free to attend, and complimentary refreshments will be available at intermission.

Helon Habila is the author of Travelers and three previous novels, including Oil on Water, which was shortlisted for the Orion Book Award and the PEN Open Book Award, and one book of nonfiction, The Chibok Girls. He studied literature at the University of Jos in Nigeria and creative writing at the University of East Anglia, UK. He was named the first Chinua Achebe Fellow at Bard College. During his fellowship, he wrote and taught at Bard. He teaches creative writing at George Mason University and lives in Centreville, Virginia, with his wife and two children. For more details, visit helonhabila.com.

Orion Faruque, a Charlottesville native, is the songwriter and arranger for the band Orion and the Melted Crayons. After he pursued a BS in music production at McNally Smith College of Music and graduated from the St. Paul School in 2014, he moved to Asheville, NC, to run a destination studio, write material, and work as a producer. His unique view on songwriting visits themes of nature, coming of age, and the visceral elements of life, while highlighting the joy to be found in each emotion. Orion has relocated back to Charlottesville, where he is an artist, a producer, an educator, and a session player. Find out more about his band here, and listen to their work on Spotify.

About the Charlottesville Reading Series

Founded by Julia Kudravetz and Amie Whittemore in 2014, the Charlottesville Reading Series presents in-person readings of poetry, prose, and song in a monthly event for community members in Charlottesville. We recruit emerging and established writers form diverse backgrounds, both locally and nationally. For more information about the series, please visit readingseries.org.