LITERARY NOTES Call to authors: RVA Booklovers’ Festival in May

Authors and literary crafters who want to mingle and get their word out can sign up for the third RVA Booklovers’ Festival, May 8.

The event — virtual this year — is a project of two Richmond indies, Brandylane Publishers and Fountain Bookstore. Sponsors too are encouraged to apply; go to www.rvabookloversfestival.com. For further details, 804-644-3090 or rvabookloversfestival@gmail. com. The festival, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., will be hosted on Hopin, so participants need access to high-speed internet.

Organizers call the festival “an opportunity for isolated, international writers and readers to come together, share ideas, and celebrate their love of the written word while connecting with the greater bookish community.” There will be kids’, poetry and main “stages” for readings, panel discussions and presentations.

Mark your calendar: Flannery O’Connor, 8 p.m. Tuesday on PBS. The “American Masters” documentary on this extraordinary Southern writer features new interviews with Hilton Als, Alice McDermott, Tommy Lee Jones, Mary Karr, Alice Walker, Tobias Wolff and others, as well as newly found personal letters by O’Connor. (Coming May 3: ”Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir.”)

Also, “Show and Grow Your Prose with Professional Critiques,” Thursday, with Michael Khandelwal and Lauran Strait, 6:30 to 7:45 p.m. via Zoom. Preregistration required; www.hamptonroadswriters.org.

Pandemic funding: Libraries will get $200 million in relief under President Biden’s American Rescue Plan. The National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities each will get $135 million to distribute to institutions, mostly through grant processes. (Publishers Weekly)

Awards: The Secret Lives of Church Ladies” by Deesha Philyaw,

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the 2021 Story Prize. The story collection was also a National Book Award finalist in fiction, and is a finalist for the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. This debut collection “revels in the beautiful mess of life, depicting generations of Black women navigating love, sex, death, family, and faith through the sanctuary and structures of the church,” wrote the National Book Award judges in their citation. (West Virginia University Press, 189 pp.)

Obituary notes: Walter LaFeber, an influential Cornell history professor and author of several books on foreign policy, was 87. ... Marianne Carus, an editor, publisher, education reformer and founder of the children’s magazine Cricket, was 92. (NYT, Publishers Weekly)