"Come seeking or offering ‘relief’ as we stroll along the turning shade and celebrate Shade is a place!” - MaKshya Tolbert
Join us on Tuesday, November 4 to celebrate the release of Shade is a place, the debut book by 2023 New city Artist-in-Residence and 2024 National Poetry Series winner, MaKshya Tolbert. Beginning with a shade walk led by MaKshya along Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall, attendees will arrive at New City Arts’ Welcome Gallery for refreshments, an artist talk, and the opportunity to buy signed copies of Shade is a place. This free, public reception is generously supported by Lisa M. Draine, Petite MarieBette, and Market Street Wine.
4:45PM: Join MaKshya at the Chalk Wall for a Shade Walk along the Downtown Mall, ending at Welcome Gallery.
5PM: Can’t join the walk? The gallery will be open for book sales and mingling.
6PM: Hear MaKshya share about Shade is a place during a brief artist talk.
→ We’ll be serving refreshments—including Petite MarieBette treats and wines selected by Market Street Wine—and selling signed books + broadsides from 5-7PM.
About MaKshya Tolbert
MaKshya Tolbert practices poetry and placemaking in Virginia, where her grandmother raised her. Her recent poetry and prose can be found at Poem-a-Day, Poets for Science, Emergence Magazine, West Branch, Ran Off With the Star Bassoon, and elsewhere. She has received recent fellowships from Cave Canem, New City Arts, Art-in-Library Spaces at the University of Virginia, and Community of Writers. Currently, MaKshya co-stewards Fernland Studios, an open-ended studio insistent on rest, rejuvenation, and reciprocity. Shade is a place is MaKshya’s first book. In her free time, she is elsewhere.
MaKshya was the Spring 2023 New City Artist-in-Residence. During their Research Residency, MaKshya wrote and embodied a long poem anchored in shade, shared livability, and black ecological loneliness as entangled beneath Charlottesville’s rapidly changing urban tree canopy. Meanwhile, Makshya self-apprenticed to coiling clay, shaping tree trunks in the wake of imminent and intimate climate transition – past, present, and unfolding.
