January 14, 2014 In B.B. King’s Lucille and the Loves Before Her, lifelong blues fan and guitar collector Eric Dahl pays tribute to the regal bluesman and the close relationship he shares with Lucille, his guitar and trusted sidekick of more than sixty years. Dahl will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on January 16, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.
January 9, 2014 Nashville author Lisa Guenther, an associate professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, describes solitary confinement as “one of the simplest and most devastating” ways to destroy a person. In her exhaustive new book, Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives, Guenther gives an historical overview of solitary confinement in the U.S., discusses theories concerning its use, and examines the role of race in its application.
January 8, 2014 Sue Monk Kidd’s bestselling 2004 novel, The Secret Life of Bees, is set against the backdrop of the burgeoning civil-rights movement. In The Invention of Wings Kidd turns the clock back further—to the slave-holding South prior to the Civil War. Kidd will discuss the book at 6:15 p.m. on January 15, 2014, at the Nashville Public Library, as part of the Salon@615 series.
January 6, 2013 The literary culture of Tennessee is as varied as the landscape of the state, and The Southern Poetry Anthology captures this diversity in the breadth of its selections. From West Tennessee’s Lisa Roney to East Tennessee’s Jeff Daniel Marion, and from nationally celebrated poets like Charles Wright to less familiar talents like Jeff Hardin and Kevin Thomason, the anthology includes a broad array of talent.
December 12, 2013 Novelist Katherine Paterson is married to a Presbyterian minister, and during each Christmas Eve service it has been his custom to read aloud an inspirational story written for the occasion by his wife, the author of Bridge to Terabithia. Many of these stories have now been collected in a new volume titled A Stubborn Sweetness and Other Stories for the Christmas Season.
December 11, 2013 In Diddy Wah Diddy, Memphis author Corey Mesler offers up a collage of short pieces that create a fanciful fictional history of Beale Street, the birthplace of the blues. Mesler calls the book a “collage novel,” a hint about the rich mix of fantasy, wordplay, and good-hearted bawdiness to be found therein.
