In Conversation with Kristin Bair
Tues, Mar 3, 2026 at 6:30 p.m.
Award-winning author Virginia Pye’s fifth novel MARRIAGE AND OTHER MONUMENTS is an ode to the city of Richmond, Virginia, her family’s home for many years. Set during the summer of 2020, as social justice protests and the removal of Confederate monuments rock Richmond, the marriages of two estranged sisters implode, eventually bringing them closer, while their husbands conspire in a reckoning their ancestors would never have dreamed of.
“Marriage and Other Monuments is a riveting contemporary narrative that intertwines suspenseful family drama, powerful themes of social justice, and a plot ripped soulfully from the headlines. Pye tells a story of race, marriage, and politics ideal for book club discussions and sure to satisfy readers of every stripe. —Bruce Holsinger, author of Culpability (Oprah’s Book Club pick)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Virginia Pye is the author of four previous award-winning books of fiction: two postcolonial historical novels set in China, River of Dust and Dreams of the Red Phoenix; the short story collection, Shelf Life of Happiness; and The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann, a love letter to writers and readers set in Gilded Age Boston. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Literary Hub, Publishers Weekly, Writer’s Digest and elsewhere. Virginia holds an MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College, and a BA from Wesleyan University. A Tin House Summer Workshop scholar, fellow at the Virginia Quarterly Review Conference, and a repeat fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Virginia has taught writing at New York University and the University of Pennsylvania, and, most recently, at Grub Street in Boston. She is Fiction Editor at the literary journal Pangyrus and serves on the board of the Women’s National Book Association, Boston Chapter. She and her husband lived in Richmond, Virginia for many years. They currently reside in Cambridge, Massachusetts.