SunAh M Laybourn on her new book exploring Korean adoptee identity
SunAh M Laybourn’s Out of Place: The Lives of Korean Adoptee Immigrants provides both a glimpse into a complicated identity and a survey of the historical context surrounding it.
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The meaning of the Southern Festival of Books in a season of loss
We often conceive of loss only as a falling away, but it is also a binding. Think of the groups whose only purpose is to bring together people who have lost the same thing.
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Book Excerpt: Greetings from New Nashville
Greetings from New Nashville, an essay collection edited by Steve Haruch, will be published in October 2020. Contributors include Ann Patchett, Ben Folds, and Tiana Clark. Haruch is a writer and filmmaker whose work has appeared in the Nashville Scene, The New York Times, NPR’s Code Switch, The Guardian, and elsewhere. He is currently producing a documentary film about the history of college radio.
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Min Jin Lee discusses identity, diaspora, and resistance in her novel Pachinko
Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, a finalist for the National Book Award, follows a Korean family through four generations of migration, hardship, and survival, telling their interlocking stories in vivid detail.
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Colson Whitehead constructs an alternate route out of American slavery in The Underground Railroad
In Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, fugitive slaves are spirited away to freedom by an actual network of trains. The Underground Railroad is the 2018 Memphis Reads selection. Whitehead will discuss the novel at Christian Brothers University on September 5 and at Rhodes College on September 6. Both events are free and open to the public.
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Excerpt: People Only Die of Love in Movies: Film Writing by Jim Ridley
On March 28, 2016, Jim Ridley collapsed in his office at the Nashville Scene. His heart had failed. For days after his death, you could search the national trending topics on Twitter and find the name Jim Ridley there alongside the likes of Star Wars and Bruce Springsteen. In June 2018, Vanderbilt University Press will bring out a collection of Ridley’s film reviews edited by Steve Haruch.
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