January 21, 2015 Writers’ retreats can be powerful incubators for novels, stories, and poems, allowing writers to immerse themselves in their work, free from the distractions of daily life. Rivendell Writers’ Colony, in Sewanee, is the first of its kind in Tennessee, and word of its particular magic is beginning to travel.
October 30, 2014 Sepha Stephanos, the immigrant protagonist of Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, is not the archetypal ambitious newcomer, striving for American success. He’s a sensitive, troubled man bewildered by life in a culture not his own. The novel is the inaugural selection for Memphis’s first city-wide read. On November 4, 2014, Mengestu will visit Memphis to discuss the book at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library and Christian Brothers University. Both events are free and open to the public.
October 10, 2014 The Southern Festival of Books is big, varied, and one of the most inclusive cultural events around. Chapter 16’s Maria Browning considers the special pleasure of the festival’s collective spirit. The twenty-sixth annual Southern Festival of Books will take place in Nashville October 10-12, 2014, at Legislative Plaza and the Nashville Public Library. All festival events are free and open to the public.
June 26, 2014 Ad-free and distinctive in design, Home & Hill: A Quarterly Magazine in the Tennessee Tradition aims to showcase the character of the state, from its magnificent natural settings to its historic monuments and hidden landmarks, to its makers and purveyors and artists and chefs.
June 9, 2014 Each summer Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art offers a colorful addition to Nashville’s literary landscape with a reading series called Annotations. Local authors discuss their work surrounded by the stunning atmosphere of the Sigourney Cheek Literary Garden. Beginning on June 13, 2014, with novelist Victoria Schwab, the events will take place at 6:30 p.m. on the second Friday of each month during the summer.
