Bruce Holsinger
Bruce Holsinger, author of the national best-seller “Culpability,” is the guest speaker at a Sunday with Friends event, Sunday, Dec. 7, at 3 p.m. at the Washington County Public Library in Abingdon, Virginia.
“Culpability” was the Oprah Book Club pick for July 2025. “I was riveted until the very last shocking sentence,” Oprah Winfrey said. “Culpability” is possibly a near-future, possibly contemporary thriller, that begs to be discussed and dissected, set at the strange new place where artificial intelligence, responsibility and family loyalty and affection meet.
It is about a family on the way to the beach when their autonomous minivan strikes and kills an elderly couple. The thriller explores the issue of who — or what forces — are responsible for the accident. The reviewer for “Real Simple” says that it is “the most of-the-moment novel I’ve read all year, and it is the book of the summer.”
Holsinger is a professor of English at the University of Virginia and is the author of four other novels “The Displacements,” “The Gifted School,” “The Invention of Fire” and “A Burnable Book,” as well as works of nonfiction and many publications. He has been profiled on NPR’s Weekend Edition, Here & Now and Marketplace.
In his novels, Holsinger has been credited with creating his own subgenre of psychosocial thriller from the unique anxieties of our times. “Culpability” and his other novels explore our contemporary world shaped by artificial intelligence, chatbots, autonomous vehicles, drones and other non-human forces.
The event is free and open to the public. There are book sales and signings at the event.
