New Dominion Bookshop in Charlottesville will host a book reading and signing with author Gregory Orr on Wednesday, Nov. 20, from 7-8 p.m.
Orr’s memoir, The Blessing, was recently reissued by Milkweed Editions. This event is free to attend and open to the public.
Hailed on its original publication as “eloquent testimony to the engaging power of art in a man’s life,” this deeply moving memoir, long out of print, is reissued with an illuminating new afterword.
When Orr was 12 years old, he shot and killed his brother in a hunting accident. From the immediate aftermath—a period of shock, sadness, and isolation—it quickly became clear that support and guidance would not be coming from his distant mother. Nor would it come from his father, a philandering country doctor addicted to amphetamines. Left to his own devices, the boy suffered.
Guilt weighed on him throughout a childhood split between the rural Hudson Valley and jungles of Haiti. As a young man, his feelings and a growing sense of idealism prompted him to activism in the civil rights movement, where he marched and was imprisoned, and then scarred again by a terrifying abduction. Eventually, Orr’s experiences led him to understand that art, particularly poetry, could work as a powerful source of healing and meaning to combat the trauma he carried.
Throughout The Blessing, Orr articulates his journey in language as lyrical as it is authentic, gifting us all with a singular tale of survival, and of the transformation of suffering into art.
Orr has written 12 poetry collections, a memoir, and several books of essays and criticism. Prior to his retirement, he taught for more than forty years at the University of Virginia, where he established its MFA program and served as its first director.
The recipient of an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, Orr lives in Charlottesville.
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Chris Graham
