Suny Monk, VCCA's Executive Director, and the Roanoke Regional Ambassadors are hosting a reception at the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University on November 19, 2009, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm, to honor Betty Branch and VCCA Fellows in the region. The event is being held in conjunction with the exhibition "Betty Branch, Through the Crow's Eye, a Retrospective". Come to celebrate these artists, writers and composers and to learn more about the role of the VCCA in the vital cultural fabric of the Roanoke Valley. There will be a presentation at 6:15 pm in the Frances J. Niederer Auditorium of the Richard T. Wetherill Visual Art Center, with presentations by visual artist Betty Branch, writer Cathryn Hankla, and composer Jonathan Romeo. Refreshments will be provided. Please join Suny and regional ambassadors Susan Jennings, Pat and Jim Kermes, Amy Moorefield, Brian Counihan, Eva and Cal deColigny, and Ed Dolinger.

2009 VCCA Fellows Reunion Saturday, November 14 7 p.m.-9 .m. Community Room at Westbeth 57 Bethune Street, New York, NY For more information and directions: http://www.vcca.com/NYreunion.html

VCCA Fellow Helen Benedict's fifth novel, The Edge of Eden , is out today from Soho Press. Inspired by her parents' anthropological field notes, the book is set in 1960, on the tropical Seychelles Islands, a thousand miles off the eastern coast of Africa. Benedict's lush descriptions of life on the islands are  firmly based in the realities of the time. The role of black magic in Seychelles culture, passed down from the country's past as a former slave colony, the decaying culture of British colonialism's last gasp -- these form the background of this witty, sharp and yet heartbreaking novel about a family unraveling and a child's desperate attempts to save it. For more information: www.helenbenedict.com