LIST: 4 Richmond authors to consider reading for National Book Lovers Day

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — In honor of Friday being National Book Lovers Day, here’s four famous Richmond authors you may consider giving a read.

The Virginia Tourism Corporation hosts a list of writers, journalists and artists with roots in Virginia.

Considering National Book Lovers Day is Friday, Aug. 9, let’s celebrate by learning a little bit about four of the Richmond writers on the corporation’s list.

David Baldacci

David Baldacci, a Richmond novelist with a focus on crime and mystery, is a Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) alum . His love for the university means he maintains ties with it to this day.

“It’s always been a special place for me,” Baldacci said in a VCU news article in 2019, when he had been selected as the university’s fall commencement speaker. “For students like me with a working-class mentality, it’s so great to go to a place that embraces you for that.”

Baldacci has written dozens upon dozens of books . His first, “Absolute Power,” was published in 1996. Other titles include “Memory Man,” “The Innocent” and “Zero Day.” His books have been published in over 45 languages and in more than 80 countries. According to his website, he’s sold 150 million copies worldwide.

His newest book, “To Die For” — an installment in Baldacci’s “6:20 Man” thriller series — is scheduled to release in November.

Baldacci is also the founder of the nonprofit Wish You Well Foundation, which supports family and adult literacy programs across the United States.

James Branch Cabell

James Branch Cabell, a fiction writer who lived during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was so influential that he had a VCU library named after him .

Born in 1879, Cabell is considered a “forerunner of American fantasy fiction.” He published over 52 titles during his lifetime, including the controversial “Jurgen.”

“Much like his friend and fellow Richmond author Ellen Glasgow (1873-1945), Cabell was quick to point out the hypocrisy of the South through satire,” said VCU Libraries of Cabell’s writing. “His medieval romanticism and fantasy, which combined many classic mythologies in a fantasy world Cabell called Poictesme (pwa-tem), were in fact thinly disguised commentary on the manners of those times.”

VCU has a website dedicated to the author, which includes a page titled “The Quotable Cabell,” which is a catalog of various quotes from Cabell and his works.

“The religion of Hell is patriotism, and the government is an enlightened democracy,” one of those quotes — reportedly from “Jurgen” — reads.

Ellen Glasgow

Like Cabell, Ellen Glasgow was a fiction writer who published many works at the turn of the 20th century. This Pulitzer Prize-winning author was born in 1873 and, when she wasn’t writing best-selling novels, she was advocating for women’s suffrage.

“In an interview with a New York Times reporter, Glasgow explained that ‘opposition to suffrage, in this country at least, is all emotional …. In fact, there is not a single valid reason that I have ever heard against giving votes to women,'” the Library of Virginia wrote about Glasglow’s advocacy. “Indeed, she argued that ‘women of the South are probably more fitted for the ballot than any other American women’ and described the right to vote as one part of a larger feminist movement that offered women equality of opportunity.”

Some of Glasglow’s most popular titles include “Barren Ground,” “Vein of Iron” and “The Sheltered Life” — the last of which the Library of Virginia describes as “her finest work.” The trilogy of novels that title was a part of explored the “decay of southern aristocracy and the trauma of the instruction of modern industrialism.”

Her Pulitzer Prize was awarded to her final novel, “In This Our Life,” which she published in 1941. She was laid to rest in Hollywood Cemetary, where you can visit her grave .

Tom Wolfe

Tom Wolfe was a Richmond novelist and journalist born in 1931. His journalistic career history includes working for the Springfield Union in Massachusets, the Washington Post, the New York Herald-Tribune, Esquire and more.

Wolfe is credited with being a leader in a movement called the “New Journalism,” which involved experimenting with interviewing using fiction techniques.

“He prepared for his articles and books by spending an intense period of time studying and interviewing his subjects, and then wrote about them from multiple points of view and in vibrant language,” said the Chicago Public Library Foundation of “New Journalism” and how Wolfe practiced it. “Unlike the standard journalism of the time, with its formal interviews and tidying-up of private details, this new approach opened up the hidden worlds of its subjects, allowing readers to experience them first-hand.”

As a novelist, he published several books, including “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby,” “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” and “The Right Stuff” — the last of which was an award-winning written about the Apollo space missions.

“As he interviewed the astronauts, Wolfe became fascinated with their bravery and the insider language they used to talk to one another,” the Chicago Public Library Foundation said.

His fiction titles include “Bonfire of the Vanities,” “A Man in Full” and “Back to Blood.”

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