The Paramount Theater in Charlottesville will host three events for the 2026 Virginia Festival of the Book on Saturday, March 21.
The first event, “Protest and the Story of America,” will be offered at 10 a.m. and is free for attendees. Registration is available online.
Three different books serve as a macrocosm and microcosms of resistance. How do personal stories mesh with the greater picture of protest? And how has this larger history of everyday people standing up shaped America?
- Charlottesville: An American Story by Pulitzer Prize winning finalist Deborah Baker looks to 2017, when clergy, activists and people from all walks of life reacted to the threat of armed white supremacists descending upon their city.
- In A Protest History of the United States, Gloria J. Browne-Marshall looks at 500 years of protest, covering civil rights advocacy, anti-war protests and labor uprisings.
- Holler: A Graphic Memoir of Rural Resistance by Denali Sai Nalamalapu hones in on six Appalachian activists fighting the Mountain Valley pipeline.
Sally Mann, 1 p.m.
Photographer Sally Mann’s new book: Art Work: On the Creative Life will be the subject of the 1 p.m. event at The Paramount Theatre. There is a ticketed event and is $25 per person. The event is offered at 1 p.m.
Following her acclaimed memoir Hold Still, this book blends practical advice with self-deprecating humor and candid stories from her career in rural Appalachia. Mann explores the hazards of early success, the role of serendipitous luck and the necessity of navigating rejection and censorship.
Richly illustrated with journal entries, letters and “failed” photographs, Art Work serves as both a “how-not-to” manual and a profound meditation on the messy, human struggle required to sustain a lifelong creative practice.
Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson, 6:30 p.m.
The final offering at the Charlottesville theatre is an author talk with Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson at 6:30 p.m. This is a ticketed event; $15 per person.
From pockets in skirts to mix-and-match separates; from wrap dresses to rompers, 20th century fashion designer Claire McCardell emphasized comfort and functionality in women’s attire during a time when constraining styles were the mode. McCardell’s ideas, sometimes called her “crazies,” were innovative, shocking, free-spirited and revolutionary. Her label is given a new life in the book, Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free.
Dickinson discusses this woman you may have never heard of, but whose legacy might live in your closet.
The author will be in conversation with Kalela Williams, director of the Virginia Center for the Book.
A demonstration of historical clothing by professor Marcy Linton of the Historic Clothing Collection at UVA’s Department of Drama will lend texture to this talk.
Tickets for all three events
Tickets for these three events are on sale now and available:
- online at www.theparamount.net
- by phone during box office hours by calling (434) 979-1333
- in person at the box office Monday – Friday from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m.
- in person one hour before each event
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Crystal Graham
