“Publication” Class Notes

John K. Brown (Grad ’88, ’92 CM) has published Spanning the Gilded Age: James Eads and the Great Steel Bridge, the daring, improbable story of the construction of the St. Louis Bridge. Begun in 1867 and completed in 1874, it was the first structure of any kind—anywhere in the world—built of steel. Its three graceful arches broke world records for their span lengths; its stone foundations were the deepest yet constructed. It also the story of the career of Eads, one of the most influential engineers of the nineteenth century. Eads not only overcame the physical and technical challenges posed by construction of the bridge but employed equally imaginative design skills to finance the project.

Brown taught history, applied ethics and writing in the UVA School of Engineering’s Department of Engineering and Society from 1992 to 2015.

https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/12518/spanning-gilded-age

Brendan Gillen (Com ’06 CM) has published his debut novel, Static, released via Vine Leaves Press in July.

“A High Fidelity for our millennium…” — Dan LeRoy, author of Dancing to the Drum Machine: How Electronic Percussion Conquered the World and The Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique (33 1/3)

“Static is a heartfelt, moving debut about the downtown New York music scene.” — Elizabeth Gaffney, author of Metropolis and When the World was Young

“Static reverberates with the drumbeat of why we make art.” — Will Musgrove, author of Asphalt Dreaming

For Paul, stealing is easy. When he’s hungry, he strolls into a bodega and steals lunch. When rent’s due, he steals records and flips them for cash. As a lonely kid growing up in Ohio’s Rust Belt, stealing was the only way he could score the hip hop records and production equipment that fueled his musical dreams.

Now he’s in New York City fighting to keep his once-ascendant band alive and his life from falling apart. His bank account is flatlining. The love of his life has broken his heart. Bunky, his bandmate, is ditching him for Eloise, a soulful vagabond with an intoxicating voice. When financial trouble forces his parents from their lifelong home, Paul ramps up his stealing to save his family from collapse. And in a fever of creativity, he begins to steal from the voices in his life to make the music he’s sure will save his soul.

Set against the modern music industry, where a single social post can change your destiny, Static is alive to the weight of familial expectations, the pursuit of our deepest hopes and dreams, and the struggle to make meaningful connections in the anxiety of the digital age.

Originally from Charlottesville, Gillen is based in Brooklyn, New York and earned his M.F.A at City College. His fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions and appears in the Florida Review, Wigleaf, Necessary Fiction, Maudlin House, New Delta Review, Taco Bell Quarterly, and X-R-A-Y, among others. Static has earned coverage in Electric Lit, Write or Die, Full-Stop, and elsewhere. As an Emmy-winning writer/director in the film and advertising space, he has written and creative directed content for ESPN, Conde Nast, Fox Sports, US Open, Anheuser-Busch, Resy, and many other brands. You can find him online at bgillen.com and on Twitter/IG @beegillen.

Jordan Dotson (Col ’05) has published his debut novel, The Ballad of Falling Rock, a work of literary magical realism available on Sept. 24th from BHC Press:

Truth told, folks still ask if Saul Crabtree sold his soul for the perfect hymn. If he sold it to angels or devils. A Bristol newspaper once asked: “Are his love songs closer to heaven than dying?” Others wonder how he wrote a song so sad, everyone who heard it died of a broken heart.

Yet, more than anything else folks ponder in the town of Trinity, one question lingers: why did this angel-toned preacher’s son, just as his fame seemed ready to light the Appalachian nightsky forever, disappear completely?

In 1938, the decisions Saul makes will alter his family’s story for generations. He and his eerily talented descendants ignite religious fear throughout Red Pine County. They navigate chapels, decaying sanatoriums, high school hallways, and a lingering myth from their Cherokee heritage that follows them wherever they go.

In the end, however, it’s Saul’s precocious grandson, Eli, who must find answers to these heartbreaking questions, who must enter this world rich in music and voices, where people die to hear the unspoken, and salvation is only found in the not-yet sung.

