To celebrate April as Poetry Month, please join us online for a talk by poet, literary historian, and editor Kim Roberts on her book By Broad Potomac’s Shore: Great Poems from the Early Days of Our Nation’s Capital. This comprehensive anthology features poems by both well-known and overlooked poets working and living in the capital from the city's founding in 1800 to 1930. Roberts expertly presents the work of 132 poets, including poems by celebrated DC writers such as Francis Scott Key, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Ambrose Bierce, Henry Adams, and James Weldon Johnson, as well as the work of lesser-known poets—especially women, writers of color, and working-class writers. A significant number of the poems are by writers who were born enslaved, such as Fanny Jackson Coppin, T. Thomas Fortune, and John Sella Martin.
The Carole Weinstein Author Series supports the literary arts by bringing both new and well-known authors to the Library of Virginia through online or in-person events. Free and open to the public, the series focuses on Virginia authors and Virginia subjects across all genres. This book will be available for pre-order soon from the Virginia Shop. For more information, contact Dawn Greggs at 804.692.3813 or dawn.greggs@lva.virginia.gov.
