One day, a young Alabama farm boy named Charlie wakes up to a changed reality: the sudden, violent appearance of a volcano in his family’s cow pasture. This perplexing event reshapes all of their lives. Bradley Sides will discuss The Volcano Keeper at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 17-18, at Novel in Memphis on October 22, and at The Book & Cover in Chattanooga on November 3.
Lydia Mathis’ debut story collection, Desperate Bodies, lives at the perilous fault lines of contemporary girls’ and women’s lives, particularly those of Black girls and women. Mathis will discuss Desperate Bodies at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 17-18.
A Buyer’s Guide to the Afterlife, the new poetry collection from Knoxville writer Erica Wright, chronicles the restless search for orientation in a world that seems unmoored, half-familiar, and utterly foreign.
Three recent poetry collections — Ian Hall’s Creekwater Mansions, Gaylord Brewer’s Goodbye, Baby, and Rachel Landrum Crumble’s In Praise of Detours — give voice to times of turbulence and upheaval.
The world depicted in Patrick Strickland’s debut story collection, A History of Heartache, is thick with undercurrents of personal violence, addiction, cynicism, and economic instability. Strickland’s stories persistently braid these elements together as they work to generate the stories’ thematic power.
Nashville poet Donovan McAbee’s first full-length collection, Holy the Body, brims with depictions of the spiritual life that refuse dogma or sentimental cliché. McAbee will discuss Holy the Body at a book launch event at Woodmont Christian Church in Nashville on March 24, with featured guests including Ciona Rouse, Thomm Jutz, Mark Jarman, and Mary Gauthier.
