November 25, 2013 Selected Poems by the late Wilmer Mills includes poems about building a house, plowing a field, and crafting a cradle, among others. This poet, who died in 2011 at age forty-one, writes from specific, hands-on experience but also sees beyond the ordinary to touch what is timeless in each act.
November 19, 2013 In Swing Low, Sweet Harriet, her new historical novel for young readers, Knoxville writer Rhonda Hicks Rucker tells a suspenseful story of Civil War espionage and the inspiring struggle for freedom waged by African Americans—both those whose names we know, like Harriet Tubman, and many more unsung heroes.
November 14, 2013 Jonathan Miles’s second novel, Want Not, follows a middle-aged linguistics professor, a pair of Dumpster-diving “freegans,” and a suburban housewife, all living in greater New York City, as they come to terms with the refuse of their lives. It’s a droll and affecting tale that disguises its philosophical message beneath a comic veneer. Miles will read from Want Not at Parnassus Books in Nashville on November 16, 2013, at 4 p.m.
November 13, 2013 Nikki Giovanni is a poet who speaks directly about the business of living, whether she’s celebrating simple pleasures, observing the difficulties of love, or denouncing injustice. On November 20, 2013, at 6:15 p.m., she will discuss her new collection, Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid, at the Nashville Public Library. The event, part of the Salon@615 series, is free and open to the public.
November 12, 2013 In The Valley of Amazement, bestselling author Amy Tan revisits her hallmark themes of female identity and struggle through the story of a young half-American courtesan in early twentieth-century Shanghai. Tan will be in Nashville to discuss and read from the novel on November 18, 2013, at 6:15 p.m. at the Hume-Fogg Academic High School Auditorium. The event, which is free and open to the public, is part of the Salon@615 series.
November 7, 2013 Dead Meander, a collection of personal essays by Nashville author and translator Adria Bernardi, captures traumatic experiences frozen in time. Bernardi acts as the fact-checker of her own life and emotions, as researcher and reporter charged with accounting for each experiment’s contributing factors, however minor their effect.
