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JMU professor Sofia Samatar to read from Opacities book Saturday

Crystal Graham
sofia samatar
sofia samatar

New Dominion Bookshop will host a book talk and signing with author and James Madison University professor Sofia Samatar on Saturday, Nov. 2, at 7 p.m.

Samatar will be speaking about her new creative writing craft book, Opacities: On Writing and the Writing Life, which was released from Soft Skull Press in August.

A conversation with author and University of Virginia professor Emily Ogden will follow.

This in-person event is free to attend and open to the public.

Opacities is a book about writing, publishing and friendship. Rooted in an epistolary relationship between Samatar and a friend and fellow writer, this collection of meditations traces an attempt to rediscover the intimacy of writing.

Samatar is a writer of fiction and nonfiction, including the memoir The White Mosque, a PEN/Jean Stein Award finalist. Her works range from the award–winning novel A Stranger in Olondria to Tone, a study of literary tone with Kate Zambreno.

Samatar is the Roop Distinguished Professor of English at JMU, where she teaches African literature, Arabic literature and speculative fiction.

Ogden is a professor of English at UVA. She is the author of On Not Knowing: How to Love and Other Essays (University of Chicago Press). She is working on Frailties, a book about Edgar Allan Poe.

New Dominion Bookshop is located at 404 E. Main St. in Charlottesville.

For more information, visit ndbookshop.com.

Crystal Graham

Crystal Graham

Crystal Abbe Graham is the regional editor of Augusta Free Press. A 1999 graduate of Virginia Tech, she has worked for 25 years as a reporter and editor for several Virginia publications, written a book, and garnered more than a dozen Virginia Press Association awards for writing and graphic design. She was the co-host of "Viewpoints," a weekly TV news show, and co-host of Virginia Tonight, a nightly TV news show on PBS. Her work on "Virginia Tonight" earned her a national Telly award for excellence in television.