Dotson was born and raised in Appalachian Virginia. After graduating from UVA, he moved to China to study classical poetry and folk music. Over fourteen years in Asia, he worked as a journalist, musician, and writing teacher, and eventually earned his MFA in Fiction from City University of Hong Kong. His lone co-written screenplay won the Jury Award in Narrative Shorts at more than thirty film festivals worldwide, and though he now teaches in Boston, Jordan still considers Southwest Virginia home.

The Ballad of Falling Rock is available wherever books are sold.

“This was the most beautiful story ever written about the saddest song ever sung. I was taken on a journey across generations where love, family and music, however complicated, overpowered all else. I am absolutely blown away…”

—@Kneecolereads

“Even in the novel’s darkest moments, Dotson’s sentences crackle on every page and are infused with a joy and love for the region and its people. This heartbreaking and tender debut is not to be missed.”

—Sybil Baker, author of Apparitions

“A fabulous, wild, and wonderfully spun tale that invites us to see ‘the world through a pool of tears,’ because everything’s ‘just a story in the end.’ A truly original debut, we look forward to much more from this powerful voice of a very talented writer.”

—Xu Xi, author of That Man In Our Lives

“Dotson’s way with words is absolutely breathtaking. I can hear the characters and feel the music. This is a must read book, without doubt.”

—Goodreads Reviewer

“This song of a novel is the perfect harmony of poetic prose and storytelling, as Saul Crabtree’s legacy unfolds across generations. With an ear for the language of Appalachia, and an eye for sensory and historical details, Dotson’s ‘Ballad’ echoes in the mind and on the heart long after the last song is sung.”

—Amy Clark Spain, author and co-editor of Talking Appalachian

Chanlee Luu (Engr ’17 CM) has published her debut poetry collection, The Machine Autocorrects Code to I, coming out on October 8, 2024.  It won the Washington Writers’ Publishing House 2024 Jean Feldman Poetry Prize. The book launch will be held at Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C. on October 13.

Luba Shur (Col ’93, Law ’96 CM) has authored a new novel, RULE 23, available for preorder on Amazon and Audible. Liar’s Poker meets Legally Blonde and The Devil Wears Prada in this buzzy satire that tells the tale of one of the greatest grifts enshrined as law. There’s a striving, young associate who’s the book’s antiheroine, a ruthless senior partner eager to exploit her ambition, and a legal system that enables their diabolical schemes like tracks enable a runaway train. Kiiri Sandy—who brought to brilliant life recent hits by David Baldacci, Ruth Reichl, and Maud Ventura—shines as the narrator.

Shur received a B.A. in economics and international relations from UVA and a J.D. from its School of Law, where she served on the Law Review and earned Order of the Coif honors. She launched her career as a two-time federal judicial law clerk and built her career in private practice, at two preeminent BigLaw firms, including tenure as an associate, a counsel, and an equity partner specializing in complex litigation and other dispute resolution. Following these positions, Luba worked as a media law attorney at a government agency and currently works as a broad-based in-house general counsel. She lives in the Washington, D.C. area along with two children, one husband, and zero dogs.

Charles (Tom) Blair (Col ’87, Law ’90 CM) is a contributing author in the volume of essays Lynching in Virginia: Racial Terror and Its Legacy.  Growing up in Rockingham County, Blair, who is an attorney in private practice in Washington, D.C., developed an abiding interest in Civil War and Reconstruction-era history.  Although not as associated with lynching as other southern states, Virginia has a tragically extensive history with these horrific crimes. This important volume examines the more than one hundred people who were lynched in Virginia between 1866 and 1932. Its diverse set of contributors—including scholars, journalists, activists, and students—recover this wider history of lynching in Virginia, interrogate its legacy, and spotlight contemporary efforts to commemorate the victims of racial terror across the commonwealth. Together, their essays represent a small part of the growing effort to come to terms with the role Virginia played in perpetuating America’s national shame.

