Join us for an evening with Duston Spear, who will read from her debut novel, Bird Girl. A conversation with Liza Nash Taylor will follow. This in-person event will be free and open to the public. We recommend arriving early for the best seating.
About the Book: Bird Girl follows Rebekah Hunnicutt, a reclusive painter whose seven monumental canvases are discovered after a popular podcast drops the story of her notorious boyfriend, a celebrated artist from New York’s Soho art scene of the 1970s. As listeners become captivated by the tale, attention shifts from the man who made headlines to the woman who disappeared from view. Moving between past and present, the novel explores ambition, friendship, betrayal, and the complicated choices women artists make while seeking recognition in a male-dominated culture. Drawing on Duston Spear’s own experiences in Soho, Bird Girl blends art history, feminism, and mystery.
About the Author: Duston Spear was born in Richmond, Virginia, and moved to New York to attend Parsons School of Design. Her debut novel, Bird Girl (Black Rose Writing, 2026), draws on her years in Soho, where she lived and worked as a young artist in New York’s downtown art scene of the 1970s. A painter, writer, and interdisciplinary artist, Spear has received awards from Creative Time and Art Matters. For more than twenty years, she taught art and writing in a college program inside a maximum-security prison. The Bird Girl book tour will culminate with Artist Interrupted, a site-specific installation at Red Giant Gallery in Baltimore.
About the Moderator: Liza Nash Taylor is the author of two recent historical novels: Etiquette for Runaways (2020) and In All Good Faith (2021), both from Blackstone Publishing. She was a 2018 Hawthornden International Fellow and received an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts the same year. Her work has appeared in Gargoyle Magazine, Deep South, and others. A native Virginian, Liza lives with her husband and dogs in an old farmhouse in Keswick, which serves as a setting for her novels.
Bird Girl will be released on August 6. To order the book, please see below for the New Dominion Bookshop book order form or call the shop at 434-295-2552.
"In her debut novel, Duston Spear brilliantly captures the ambiance and culture of Soho in its artistic prime, evoking the gender gaps and preening personalities in ways that are both insightful and funny."
—Porter Aichele
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