No Graceland
September 10, 2014 Huddy Marr, the protagonist of Stephen Schottenfeld’s Bluff City Pawn, knows guns—and gold, and guitars, and jewelry. He also knows that the blood bank replacing the liquor store next door to his pawn shop signals the last, irreversible step in the decline of his particular neck of a slumping city. In his debut novel, Schottenfeld capably shows Memphis as the home of a different kind of blues. Schottenfeld will appear at the University of Memphis on September 16, 2014, at 8 p.m. in the Bluff Room of the University Center. He will also appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014. Both events are free and open to the public.
September 8, 2014 A novel with enormous scope and an ambitious time-jumping structure, Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven paints its post-apocalyptic world in both bold brushstrokes and tiny points of background detail. Mandel will discuss Station Eleven at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on Oct. 10-12.
September 5, 2014 The Story of Land and Sea, Katy Simpson Smith’s debut novel, considers parental love, faith, and friendship in coastal North Carolina at the end of the American Revolution. Smith will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on September 11, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.
September 3, 2014 Antonya Nelson has often been praised as one of the great contemporary writers of the short story. With Funny Once, her newest collection, she more than delivers on that reputation with nine stories and a novella that are object lessons in exquisitely crafted literary fiction. Antonya Nelson will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014. All festival events are free and open to the public.
August 26, 2014 The four friends at the center of Nickolas Butler’s debut novel, Shotgun Lovesongs, teeter between nostalgia for the young guys they once were and hopes for the men they will become. Now in their mid-thirties, they have begun to feel the weight of the choices they’ve already made. Nickolas Butler will discuss Shotgun Lovesongs at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014. All festival events are free and open to the public.
August 19, 2014 Since the publication of his first story collection some twenty years ago, Tony Earley has built a body of work defined by extraordinary insight into the comedy, pathos, and wonder of the commonplace. In his new collection, Mr. Tall, Earley widens the scope of his frequently hilarious, reliably lyrical stories. Earley will discuss Mr. Tall at Parnassus Books in Nashville on August 26, 2014, at 6:30 p.m., and at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014.