Join us at 7:00 PM on May 20 at New Dominion Bookshop (404 E. Main St.) for the May Charlottesville Reading Series event, featuring poet Abdul Ali, writer Erin O’Hare, and musician Nathaniel Star. This in-person event will be free and open to the public. We recommend arriving early for the best seating.

Abdul Ali is the author of Trouble Sleeping, his debut collection of poems that won the 2014 New Issues Poetry Book Prize, and is the current editor-at-large of Pleiades. He has held distinguished teaching appointments at Johns Hopkins University, Goucher College, and Howard University. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, the Robert Deutsch Foundation, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He has published his poems in numerous journals and publications, including Copper Nickel, Plume, and Transition. Ali lives and creates in Baltimore, MD, where he is the cofounder of Thrive Arts. His website is abdulali.net.

Erin O’Hare is a journalist and radio DJ based in Charlottesville. She is the neighborhoods reporter for Charlottesville Tomorrow and prior to that, she reported on arts and culture for C-VILLE Weekly for nearly five years. She regularly contributes to the Celluloid Lunch zine, and her writing has been featured in Maximumrocknroll, Women in Sound, Bandcamp Daily, The Australian, and elsewhere. She hosts “Ye Olde Tuesday Afternoon Rocke Show” and “Black Circle Revolution” on WTJU 91.1 FM and plays bass in a post-punk/jangly dream pop band called Films On Song.

Nathaniel Star breathes music. His performance and writing credits feature some of the most respected names in the music industry, from regional stars to a Grammy Award–winning artist.