Craft, Then Faith, Then Letting Go
June 5, 2014 Jim Stegner, the protagonist of Peter Heller’s new novel, The Painter, is an archetypal American individualist in the tradition of Ernest Hemingway and Jackson Pollock. Finding himself in the midst of a deadly conflict that puts him at odds with both the police and a pair of vengeful outlaws, Stegner still somehow manages to create art that evokes in his audience “everything they know and feel and love, and all the things they don’t know, and some of the things they hope.” Peter Heller will discuss The Painter at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 12, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.
June 4, 2014 The stories in John Brandon’s new collection, Further Joy, pack a novel’s worth of engaging conflict and intriguing personalities into small packages. Stuck in small Florida towns that have no tourist attractions or natural beauty, Brandon’s characters make a game of their lives just to withstand them. John Brandon will read from Further Joy at Crosstown Arts in Memphis on June 9, 2014, at 6 p.m.
June 3, 2014 The One & Only, the seventh novel by bestselling author Emily Giffin, focuses on Shea Rigsby, a thirty-something living in fictional Walker, Texas, where life revolves around the local college football team. Shea’s world is turned upside down when she must choose between her best friend and her romantic feelings for her best friend’s father. Giffin will discuss The One & Only at the Nashville Public Library on June 9, 2014, at 6:15 p.m. The event, part of the Salon@615 series, is free and open to the public.
June 2, 2014 Barbara Herman calls vintage perfume a “liquid language” that reveals something about the tastes and dreams of a bygone era, even as it offers us a portal to our own deep desires. In Scent & Subversion: Decoding a Century of Provocative Perfume, Herman describes hundreds of classic twentieth-century perfumes and considers their rich, sensual appeal. She will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 5, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.
May 29, 2014 When eleven-year-old Circa Monroe begins to notice that the images she inserts into photographs seem to be becoming real, she’s convinced that she is capable of altering the world with her computer and a bank of images—and possibly bring her beloved father back to life. Memphis native Amber McRee Turner will discuss her new middle-grade novel, Circa Now, at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on June 7, 2014, at 1 p.m.
May 28, 2014 Marty Stuart has spent his career both making musical history and capturing it on film. American Ballads: The Photographs of Marty Stuart is a new collection of Stuart’s photography that accompanies the exhibit currently showing at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville. Marty Stuart and his mother, Hilda Stuart, will discuss the exhibit and their shared passion for photography at the Frist on June 4, 2014, at noon. Admission is free.