March 22nd, 2012 issue #1112

March 22nd, 2012
  • Fiction winners: Lawyers dominate in Grisham's short-story picks

    In Hollywood, everybody has a screenplay. In Charlottesville, apparently everybody has a short story, at least judging by the 141 people who entered the Hook's 11th fiction contest— nearly double the number of those who participated just three years ago. We're still trying to analyze whether this is a trend, but the Hook's short-story judge, John Grisham, a former lawyer-turned-writer, picked lawyers-turned-short-story-writers as two of the three winners of this year's contest. Yet none of the winning stories had courtroom scenes.

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  • Hands

     Trenton, New Jersey1979 This story... It's the 1st place winner in the 2012 Hook Short Story contest.   Also by this author: • "First Church" by John Davidson John Davidson took second place in the 2010 short story contest with "First Church," which contest judge and mega-author John Grisham lauded as "haunting and frightening."

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  • Nell Casey: Swimming through Spalding Gray

    Around 2007, Kathleen Russo, widow of monologuist Spalding Gray, approached author Nell Casey about writing Gray’s autobiography. Gray, who committed suicide in 2004, spent his career publicly, nakedly chronicling his life in monologues like Swimming to Cambodia. Casey asked herself: Had Gray already said everything onstage? The answer: a resounding no. The journals showed her that there much more than the man's famous monologues. “It wasn't possible for Gray to chronicle or confess all aspects of his life publicly," says Casey, "but privately he did so.”

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  • The Death Look: Donna Britt rages for a reason

    Former Washington Post columnist Donna Britt has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. So why, in her household with three healthy sons and a husband, is such an acclaimed writer the one walking the dog, doing the laundry, and emptying dirty dishes from the sink? And why does her reaction manifest itself in what she calls The Death Look?

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  • Weird sisters: When Shakespeare plays second fiddle

    Best-selling author Eleanor Brown is a book festival’s ideal guest: a voracious reader from a family of voracious readers who writes about voracious readers. Brown’s first novel, The Weird Sisters, follows a Shakespeare scholar’s three daughters as they return to their Ohio hometown when their mother is stricken with cancer. Though Brown’s book has a cast of bibliophiles and is peppered with Shakespearean references, literature was mainly a springboard for the true heart of the book: the shifting relationship of the titular sisters and their parents, she says.

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4Better Or Worse

  • The week in review

    Biggest ouster: The Fluvanna Board of Supervisors fires five department heads March 14 following wage increases that were made without the board's knowledge. Canned are p...

The Dish

Essays

  • Holy wars: Then, now, and Iran

    By Tony Perrino   Warfare is as old as humanity. Since the beginning of civilization, people have fought one another, justifying their aggression as a matter of surv...

Real Estate - $old

  • Quick turn for Fifeville farmhouse

    2/16 Charlottesville R.L. Beyer Construction, Inc. to Marga Bushara, 228 Huntley Avenue, $351,224  Barry R. Sisson to Hai Chon Lee, 1708 Cedar Hill Road, $266,000 2/17...

Real Estate - On the Block

Real Estate Property auctions

  • Property auctions

    March 23 at 5pm at the    Albemarle Courthouse Property: 1641 Brightfield Place Debtor: Daniel S. Chen and Susan B. Broadwater Original amount owing: $229,50...

Movie Reviews

Music Features

Contents

  • Table of contents

    COVERFree manAfter serving a dozen years behind bars for a murder he may not have committed, 31 year-old Michael Hash is home with family as the law enforcement officials w...

News

Black and White

  • Move-in

    There are a vast number of residential properties around the former Martha Jefferson Hospital that were upzoned to B-1 during the time the medical center occupied the neig...