Andrew G. Lee, M.D. (Col 85, Med 89 CM) published the second edition of his textbook, Emergencies in Neuro-ophthalmology. Dr. Lee served this year (2023-2024) as president of the Houston Ophthalmological Society and president of the Houston Neurological Society.

Steve McCullough (Col ’94 CM) recently published through LexisNexis a treatise on the Virginia Constitution entitled Virginia Constitutional Law.  McCullough has served as a Justice on the Supreme Court of Virginia since 2016.

Frank Garmon Jr. (Grad ’10, ’17) has published A Wonderful Career in Crime: Charles Cowlam’s Masquerades in the Civil War Era and Gilded Age, a book uncovering the shadow world of one of America’s most enigmatic and cunning criminals.

Charles Cowlam was in prison in Richmond, Virginia when the Civil War began. He was serving a ten-year sentence for mail robbery after he stole $4,000 from the mails while working as a post office clerk in Portsmouth. His trial took place on the second floor of the Norfolk City Hall, in what is now the MacArthur Memorial. Friends and family petitioned Abraham Lincoln on his behalf, noting that Cowlam was only nineteen years old when the thefts occurred. Lincoln agreed to pardon him on May 27, 1861.

Unfortunately for Cowlam the pardon from Lincoln arrived just over a month after Virginia had seceded from the Union. The governor of Virginia refused to recognize Lincoln’s authority, and Cowlam remained in prison for two more years until he convinced the President of the Confederate States, Jefferson Davis, to grant him a pardon.

Cowlam is the only person known to have received pardons from both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. He possessed an extraordinary ability to blend into new surroundings. He spent much of his life on the move, and he changed his name almost as frequently as he changed his story. One contemporary newspaper noted that Cowlam “has as many aliases as there are letters in the alphabet.”

When the war ended Cowlam conned his way into working as a detective investigating Lincoln’s assassination. He later parlayed this investigative experience into jobs with the Internal Revenue Service and for the British government in Ireland. In each case his employment as a detective was short lived, and his shady past always seemed to catch up with him.

Upon returning to the United States Cowlam set his sights on a political career. He convinced President Ulysses S. Grant to appoint him U.S. marshal for the northern district of Florida shortly after arriving in the state in 1872. Grant rescinded the appointment after nearly every local Republican wrote to Washington complaining that Cowlam was a fraud.

Cowlam then launched a congressional campaign on his own. He printed deceptive broadsides designed to trick voters into thinking that he had the support of a major party. Behind the scenes he worked to manipulate the selection of county election commissioners in a last-ditch effort to steal the election. The plan failed when Cowlam received only ninety-two votes across the state.

With his frauds in Florida exposed, Cowlam moved to New York where he started a fake secret society designed to appeal to urban workingmen. He spent his evenings flirting with wealthy eligible bachelorettes, neglecting to mention that he was already married. In short time he became a serial bigamist. The newspapers reported that Cowlam had married half a dozen women in a span of six month, each time disappearing with their money.

Cowlam left New York in the spring of 1874 and spent the next twelve years on the run. He reappeared in the summer of 1886 in Dayton, Ohio. This time he claimed to be a Union colonel who suffered from dementia. He could not remember his own name, where he had fought, or who he had served with, but he was certain that he was a Union colonel. The local papers described him as appearing “about forty years of age” with the initials “C.C.” tattooed on his forearm. After a three-month investigation the War Department discovered his true identity and revealed that he had never fought in the Union army.

Published by Louisian State University Press, A Wonderful Career in Crime sheds light on Cowlam’s remarkable exploits, a true story reminiscent of Catch Me If You Can. It is a must-read for anyone interested in deception, fraud, and ambition in American history.

Garmon Jr. is an assistant professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University.

Email: frank.garmon@cnu.edu

Justin Humphreys (Col ’01) wrote LIFE. Hollywood, a two-volume coffee table book set, which will be published by Taschen internationally this summer. LIFE. Hollywood is a collection of classic Hollywood photos from the archives of LIFE magazine with captions and linking essays by Humphreys.

