Nation on the Take by Wendell Potter and Nick Penniman explains how the wealthy control Washington
March 30, 2016 In Nation on the Take, investigative journalists Wendell Potter and Nick Penniman make an overwhelming case that money is polluting government and buying not just influence but legislation favorable to, and sometimes written by, special interests.
Colin Dayan considers the human-canine bond in With Dogs at the Edge of Life
March 29, 2016 Written from a perspective shaped by a passionate, unorthodox sympathy for dogs, Vanderbilt University professor Colin Dayan’s With Dogs at the Edge of Life explores the troubling contradictions in the human-canine relationship.
With Hide, Matthew Griffin has written a love story for the ages
March 23, 2016 Matthew Griffin’s debut novel comes to us at a pivot point in our national history. But Hide can’t be reduced to a social-justice tale, or one of love between gay men. It’s a story about the kind of love, gay or straight, that endures beyond youth, strength, and memory. Griffin will appear at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on March 30, 2016, at 6 p.m.
In fiction and essays, Julian Barnes proves that truth is multiple
March 21, 2016 Reading Julian Barnes is a paradoxical pleasure: the author makes clear, in book after book, that literature provides no reassurances, no uncanny access to wisdom or happiness, no affirmation to troubled readers—and yet the experience of reading his work is strangely comforting. Now seventy, Barnes keeps exploring profound questions and continues to produce brilliantly conflicting answers. He will give a free public reading at Vanderbilt University’s Ingram Hall in Nashville on March 23, 2016, at 6:30 p.m.
In her latest poetry collection, Darnell Arnoult addresses aging with candid humor and moving insight
March 18, 2016 In her new poetry collection, Galaxie Wagon, Darnell Arnoult addresses aging with enviable humor and wisdom. She will read from her work at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on March 24, 2016, at 6 p.m.
In My Father, the Pornographer, acclaimed novelist Chris Offutt confesses a dubious legacy
March 17, 2016 Chris Offutt’s father, science-fiction writer Andrew J. Offutt, died in 2013. His eldest son’s inheritance: a massive library of pornography, most of it written by Andrew Offutt himself under a variety of pseudonyms. In My Father, the Pornographer, Chris Offutt delves into his father’s career as the “King of Smut,” as well as his own memories of a haunted, fractured childhood. Offutt will appear at Crosstown Arts in Memphis on March 24, 2016, at 6 p.m.
