Richmond Public Library is proud to present our fifth annual Read Up Richmond event featuring award-winning author S.A. Cosby in conversation with Dale Brumfield, a longtime Virginia-based author and journalist. The discussion will be followed by an audience Q&A. Books will be available for purchase and signing at the event from Fountain Bookstore. The event will also be livestreamed via the Library's YouTube Channel.

In anticipation of the event, we'll be raffling off copies of Cosby's latest novel, All the Sinners Bleed. Each week, a reader from each branch will be chosen. Visit rvalibrary.org/read-up-richmond/ to enter for a chance to win and to register for the event.

S. A. Cosby is an Anthony Award-winning writer from Southeastern Virginia. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Razorblade Tears and Blacktop Wasteland, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, was a New York Times Notable Book, and was named a best book of the year by NPR, The Guardian, and Library Journal, among others. When not writing, he is an avid hiker and chess player.

Dale Brumfield is the author of twelve books. His latest is “Closing the Slaughterhouse: The Inside Story of Death Penalty Abolition in Virginia.” This follows “Railroaded: the true stories of the first 100 people executed in Virginia’s electric chair,” “Theme Park Babylon,” “Naked Savages,” both novels, and “Virginia State Penitentiary: A Notorious History,” about the iconic prison that sat in Richmond from 1800 to 1991. His other history books, “Richmond Independent Press” (2013) and “Independent Press in D.C and Virginia: An Underground History” (2015) chronicle the rise and fall of Virginia and D.C.’s underground and alternative press in the 1960s and ’70s. Both were nominated for Library of Virginia Literary Awards in nonfiction.

Read Up Richmond challenges people to read differently, to read outside one’s own lived experience to develop an understanding of the world. This program is an opportunity for people from different walks of life to come together in the library to learn together, to enter into a conversation with the larger community, and to share the same space, making Richmond a more connected, more civil place. This program is made possible through the generous support of the Richmond Public Library Foundation.