All events are free to attend unless otherwise stated! Please give us a call if you have any questions or concerns, or if you would like to order one of the featured books for pick-up. For regular updates on Bards Alley events and book clubs, subscribe to our weekly newsletter at the bottom of this page!

Lead the Way Organics
A Tea Cart Pop-Up
Saturday, June 13, 2:00pm - 4:00pm
@ 103 Church St. NE, Vienna, VA: Bards Alley's Future Home

Laura, owner of Lead the Way Organics, is having a pop-up at Bards Alley's future home at 103 Church St. NE with her new tea cart, the Lead the Way Tea Experience! She will serve teas, wellness blends, and more during the afternoon, and Bards Alley's owner Jen will be there to chat with folks and debuting a way to support Bards Alley's move.

The Lead the Way Tea Experience is the newest way to elevate your next gathering and can pop-up at community events including bridal showers, weddings, corporate events, wellness retreats, or other intimate celebrations and more! Fully customizable, they offer features like organic tea service, functional wellness blends, local honey pairings, floral-inspired displays, custom favors and gifting, seasonal and themed tea experiences, and champagne and wine pairings! Chat with Laura while you're there to see if it may be a good fit for you and your events!

National Audiobook Month:
Bards Alley's Audiobook Walk
Saturday, June 13, 4:00pm
@ 103 Church St. NE, Vienna, VA: Bards Alley's Future Home

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After you check out the Lead the Way Organics Tea Experience, join us for an audiobook walk beginning at 4PM from Bards Alley's future home at 103 Church St. NE. Jen will be leading folks on a ~1.5mi stroll around Vienna, finishing up at Bards Alley.

While the walk is free to attend, we do request that you snag a free ticket! The first 10 participants to register online and attend the walk will receive a free audiobook credit from Libro.fm, an audiobook alternative that supports Bards Alley and other independent bookstores! Please register at bardsalley.square.site or through the button above.

We ask that you meet at the starting location by 4PM, wear comfortable clothes, bring headphones, and bring a filled water bottle. We will keep an eye on the weather, but the walk is rain or shine barring extreme weather. If we need to cancel or reschedule, those who registered via our Square site will receive an email.

Melanie McCabe: Road Longer Than Memory
Saturday, June 13, 2:00pm - 3:00pm
@ Mary Riley Styles Public Library, 120 N. Virginia Ave., Falls Church, VA

Join us at Mary Riley Styles Public Library for an event with local author and poet Melanie McCabe for her brand new release Road Longer Than Memory. Bards Alley will be on site selling copies of the book, and a book signing will follow her talk.

Set against the backdrop of suburban upheaval in the 1970s and '80s, Road Longer Than Memory is a compelling story of memory, reckoning, and the cost of what we leave unsaid. To acquaint people with the I-66 protests and controversy that serve as background for the novel, Melanie will share a short video about that time period of Arlington history and its effect on her own life.

About ROAD LONGER THAN MEMORY: After a failed relationship and an unsettled teaching career, Sara Barlow returns to her childhood home in Arlington, Virginia, hoping for a fresh start. But when she applies for a job at her old high school, a chance glimpse into the gymnasium shakes her to the core—she spots the man she suspects was involved in a classmate’s violent death a decade earlier.

Haunted by the past, Sara confronts the memories she’s spent years trying to suppress: her sister Suzanne’s fatal car crash, her secret summer with the reckless Devlin Barrie, and the anonymous 911 call she made after witnessing what she believes was a murder. As the construction of Interstate 66 physically fractures her community, Sara grapples with emotional fault lines of her own—guilt, silence, and buried truth.

About the author: Melanie McCabe is the award-winning author of four poetry collections and a memoir. Road Longer Than Memory is her debut novel. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Reader’s Digest, The Georgia Review, The Massachusetts Review, Shenandoah, and other national publications. A lifelong Virginian, she taught high school English and creative writing in Arlington for over two decades.

Queerly Written: an LGBTQ+ Author Panel
Tuesday, June 16, 6:00pm - 8:00pm
@ Reston Regional Library, 11925 Bowman Towne Dr., Reston, VA

In celebration of pride month, join us for an #OwnVoices panel discussion at Reston Regional Library with award-nominated and award-winning queer authors.  Authors speaking include Dominique Dickey, Susie Dumond, Steven Gellman, Salinee Goldenberg, Venessa Vida Kelley and Andrew Joseph White.

The authors will be in conversation with a moderator and will be answering audience questions at the end of their discussion. A book signing will follow the talk and copies of all of the authors' books will be available for purchase on-site from Bards Alley. ​Casa BruMar Foundation, a non-for-profit providing support to Virginia LGBTQ+ youth and adults, will be in attendance with a table to provide community information.

Registration is required for this event! Please register with the library through the link below.

​Vienna250 & Bards Alley Author Series:
Gayle Jessup White: Reclamation
Saturday, June 20, 2:00PM - 3:00PM
@ Vienna Community Center, 120 Cherry St. SE, Vienna, VA

Join us for a celebratory Vienna250 event with Gayle Jessup White! To wrap up our author series, she will discuss Reclamation: Sally Hemmings, Thomas Jefferson, and a Descendant's Search for Her Family's Lasting Legacy, a memoir reckoning with the ways slavery shaped both her family and her country.

Bards Alley will have copies of Jessup White's book available for sale and a signing after her talk. If you would like to reserve a copy for pick-up at the store or at the event, call us at (571) 459-2653.

