Home ‘Three Muses’ author raises curtain on ballet in debut novel
Arts & Media

‘Three Muses’ author raises curtain on ballet in debut novel

Crystal Graham
Martha Anne Toll
Martha Anne Toll

New Dominion Bookshop will host a book reading and signing with author Martha Anne Toll on Saturday, Feb. 11, at 4 p.m.

Toll will be reading from her recent novel, Three Muses, which was released from Regal House Publishing in the fall.

A conversation with author Jody Hobbs Hesler will follow.

This in-person event will be cosponsored by local nonprofit WriterHouse and will be free to attend and open to the public.

Three Muses ventures through memory, trauma, and identity, while raising the curtain on the unforgiving discipline of ballet. Three muses – song, discipline and memory – weave their way through love and loss, heartbreak and triumph – to leave readers of this prize-winning debut breathless.

Toll writes fiction, essays and book reviews, and reads anything that’s not nailed down. Her debut novel, Three Muses, won the Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction. Toll brings a long career in social justice to her work covering writers of color and women writers. She is a book reviewer and author interviewer at NPR Books, The Washington Post, Pointe Magazine, The Millions and elsewhere. She also publishes short fiction and essays in a wide variety of outlets. Toll has recently joined the Board of Directors of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation.

Hesler’s debut short story collection, What Makes You Think You’re Supposed to Feel Better, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press in November 2023. Her fiction, feature articles, essays and book reviews appear in The Millions, Atticus Review, The Rumpus, The Los Angeles Review, CRAFT, The Bangalore Review, Arts & Letters, Pithead Chapel, Gargoyle, Raleigh Review, [PANK], Charlottesville Wine & Country Life and elsewhere. She earned her fiction MFA from Lesley University and teaches at WriterHouse in Charlottesville.

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 nearly 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. Her work on "Virginia Tonight" earned her a national Telly award for excellence in television.