MAGAZINES & BOOKS




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The Best of RVA Magazine 2025

As we close out the year, here’s a look at some of the most impactful stories we published in 2025. Over the past year, we covered Richmond as a living system under pressure, focusing on the people, culture, and policies that shape daily life and determine who gets...

How a New Richmonder is Fostering Community Through Tiramisu

Editor’s note: Since this story was originally written, Alex Na hosted another free tiramisu drop over the weekend, continuing to build a following around his community dessert project. This feature was submitted by Jordan Smith, a journalism student at the Richard T....

Writer’s Block | On Our Backs in the Caribbean

Writer’s Block is RVA Magazine’s Sunday series highlighting contemporary writers working in Richmond and across the Commonwealth. We feature original poems, short stories, or essays. Just real voices writing right now. This week, we’re featuring a new story from...

Photo | What Suitcase Joe Found at Skid Row University

I hadn’t seen him in years. Then I caught his pop-up photo show in an alleyway gallery in Oregon Hill a few months back. The images were real life. Honest. Some of them tough to even look at. Street people, prostitutes, gang bangers, punks mid-fight, scenes in bars,...

The Bully.

Or The First Time I Learned How Fear Works Ed. note: This memory came back to me in the middle of the night, and it felt connected to the way fear shapes people and systems right now. It’s just a moment from childhood that suddenly made a lot more sense as an adult....

CONEX and the Strange New Gravity of Carver

The Carver neighborhood sits tucked between the highway and the downtown sprawl, close enough to reach everything and overlooked long enough to feel like its own island. So when CONEX appeared there a few weeks ago, rising out of a sunken concrete pit built from cargo...

Review | A Christmas Carol at Virginia Rep: Tradition Done Right

There’s something about the dead center of winter that brings out the best in humanity. It might be the desire to stay huddled around the fire, TV, or kitchen table, when your people begin to look more like fellow travelers in life rather than the people constantly...

Bibliophilia Finds The Comedic Potential of Romance Novels

Fallout's semi-regular event, Bibliophilia, seeks the humor in sex scenes from pulp romance novels and legendarily bad fanfic My Immortal. It's not too hard to find. Most comedy acts don’t include the phrases, “feeling his desire harden,” or, “spinning out the golden threads of their passion,” but Bibliophilia isn’t most comedy acts. Benjamin...

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RVA Comics X-Change: Issue 14

Happy Tuesday, comic fans! Welcome back to Comics X-Change, RVA Magazine’s go-to for comic news in a sparkly biweekly bow! We have a jam-packed special edition double issue for you today. This week we took a pit stop to hang out with our friends Alpha Comics and Games over in Willow Lawn -- not just to get caught up on the new releases we need to...

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‘Cosmic Librarians’: The Crystal Energy of the Aquarian Bookshop

“I’ll be right with you,” says Timothy Stewart, before padding off to excitedly explain a series of crystals to a customer. Crystals mean a lot to Stewart. He believes they are alive. He believes they have the ability to change your life. Stewart works the floor at the Aquarian, a bookshop skirting the very edge of the Fan. But only a corner of...

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RVA Comics X-Change: Issue 13

Welcome back, comic fans of the River City! Welcome to RVA Comic X-Change, Issue Lucky Number Thirteen! Only good things come in a baker’s dozen, and we’re just one of them. This week we’ve got a good handful of goodies just for you coming out in the next two weeks. We’ve got some feminism for you, some romance, and because I can not think about...

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RVA Comics X-Change: Issue 11

Good afternoon, comic book fans of the greater River City! Welcome back to another solid issue of RVA Mag’s Comics X-Change, where we take a look at the new comics you need to dive into on New Comic Book Day, and talk about the hottest topics in comics culture. This week we have two exciting things going on. We sat down with local comic book...

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Unraveling Academia With Queer Punk Feminist Julietta Singh

*This article originally appeared in RVA Mag #35, on the streets now at all your favorite spots. Author and academic Julietta Singh flunked out of college on her first try. Now almost 20 years later, she’s a tenured professor at the University of Richmond, and she’s authored two books -- both released in 2018. After spending over a decade in the...

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RVA Comics X-Change: Issue 10

Good afternoon, comics fans! Welcome to not only the first Comic X-Change issue of the new year, but the big whopper - Issue Number 10! For such a special issue, and to kick this brand new year off right, I decided to reach out to one of my very best comic friends and gurus, Kevin Smith of Third Eye Comics in Mechanicsville. This issue, we’ve got...

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RVA Comics X-Change: Issue 9

Good afternoon and happy holidays, comic fans! Welcome to that weird in-between week at the end of the holidays where up is down, left is right, DC is Marvel. I hope regardless of what you celebrate that you had a great holiday season, and I hope you got all of the comic goodness your nerdy little heart desired. I am filled with cheesecake and...

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RVA Comics X-Change: Issue 8

Good afternoon and happy holidays, comic fans! Welcome back to yet another issue of your favorite biweekly go to spot for comic and pop culture talk. If you’re like me you used Sunday’s Snowmageddon to hole up and catch up on the latest and greatest out there right now (and honestly, to rewatch the new Avengers trailer ad nauseum, which we will...

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