Eckles Library Plans Two Campus Read Events

Get a free book, eat some pizza and snacks, and listen to Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Edward P. Jones read from his new novel, The Known World.

On Thursday January 22, from 5 to 6 pm, Eckles Library (on the Mt. Vernon campus) will be having A Novel Happy Hour, at which will be given away pizza and up to 100 copies of Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Edward P. Jones's The Known World. Both the pizza and the book will be free.

Next week, on Thursday, January 29, Mt. Vernon residents can gather at Eckles Library at 3:30 in preparation for a trip to to Morton Auditorium to hear Mr. Jones read from his novel. Free snacks will be provided.

According to the publisher: The Known World "tells the story of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave who falls under the tutelage of William Robbins, the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. Making certain he never circumvents the law, Townsend runs his affairs with unusual discipline. But when death takes him unexpectedly, his widow, Caldonia, can't uphold the estate's order and chaos ensues. In a daring and ambitious novel, Jones has woven a footnote of history into an epic that takes an unflinching look at slavery in all of its moral complexities."

Hear what Jones has to say about why he wrote The Known World