This event will take place off-site at The Bridge PAI (209 Monticello Road).
Journalist Earl Swift will discuss and read from his new book about Tangier Island, in conversation with Virginia Humanities’s Sarah McConnell, host of the award-winning radio program With Good Reason. This free event is in partnership with Virginia Humanities and The Bridge PAI.
Described as “a brilliant, soulful, and timely portrait of a two-hundred-year-old crabbing community in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay as it faces extinction,” Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island is the culmination of Swift’s multi-year fellowship at Virginia Humanities. His time on Tangier was featured in Outside Magazine and Garden & Gun. He has written about the Chesapeake region for thirty years and even circumnavigated the Chesapeake Bay by kayak.
Prior to the live discussion, from 6-7 PM, guests can secure their seat and purchase refreshments while mingling with panelists and enjoying a demonstration of Encyclopedia Virginia‘s virtual tour of Tangier Island led by Virginia Humanities’s Peter Hedlund. Book sales will be provided by New Dominion Bookshop.
Seating for this outdoor program is limited; please bring a lawn chair to ensure a seat, as well as your curiosity and appetite for great stories and Chesapeake crab.
Guests are asked to register for this free event to receive updates and rain location information.
"WONDERFUL, POETIC, STIRRING. An elegy to a disappearing way of life."
Callum Roberts
Earl Swift began writing for a living in his teens. In the years since, the Virginia-based journalist has penned seven books and hundreds of major features for newspapers and magazines, and has earned a reputation for fast-moving narrative and scrupulous reporting. His editors have nominated his work for the National Book Award, the National Magazine Award, and six times for a Pulitzer Prize. A former Fulbright fellow in New Zealand, Swift is currently a residential fellow of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
Sarah McConnell began her career as a reporter with Charlottesville, VA’s WINA 1070 AM. After twenty years as WINA’s News Director, she became host of With Good Reason in 2002. Sarah continues to train upcoming journalists as part of the Board of Directors for WUVA.