Thursday
October 9
10:30 AM
Varun Gauri’s novel, For the Blessings of Jupiter and Venus, tells the story of Meena, a woman who chooses an arranged marriage with Avi, an aspiring politician in small-town Ohio. When Avi’s opponent launches a racist political smear campaign, they are forced to defend themselves, their community, and their new relationship. Author Tania James calls this book “An exuberant debut that is as bitingly funny as it is wise.” Radhika Wheelock, Fiction MFA candidate at George Mason, will moderate this conversation.
Location: Wilkins Plaza Tent, between the Johnson Center and Horizon Hall.
10:30 AM
Carrie R. Moore’s debut story collection, Make Your Way Home, follows Black men and women as they search for love, home, and belonging across the American South. The collection considers the way the past shapes our present and how place informs our experiences. Author Elizabeth McCracken says, “A book that has the force of life itself, all its hurts and love and betrayal, the little intimacies, terrible mistakes, reconciliations, moments of transcendence, the ways we can and cannot change. It is an astonishing debut.” Martheaus Perkins, poetry MFA candidate at George Mason and author of The Grace of Black Mothers, will moderate this conversation.
Location: Fenwick Reading Room, Room 2001, Fenwick Library
12 PM
In this cross-genre event, authors Phyllis R. Dixon and E.N. Couturier will discuss the environment, sustainability, and the complicated relationship between humans and the land they inhabit. Dixon’s novel, Something in the Water, follows a woman investigating the connection between corruption and the unsafe drinking water in her small town. When her family’s stability is threatened because of her discovery, she must decide between public safety and her son’s freedom after getting in trouble with the law. Couturier’s essayistic memoir Organic Matter, documents the brutal experience of working on a vegetable farm as she considers the uncertain future of the land that is meant to sustain us. Author Krys Malcolm Belc says, “This book sneaks up on you–come for the food writing…and stay for the rousing meditations on faith, family, and making your own way in early adulthood.” Ashlee Green, a graduate of Mason’s Nonfiction MFA program, will moderate this conversation.
Location: Wilkins Plaza Tent, between the Johnson Center and Horizon Hall.
12 PM
Lydi Conklin’s debut novel, Songs of No Provenance, is a fascinating character study of an indie folk singer who flees to a rural writing camp after a massive career misstep. The book examines issues of trans nonbinary identity, queer baiting and appropriation, and questions whether a work of art can truly ever be separate from the artist. Author Carmen Maria Machado says, “Conklin has gathered up slippery ideas about art-making and desire and mentorship and gender and plunged an antihero for the ages through the heart of them all. Songs of No Provenance is a raw, empathetic novel of exceptional power.” Satori Good, fiction MFA fiction candidate at George Mason and Editor in Chief of So to Speak, will moderate this conversation.
Location: Fenwick Reading Room, Room 2001, Fenwick Library
1:30 PM
Alex Finlay and Lacey N. Dunham deliver intense, chilling, and atmospheric novels set on college campuses. Finlay’s Parent’s Weekend begins with five families celebrating their children’s first year of college. But when those kids go missing during parent’s weekend activities, panic ensues. Author Mary Kubica says, “Alex Finlay is a master at creating complex, high-stakes thrillers that are charged with emotion.” Dunham’s The Belles follows Deena Williams, a freshman desperately trying to fit in at a prestigious women’s college. Author Lynn Steger Strong says, “Seductively immersive and brilliantly gothic, The Belles beautifully mines the depths and complexities, the dangers and cruelties, of young womanhood within the confined and explosive space of a 1950’s southern all-girls’ school.” Catherine Olien, Associate Director of the Center for Humanities Research, will moderate this conversation.
Location: Wilkins Plaza Tent, between the Johnson Center and Horizon Hall.
1:30 PM
Join two memoirists as they discuss familial love and difficulties between mothers and daughters. Jeannie Vanasco’s A Silent Treatment, depicts the way the writer’s mother punished her by giving her the silent treatment ranging from two weeks to six months at a time. Author Megha Majumdar says, “A Silent Treatment confronts both the complexity of family and the quandary of capturing a family’s shapeshifting and perplexing love, their truthful and devoted love, in the amber of memoir.” Sarah LaBrie’s No One Gets to Fall Apart traces the lead-up to her mother’s mental breakdown as LaBrie investigates her family history and generational trauma. Author Lorrie Moore says, “This is a brilliant memoir about what we inherit and what we create; what disappears and what remains. Full of intelligence and rueful humor, No One Gets to Fall Apart is a triumph of every kind of literary perseverance.” Bex Pachl, MFA candidate in Nonfiction, will moderate this conversation.
Location: Fenwick Reading Room, Room 2001, Fenwick Library.
1:30 PM
Motherhood, illness, language, possibility, and more twine together in Chet’la Sebree’s newest collection, Blue Opening: Poems. Through the fluid boundaries of form, Sebree grapples with origins and combs the cosmos for answers to the unknowable. Editor Arcelis Girmay says, “These formally various poems are made in the ‘body’s vernacular.’ Cellular, full of becomings and endings, alert toward ‘the arrival of the infinite:’ Chet’la Sebree’s language becomes a strand of desire, a string of scream.” Sebree is also the author of Field Study which won the 2020 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, and Mistress. Matti Ben-Lev, Nonfiction MFA candidate at George Mason, will moderate this conversation.
