Join us for the September Charlottesville Reading Series event, featuring poet Joumana Altallal and novelist Sara Read. This in-person event will be free and open to the public. We recommend arriving early for the best seating.
Joumana Altalla is an Iraqi-Lebanese writer, researcher, and artist who was born in Baghdad, and grew up in Charlottesville. She received her MFA in Poetry from the University of Michigan. Joumana is currently working on her first book, which focuses on American spectatorship and the commodification of violence in post-2003 Iraq.
Before she started writing fiction, Sara Read got a degree in women’s studies from UC Santa Cruz. She tried the nine-to-five life for about a nanosecond before moving to rural Virginia to become a flute-maker’s apprentice and traditional fiddle player. Some years and two babies later, she returned to school for a masters in nursing and worked in labor and delivery, oncology, and nursing education. Sara’s short stories have been featured in The Missouri Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, and Zone 3 Press, and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Johanna Porter Is Not Sorry is her debut novel. Her next book, Principles of (E)motion, is due out in early 2024. Sara lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with her husband, two teens, a terrier, and three snarky cats.