Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Susannah Felts

Quietly Determined

A young woman finds her way in Margot Livesey’s The Road from Belhaven

Margot Livesey’s The Road from Belhaven follows a gifted girl’s passage from child to adult. Livesey will appear at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.

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She’s on the Bird

Amy Tan turns her discerning eye to the avian world

With The Backyard Bird Chronicles, novelist Amy Tan has put fiction aside in favor of drawing, observing, and pondering the multitude of birds that find refuge and refreshment at her California home. Tan will discuss the book at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 10.

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Honoring Grief, History, and Family

Crystal Wilkinson on her new culinary memoir, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts

Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, a food memoir by former Kentucky Poet Laureate Crystal Wilkinson, offers a banquet of voices, memories, imagination, and archival photographs. Wilkinson will appear at The Bookshop in Nashville on February 2 and Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on February 3.

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Growing Wilder by the Day

Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds is a tale of horror and beauty

In her breathtaking seventh book, The Vaster Wilds, Lauren Groff tells the story of a young servant girl on the run in the 17th-century New World wilderness. Groff will discuss the book at Parnassus Books in Nashville on September 14 and the East Tennessee History Center in Knoxville on September 15.

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A Happy Marriage of Flavors

Chef Vishwesh Bhatt expands the Southern culinary repertoire

With I Am From Here, chef Vishwesh Bhatt breaks new ground in the “Southern cookbook” genre. Bhatt will appear at a ticketed event held at Restaurant Iris in Memphis on June 16.

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A Story of Women and Power

Toil and Trouble surveys witchy history

In Toil and Trouble: A Women’s History of the Occult, Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson profile religious leaders, entertainers, psychic mediums, healers, activists, and more, from Puritan New England to the witch-friendly grounds of social media today.

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