A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

Real Powers

In her latest novel, A Spell for Change, Nicole Jarvis writes about three young people in 1920 Appalachia who are blessed — or cursed — with magic. Jarvis will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 22.

Surviving Slavery

Inspired by his family’s history, former journalist Charles B. Fancher set his novel Red Clay on a fictional plantation called Road’s End as the Civil War comes to an end but the threat of violence still lurks.

God Is Change

In her essay collection about faith and science, World Without End, Martha Park identifies the uncanny overlaps between conflicting beliefs and gently prods at the heart of them. Park will discuss the book at Novel in Memphis on May 6.

Disaster-Colored Glasses

Making sense of the land mines of life is the theme of Nashville author Mary Laura Philpott’s memoir in essays, Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives. Philpott will appear with Margaret Renkl at a fundraiser for The Porch at Juniper Green in Nashville on May 2. 

A Necessary Political Act

Opinions is a collection of Roxane Gay’s best nonfiction pieces from the last decade, in which she blends the personal and the political in her unflinching prose, offering us her unique take on a wide array of topics. Gay will be a keynote speaker at Bookstock, held at the Benjamin L. Hooks Library in Memphis on May 3.

Normal Life Impossible

In her latest story collection, Hellions, Julia Elliott reimagines the grotesque on her own terms.

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