Poet Ross Gay returns to finding joy in the everyday with his latest essay collection, The Book of (More) Delights. Gay will appear at a fundraiser for The Porch in Nashville on April 5 and will give a free reading at the downtown branch of the Nashville Public Library on April 6.
Black Panther: Panther’s Rage by Sheree Renée Thomas and the anthology Africa Risen, which Thomas coedited, imagine worlds rich in Black life and agency. Sheree Renée Thomas will appear at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City on March 27.
In their recently published collections, poets Denton Loving, Evie Shockley, and Susan O’Dell Underwood each find an original expression for the mingling of past and present that presses at the edges of contemporary life. Susan O’Dell Underwood and Denton Loving will appear at the 2024 Tennessee Mountain Writers Conference in Oak Ridge, April 4-6
Prolific, critically acclaimed writer Percival Everett offers a new take on a controversial classic with his latest novel, James. Everett will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on March 25.
Images of ordinary life convey warmth, grief, and complicated emotion in Edgar Kunz’s second poetry collection, Fixer. Edgar Kunz will appear at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on March 21.
FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Prathia Hall was a minister, activist, and academic who played a critical but largely unknown role in the civil rights movement. Memphis church historian Courtney Pace recounts her pivotal influence in Freedom Faith: The Womanist Vision of Prathia Hall.
