In Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, fugitive slaves are spirited away to freedom by an actual network of trains. The Underground Railroad is the 2018 Memphis Reads selection. Whitehead will discuss the novel at Christian Brothers University on September 5 and at Rhodes College on September 6. Both events are free and open to the public.
Tayari Jones, who will talk about her novel An American Marriage during the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 12-14, sets her fiction in Atlanta because the urban South is “a microcosm of all the issues facing the country.”
A prolific writer known for exploring multiculturalism with keen intelligence, grace, and humor, Gish Jen is the author of four novels, a short-story volume, and, most recently, a nonfiction book created from the talks she gave at Harvard University in 2012 as part of the William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization.
Nearly twenty years have passed since the publication of James McBride’s first book, The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother. The memoir spent two years on the New York Times bestseller list and continues to be a regular selection for city-wide programs.
Reporter Daniel Connolly spent the 2012-2013 school year at Kingsbury High School in Memphis, where Latino teenagers make up nearly fifty percent of the student population. The Book of Isaias is his account of that year.
John Prine’s first official songbook, Beyond Words, collects sixty of his influential songs. It also offers a treasure trove of family photographs, song manuscripts, and short commentaries that highlight the singer’s incisive wit.
