Emma Smith’s Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers is a critical look at books as objects and the ways they have been bought and sold, used and abused, feared and celebrated, reviled and fetishized, bound, banned, and burned throughout history. Smith will deliver the Pearce Shakespeare Endowment Lecture at Rhodes College in Memphis on October 19.
FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Race Man: Selected Works, 1960-2015 collects a wide array of writings from civil rights leader Julian Bond, whose life provides a model of servant leadership.
In Tan Twan Eng’s The House of Doors, celebrated writer W. Somerset Maugham visits friends in the Malay Peninsula during a time of personal crisis and political upheaval. Tan will discuss The House of Doors at the 2023 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 21-22.
In a new poetry collection and a volume of prose and images, poet Terrance Hayes undertakes a multi-faceted exploration of expression. Terrance Hayes will appear at Tennessee State University’s Otis Floyd Campus Center in Nashville on October 18 at 7 p.m. as part of the 2023 Southern Festival of Books.
Twenty years after her mother’s death, Nashville poet Lisa Dordal unexpectedly found a trove of letters from her. This discovery set Dordal reeling, eventually resulting in Next Time You Come Home, a fascinating experiment in how to honor a loved one’s legacy. Lisa Dordal will discuss Next Time You Come Home at the 2023 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on Oct. 21-22.
In C Pam Zhang’s new novel, Land of Milk and Honey, an Asian-American chef escapes ecological catastrophe by going to work for an elite research community on a remote mountain in the Alps. C Pam Zhang will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on October 4.
