Daren Wang’s debut novel makes it clear that the sin of slavery was never only a Southern thing. Wang will discuss The Hidden Light of Northern Fires at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on September 20 at 5:30 p.m., and at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 13-15.
Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America is an achievement, astonishing for its ingenious structure, breadth of research, wealth of anecdote, and engaging conversational voice. Kendi will appear at the Nashville Public Library on September 15 at 6:15 p.m.
In Forest Dark, Nicole Krauss tells parallel stories of American Jews who lose their ways and travel to Israel to re-discover life’s purpose. Nicole Krauss will appear at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 13-15.
In 1952, a Soviet geneticist named Dmitri Belyaev set out to create tame foxes, with dramatic success. In How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog), Belyaev’s colleague Lyudmila Trut and biologist Lee Alan Dugatkin give a detailed history of the now-famous Siberian fox study and explore its importance in solving a number of scientific mysteries. Dugatkin will appear at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 13-15.
In The Last Castle Denise Kiernan tells the story of George W. Vanderbilt, who hired famed architect Frederick Law Olmsted to build him the largest private residence in the U.S. Kiernan will discuss The Girls of Atomic City at the Grove Theater in Oak Ridge on September 15 at 6 p.m. as part of the city’s seventy-fifth anniversary celebration. She will discuss The Last Castle at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books, which will be held in Nashville October 13-15.
National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward will be in Nashville to talk about her third novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, in which a Mississippi family grapples with drugs, grief, and ghosts. She’ll appear at Parnassus Books on September 12 at 6:30 p.m.