Hayden Saunier (Col ’79 CM) has published her sixth collection of poetry, Wheel, out June 12 from Terrapin Books. Saunier’s work has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, Rattle Poetry Prize, Pablo Neruda Prize, and has been published in journals such as Beloit Poetry Journal, diode, Pedestal, Plume, RHR, Thrush, and VQR, and featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writers Almanac. 

About Wheel, John Timpane writes,

“It’s a tight collection governed by theme and voice, but also by powerful formal means, especially repeated music and imagery, marked out in something like sonata form by those four “Wheels,” as sameness, otherness, repetition, singularity, and how and why whirl and interequilibrate. Gorgeous. This is the work of a poet at full throttle, full voice, persuading us to join her, farmer, actress, wife, child, adult, past, present, desirer/desired, wonderer, as she stands in winter suit of hand-me-downs amid a storm of beauty, loss, and bright abundance, feet in rubber boots, wheeled round, firmly grounded in chastening, gladdening splendor.”

Sara Shukla (Col ’02, Educ ’06) has published her debut novel, Pink Whales, a story about marriage, secrets, escape, and deceptively tidy little lives. Sharp-witted and funny, it explores the complexities of a marriage amidst change, modern parenting, and the desire to fit in, no matter how old you are, and sometimes, no matter the cost.

Charlie is already feeling adrift when she relocates to an exclusive town in coastal New England with her mysteriously distant husband, Dev, and their young twins in tow. She hopes the move will recharge her stalled marriage, and she wants her kids to feel like they belong, even if she’s clearly a fish out of water herself. In a strange new world where summer is a verb and both the harbor and the partygoers are awash in a dizzying constellation of pinks and pastels, she’s never felt so confounded or alone. She’ll need more than a preppy handbook to find her way.

Then a trio of power moms―imposing, beautiful, and monogrammed―comes to the rescue, and Charlie clings to their attention like a life raft. As Dev pulls further away, Charlie dives into her newfound friends’ circle of yacht clubs, rivalries, and bizarre theme parties, hoping to find her sea legs. She even dares to cozy up to a hot, barefoot, and aggressively flirty local. But if she’s running from her problems at home, where exactly is she escaping to? Charlie is beginning to wonder. This ridiculous new normal―and her desire to be part of it―might just eat her alive.

Shukla is an editor for WBUR’s Cognoscenti, in Boston. You can find her writing at WBUR as well as the Los Angeles Review of Books, McSweeneys, and elsewhere. An alum of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator, she lives in Massachusetts with her family.

Published by Little A, Pink Whales is on sale June 4.

“A satisfying romp through a New England enclave that’s not nearly as idyllic as it seems.”

―Kirkus Reviews

 “My house is a mess and my laundry piled to the ceiling, and it’s all Sara Shukla’s fault! I couldn’t put it down. PINK WHALES lets you go places you’re not invited, drink more than you should, and escape to the beach on nearly every page—what’s not to like?”

―Christine Simon, author of Patron Saint of Second Chances

“Pink Whales is a deep and delightful modern rom-com full of meaningful twists on love, redemption, family, and the meaning of home. A perfect read for the beach…or the yacht club.”

―Byron Lane, author of A Star Is Bored and Big Gay Wedding

“Pink Whales is a can’t-miss coastal romp where Charlie navigates the choppy waters of her new preppy town on a quest to save her marriage and bring her family together. I loved every page. Shukla has a gift for writing humor that hits deep while also exposing truth and the raw emotion that makes the story both relatable and unforgettable.”

―Rachel Barenbaum, author of Atomic Anna and A Bend in the Stars

“Sara Shukla’s Pink Whales is an equal parts hilarious and heartfelt portrait of class anxiety and late coming of age. With her irresistible dialogue and perfectly skewered characters, Shukla swept me into the seaside town of Rumford and all its preppy, pesky privilege. I loved reading this utterly delightful debut!” ―Liv Stratman, author of Cheat Day