New Dominion Bookshop and nonprofit WriterHouse will host an in-person book launch with author Jocelyn Nicole Johnson at The Haven (112 W. Market St., Charlottesville) on Friday, Oct. 8, from 7-8 p.m.
Johnson’s highly anticipated debut book, My Monticello, will be released from Henry Holt/Macmillan in early October. This event is free to attend and open to the public. The bookshop recommends arriving early for the best seating. The doors for the event will open at 6:45 p.m.
My Monticello is a fiction debut of five stories and a novella, all set in Virginia. Each story explores burdened inheritances and extraordinary pursuits of belonging. The eponymous novella that concludes the collection follows a diverse group of Charlottesville neighbors as they flee violent white supremacists.
Led by Da’Naisha, a young Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, the group seeks refuge in Jefferson’s historic plantation home in a desperate attempt to outlive the long-foretold racial and environmental unravelling within the nation.
A fellow of Tin House, Hedgebrook and VCCA, Johnson has published her writing in Guernica, The Guardian, and elsewhere. Her short story “Control Negro” was anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, guest edited by Roxane Gay, who called it “one hell of a story,” and was read live by LeVar Burton as part of PRI’s Selected Shorts series.
A veteran public school art teacher, Johnson lives and writes in Charlottesville.
For more information, visit ndbookshop.com.
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Chris Graham