Location: George’s, 3rd Floor, Johnson Center.
2:15 PM
From the 1910s to the 1960s, the Katharine Gibbs School was widely known for training women for secretarial positions. However, in Expect Great Things! How the Katharine Gibbs School Revolutionized the American Workplace for Women, author Vanda Krefft reveals how this school intentionally instilled women with the skills, knowledge, and self-confidence to seek opportunities outside of the prescribed secretarial role. Krefft tells the story of Katie Gibbs, the school’s founder, and introduces us to a rolodex of graduates who went on to defy the sexism of their era. Publisher’s Weekly calls the book “an exuberant and fascinating look back at how the uphill battle women faced inspired them to be creatively subversive.” This event is part of Fall for the Book’s festival lineup. Sponsored by Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
This event will be livestreamed over Zoom. Starting September 10, register for your free ticket via Eventbrite.
3 PM
Historian Forest Issac Jones presents Good Trouble: The Selma, Alabama and Derry, Northern Ireland Connection 1963-1972. In this book, Jones examines the connection between the Black Civil Rights Movement in the United States and the Catholic Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland based on research, interviews, and oral histories. Author Brian McGilloway says “By viewing the events in Derry through the prism of those in Selma, Forest Jones draws attention to the striking commonality in cause and consequence of both the American and Northern Irish Civil Rights movements, and the awful violence which attempted to silence those twin cries for equality. In doing so, he creates an insightful and compelling examination of a terrible period in our shared histories and highlights the need for society to learn from the past for a more equitable future.”
Location: Fenwick Reading Room, Room 2001, Fenwick Library.
4:30 PM
In this cross-genre panel, Corinna Vallianatos, author of Origin Stories, and Carmen Giménez, author of the poetry collection Be Recorder, talk about identity, grief, love, and the nation. Be Recorder explores the precariousness of personhood, rebellion, and reckoning with self and nation. The Los Angeles Review of Books says, “The collection reminds us of the rich, interconnected histories between both Americas, North and South, the one we live in and the one we wish we lived in.” Deb Olin Unfert says about Origin Stories, “These dark, devastating stories are love meditations, each offering a secret lesson on how to navigate our new world as woman, daughter, mother, artist. Page-turners each one, full of power, brilliance, and racing energy.” They also discuss Graywolf Press’s publishing process, both from an editorial and authorial point of view.
Location: Fenwick Reading Room, Room 2001, Fenwick Library.
6 PM
In Waiting for Britney Spears: A True Story, Allegedly, Jeff Weiss recounts his experience as a tabloid journalist following Spears in the early 2000s. In so doing, he reflects on our obsession with fame, morality, and celebrity gossip. Publishers Weekly calls the book “As much a thrilling chronicle of Spears’s life as it is a perceptive examination of celebrity culture, this captivates.” Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo’s novel The Tiny Things Are Heavier follows a young Nigerian woman, Sommy, who moves to the US for school only two weeks after her brother attempts suicide. Still plagued by guilt, Sommy tries to fit in as best she can in this new country. Author Kiley Reid says, “A gracefully told and sharply observed debut. Okonkwo has produced a beautiful study and story of what we owe to our family, friends, lovers, and ourselves.” Sponsored by Mason Creative Writing.
Location: Fenwick Reading Room, Room 2001, Fenwick Library
7:30 PM
Enjoy the three powerhouse finalists – and celebrate the winner – of the Eighth Annual New American Voices Award for immigrant writers. Finalists Olufunke Grace Bankole, Cristina Jiménez, and Shubha Sunder, will be joined by this year’s judges: Marie Myung-Ok Lee, Brando Skyhorse, and Mary-Alice Daniel. The New American Voices Award was created in 2018 by Fall for the Book and the Institute for Immigration Research to recognize recently published works that illuminate the complexity of the human experience as told by immigrants, whose work is historically underrepresented in writing and publishing. Sponsored by the Institute for Immigration Research.
There will be a reception prior to the award ceremony. Tickets are recommend for this event. Reserve your free Eventbrite ticket here starting September 10.
Location: Grand Tier III, Center for the Arts.
Finding Events
Finding Events
From the Mason Pond Parking Deck, walk up the plaza, past the statue of George Mason towards the big clock. You’ll see the Wilkins Plaza Tent in the middle of the plaza.
To get the to Fenwick Reading Room, enter Fenwick Library, go up the stairs, and take a right. You’ll see the banner at the end of the hallway for room 2001.
George’s is located in the Johnson Center, which will be on your right shortly after exiting the top of the Mason Pond Parking Deck. Take the elevators to the third floor, then walk to the back of the building — the big glass windows say George’s.
Parking
For Mason’s Fairfax Campus, located at 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, VA: Rappahannock River and Mason Pond parking decks provide most of the campus’ visitor parking using an entry/exit ticket payment system. Rates can be found here. Mason Pond is the closest parking to most campus events. Access it via Mason Pond Drive or Aquia Creek Lane.
To park in Lot K, use the Roanoke River Road entrance off of Braddock Road, across from University Mall. Lot K is the first left from that entrance. You need to pre-purchase a parking pass online to use this lot.