Virginia Festival of the Book 2014 - Stephen Jimenez

During a Virginia Festival of the Book panel on March 20 called "Shifting Identities" at the Jefferson Madison Regional Library in Charlottesville, investigative journalist Stephen Jimenez discussed his 2013 book, The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard.

In the book, Jimenez explores alternative explanations for the 1998 beating and murder of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard, which at the time was thought to be an unprovoked gay bashing and hate crime.

Shepard's murderers were convicted of second degree murder but not a hate crime. Jimenez looks into a seedy underworld connection between Shepard and one of his killers, Aaron McKinney. According to Jimenez, both Shepard and McKinney were involved in the crystal meth trade in Colorado and Wyoming.

Here is video of Jimenez's presentation and his answers to questions posed by audience members:

My post-panel interview with Jimenez can be read on Examiner.com.

The other participants in the "Shifting Identities" panel at the Central JMRL were Laura Krughoff, who read from her 2013 novel, My Brother's Name, and Ariel Gore, who discussed her memoir, The End of Eve, which was published just days earlier in March 2014.

To see previous posts about the Virginia Festival of the Book, look here.

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2013 Virginia Festival of the Book: Locavores

Two local authors spoke on March 21 at the Jefferson Madison Regional Library on the topic "Locavore: Hunting and Eating Locally."

Their discussion was part of the 19th Virginia Festival of the Book, which started Wednesday and ends Sunday.

The speakers were, according to the book festival's web site,

Pam Dawling, author of Sustainable Market Farming: Intensive Vegetable Production on a Few Acres, [who] also writes for Growing for Market magazine. For 20 years, she has grown vegetables at Twin Oaks Community in central Virginia, feeding a hundred people.

and

Jackson Landers, author of Eating Aliens and The Beginner's Guide to Hunting Deer for Food, [who] teaches hunting workshops across the U.S., has been featured in the Huffington Post and the New York Times, and is the subject of a documentary entitled Close to the Bone. He lives in Virginia.

The entire discussion was captured on video:

Dawling spoke first about gardening and growing vegetables in an economical, efficient, and sustainable fashion.

Landers followed, explaining how the "blood footprint" of hunting deer for food is smaller than the blood footprint of tofu, which, because it involves large-scale agriculture in the growing of soybeans, necessarily results in the deaths of many small animals -- something that vegans may want to think about the next time they fry up a tofuburger.

He also provided the audience with some entertaining stories of hunting pigeons in New York's Central Park and explained that all of the odd species he has killed and eaten "taste like chicken, beef, or pork."

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