About RECLAMATION: Gayle Jessup White had long heard the stories passed down from her father’s family, that they were direct descendants of Thomas Jefferson—lore she firmly believed, though others did not. For four decades the acclaimed journalist and genealogy enthusiast researched her connection to Thomas Jefferson, to confirm its truth once and for all.

After she was named a Jefferson Studies Fellow, Jessup White discovered her family lore was correct. Poring through photos and documents and pursuing DNA evidence, she learned that not only was she a descendant of Jefferson on his father’s side; she was also the great-great-great-granddaughter of Peter Hemings, Sally Hemings’s brother.

In Reclamation, she chronicles her remarkable journey to definitively understand her heritage and reclaim it, and offers a compelling portrait of what it means to be a black woman in America, to pursue the American dream, to reconcile the legacy of racism, and to ensure the nation lives up to the ideals advocated by her legendary ancestor.

About the author: Gayle Jessup White is the Public Relations & Community Engagement Officer at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s legendary estate. A former award-winning television reporter and anchor, Jessup White started her career at the New York Times. She’s written and spoken extensively about her work at Monticello. She is a direct Jefferson descendant, and is also related to two well-documented families enslaved at Monticello—the Hemingses and the Hubbards. She lives in Virginia.

Ray Nayler: Palaces of the Crow
Sunday, July 5, 5:00pm - 6:00pm
​@ Bards Alley, 110 Church St. NW, Vienna, VA

Join us at Bards Alley for an event with sci-fi writer Ray Nayler, the Locus- and Hugo-winning author of The Mountain in the Sea (also a Nebula & Bradbury Prize finalist) and The Tusks of Extinction. He will be in conversation with Bards Alley Sci-Fi/Fantasy Book Club leader Brent Cassell to discuss his brand new release Palaces of the Crow.

In Ray Nayler’s speculative novel of the recent past, four young teens caught between Nazis and the Red Army survive winter in the woods with the help of a flock of highly intelligent crows with a magnificent secret of their own to protect.

Palaces of the Crow and Nayler's backlist will be available for purchase during the event, and a signing will follow their discussion. Registration is required.

About PALACES OF THE CROW: Neriya, a young Jewish girl who dreams of becoming a biologist, has befriended a local flock of crows in her shtetl. Czeslaw is an underage Polish soldier who deserts the Red Army and runs into the freezing Lithuanian woods. Kezia is a Roma horse trader whose family is on the run from Soviet collectivization. As the German blitzkrieg crashes across the border in June 1941, all three are caught up in the onslaught. Along with Innokentiy, an abandoned boy who cannot speak, they are driven into the primeval forest, where they survive by forming an unbreakable bond with one another—and with Neriya’s intelligent crows, who for years have been bringing her intricate gifts suggesting they are no ordinary corvids.

As the war goes on, the crows warn the children of danger and help them hide from the human threats of the forest—not only the Germans but also Russian deserters, Polish partisans, fascist Lithuanian police, and the other bandits and outcasts wandering the benighted landscape.

From the Ray Bradbury Prize and Arthur C. Clarke Award finalist, and Hugo and Locus Award winner, Ray Nayler, Palaces of the Crow blends history and haunting speculative wonder into a story of survival, loyalty and the fragile beauty of life in the darkest of times.

About the author: Ray Nayler is the author of the Locus Award-winning novel The Mountain in the Sea and the Hugo Award-winning novella The Tusks of Extinction. Born in Quebec and raised in California, Ray lived and worked abroad for two decades in Russia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Balkans. Ray most recently served as international advisor to the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and as visiting scholar at the George Washington University's Institute for International Science and Technology Policy. He lives in Washington, DC.

Jared Peatman: A Hell of a Regiment
A Falls Church250 event
Tuesday, July 7, 6:30pm - 7:30pm
@ Mary Riley Styles Public Library, 120 N. Virginia Ave., Falls Church, VA

Join us at Mary Riley Styles Public Library for an event with local author Jared Peatman for his brand new non-fiction release A Hell of a Regiment: To Gettysburg and Beyond with the Twentieth Maine, an account of one of the defining moments in American history. Bards Alley will be on site selling copies of the book, and a book signing will follow his talk.

About A HELL OF A REGIMENT: The 20th Maine needs no introduction. One of the most famous units of not only the Civil War, but all of American military history, the regiment earned its reputation in one of the country’s most celebrated clashes of arms: the defense of Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg, under the command of the legendary Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Drawing on previously unknown or inaccessible sources, A Hell of a Regiment is the first major account of the 20th’s stand at Gettysburg in more than three decades, a fresh telling for a new era.

With an eye and ear for the excitement and horror of Civil War combat, Jared Peatman evocatively reconstructs the 20th Maine’s stand on Little Round Top, shedding new light on the battle and explaining just how a ragtag group of soldiers, led by a colonel trained in rhetoric and religion instead of military drill and tactics, became an effective fighting force. More than just an account of a single regiment during its finest hour, this is the story of the Union soldier’s experience in the Civil War battlefield.

About the author: Jared Peatman is senior fellow at the Center for Excellence in Public Leadership at George Washington University, director of curriculum at the Lincoln Leadership Institute at Gettysburg, where he provides history-based leadership training, and a member of the board of directors of the Civil War Roundtable Congress.  He is the author of The Long Shadow of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (Southern Illinois University Press, 2013). Peatman lives near Washington, DC.