Karen Salyer McElmurray retraces her life’s journey in I Could Name God in Twelve Ways
Award-winning writer Karen Salyer McElmurray’s collection of essays, I Could Name God in Twelve Ways, is many things at once: memoir, travelogue, and prayer. McElmurray reflects on her upbringing in rural Kentucky, her adventurous youth traveling the world, and her career as a writer and professor.
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In Evil Eye, a young woman navigates cultural crossroads in search of herself
The protagonist of Etaf Rum’s second novel, Evil Eye, struggles to carve out a place in two worlds without losing what she loves. Rum will appear at the 2023 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 21-22.
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Kristine Potter’s photography goes deep
Nashville-based photographer Kristine Potter melds murder ballads with Southern landscapes in Dark Waters.
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A woman reckons with the past in Polly Stewart’s The Good Ones
Polly Stewart’s crime novel The Good Ones centers a young woman’s disappearance within an intricate web of mysteries and the expectations that define womanhood in the South. Stewart will discuss The Good Ones at Novel in Memphis on June 13.
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Making Our Future offers visionary folklore of Appalachia
In her book Making Our Future: Visionary Folklore and Everyday Culture in Appalachia, Emily Hilliard presents what she calls “visionary folklore,” sidestepping nostalgia in favor of a cooperative approach that catalogs traditions while seeking to identify and participate in new cultural practices. Hilliard will appear at Vinyl Tap in Nashville on January 21 and Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on January 22.
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Many voices harmonize in Paper Concert
Amy Wright’s Paper Concert: A Conversation in the Round compiles interviews with a variety of thinkers and artists who explore an array of topics from climate change to ketchup. Wright will deliver the Basler Chair Lecture at ETSU on March 28 and will appear at ETSU’s Bert C. Bach Written Word Initiative on April 12. She’ll also read at Knoxville’s Flying Anvil Theatre on April 10.
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