“The threat to the narrator may be existential in nature but it’s still a threat,” Jenny Offill says of her novel Dept. of Speculation. “Her life is falling down around her.” Offill will read at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on April 6 at 7 p.m.
Nashville native Patricia C. McKissack talks with Chapter 16 about Let’s Clap, Jump, Sing & Shout; Dance, Spin & Turn It Out!: Games, Songs, & Stories from an African American Childhood, her one-of-a-kind collection of African American children’s play-time lore.
“Early friendships take place at a time when you are experiencing all kinds of ‘firsts.’ And for another person to witness your firsts, or let you see hers, can be especially intimate and meaningful.” Prior to her appearance at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on March 23 at 7 p.m., Meg Wolitzer talks about her novel The Interestings.
.
Richard Blanco brings a poet’s keen eye for observation and a prose writer’s gift for plot to his new memoir, The Prince of los Cocuyos, which illustrates how cultural, sexual, and artistic sensibilities are “all developed—not independently of each other—but simultaneously.” Blanco will appear at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on March 15 at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
In A Chance for Change, Crystal Sanders expands our understanding of the role of education and federal anti-poverty programs in the civil-rights movement. She will discuss the book at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis on March 16 at 6 p.m.
Wally Lamb’s fifth novel, We Are Water, is a testament to the fact that families can survive almost anything thrown at them—murder, abuse, abandonment—if love remains. Lamb will appear in conversation with songwriter Mary Gautier on March 11 at Green Door Gourmet in Nashville in a benefit event for the Porch Writers’ Collective.
