In The Great River, Boyce Upholt chronicles the long history of how the U.S. government has sought to control and shape the Mississippi River, exploring its social and environmental impacts. Upholt will discuss the book at Novel in Memphis on June 25.
Mesha Maren’s Shae is both a powerful queer coming-of-age novel and a meditation on the challenges of teen parenthood and the horrors of addiction. Maren will discuss Shae at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on May 30.
In The Realms of Oblivion, Andrew Ross tells the history of the 19th-century South through the experience of the Davies family and the Black people who worked their land in both slavery and freedom.
FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Family farming is hard work, acknowledges Brooks Lamb in Love for the Land: Lessons from Farmers Who Persist in Place. In this 2023 Chapter 16 interview, he says it’s also a rewarding lifestyle worth saving, for the sake of the environment and ourselves. Lamb will discuss Love for the Land at Patagonia Nashville on May 16.
Comprised of braided essays which use key pop-culture moments to weave together stories of triumph and personal exploration, Julian Randall’s The Dead Don’t Need Reminding unearths grief and deeply rooted family histories.
FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: The child of Chinese immigrants, Jenny Qi entered Vanderbilt at 16, lost her mother while she was still an undergraduate, and went on to earn a Ph.D. in biomedical science while pouring her grief into poetry. Her award-winning debut collection, Focal Point, explores sorrow, death, and what we owe to each other.
