One Tough Broad
September 17, 2014 Kirsten Gillibrand is only the sixth—the sixth—woman in history to give birth while serving in Congress, and though she has unfortunately few peers, she gets the challenges facing contemporary women. Her new book, Off the Sidelines: Raise Your Voice, Change the World, is a call to arms urging women to get involved and change the outcome on issues important to them. Gillibrand will discuss her book at a ticketed event at Belmont University’s McAfee Concert Hall on September 20, 2014, at 1:30 p.m.
September 16, 2014 With Wolf in White Van, John Darnielle, singer and lyricist for The Mountain Goats, has produced an LP of a novel that delves into the damaged psyche of a disfigured young man who retreats into a role-playing game he has invented, a fantasy world where he—and others—can feel safe. Darnielle will discuss Wolf in White Van at Parnassus Books in Nashville on September 24, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.
September 12, 2014 Carol Bradley’s meticulously researched new book, Last Chain on Billie: How One Extraordinary Elephant Escaped the Big Top, is a heartrending biography of an Asian elephant brutalized for decades. But it is also a history of the perverse form of entertainment known as the circus. Carol Bradley will discuss Last Chain on Billie at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on September 19, 2014, at 6 p.m., at I Love Books in Kingsport on September 20, 2014, at 1 p.m., and at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014.
September 11, 2014 In The Phantom Coach: A Connoisseur’s Collection of Victorian Ghost Stories, seasoned anthology editor Michael Sims has compiled a book sure to send a shiver down the spine of even the most skeptical reader. Included are all the standard tropes of the genre: haunted houses, the walking dead, cursed objects, and eerie landscapes, as well as the expected Victorian flourishes of fainting females and their brave but clueless male champions. Sims will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014.
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.