Learn the art of Coptic Book Binding with the Virginia Arts of the Book Center

Discussion of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.  Documents the story of how scientists took cells from an unsuspecting descendant of freed slaves and created a human cell line that has been kept alive indefinitely, enabling discoveries in such areas as cancer research, in vitro fertilization and gene mapping.

Discussion of Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  The author recounts the story of her life, from her traditional Muslim childhood in Somalia and escape from a forced marriage to her efforts to promote women’s rights while surviving numerous threats to her safety.

Live reading of Borges’s “The Circular Ruins” followed by refreshments and discussion.

Discussion of J.M. Synge’s Playboy of the Western World,  which deals with a hero’s progress, from timid weakling to paragon of bravery.

Discussion of This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust.  An illuminating study of how the war’s staggering carnage (the equivalent of 6 million dead today) changed society’s attitude toward death and led to the establishment of national commitments for the military dead.

Discussion of Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.   The perfect marriage between the wealthy, worldly attorney Newland Archer and the beautiful and docile May Welland is threatened by the arrival from Europe of May’s cousin, the fascinating Countess Olenska.

This workshop will explore the ways metaphors sweeten the writing, making an ordinary scoop of a sentence into a deluxe banana split, and the diverse ways prose writers play with time, from the micro-level to the macro.

Discussion of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night by Mark Haddon.  Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor’s dog and uncovers secret information about his mother.