Amy Hempel’s fiction offers up an almost musical experience, one where rhythm and pulse seem to affect the reader in tandem with the goings-on of the story itself. Hempel will give a free public reading at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on April 19.
In An Unseen Light: Black Struggles for Freedom in Memphis, Tennessee, a collection of scholarly essays, editors Aram Goudsouzian and Charles W. McKinney Jr. look at the Bluff City from emancipation through the turbulent 1960s and into the present. They will discuss An Unseen Light at two Memphis events: at the National Civil Rights Museum on April 17 and Novel on May 15.
In The Fighter, Michael Farris Smith’s latest tale of human struggle in the Mississippi Delta, brawler Jack Boucher is drowning in debt, dodging enemies, and losing the battle against his own fractured memory. Smith will appear at Novel in Memphis on April 16, and at Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 17.
Through a tale of skydiving, Tracy Barrett’s new YA novel, Freefall Summer, explores the ins and outs of growing up. Barrett will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 14.
Madeline Miller, author of The Song of Achilles, is back with Circe, another brilliant revamp of tales and characters drawn from Homeric poetry. Miller will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 11.
Ostensibly the story of a kidnapping, Leah Stewart’s clever new novel, What You Don’t Know About Charlie Outlaw, is also an examination of the cult of celebrity. Stewart, a Vanderbilt graduate, will appear at Novel in Memphis on April 11 and at Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 13.
