Q & A

November 20, 2012 In 1999, the award-winning, bestselling novelist Barbara Kingsolver founded The Bellwether Prize, an award given biennially to an unpublished debut novel that addresses matters of social justice and responsibility. Carrying a $25,000 prize—funded entirely by Kingsolver herself—and a publishing contract, the Bellwether is “designed to be a career-founding event for writers with outstanding literary skills, moral passion, and the courage to combine these strengths in unusually powerful fiction,” as Kingsolver’s website puts it. Susannah Felts will interview Naomi Benaron and Hillary Jordan, two Bellwether winners, at Parnassus Books in Nashville on November 29 at 6:30 pm. The event is free and open to the public.

November 7, 2012 “Emigrants, immigrants, adventurers, and runaways—they fascinate me because they loiter on the margins, stripped of the markers of family and nation,” writes novelist Emma Donoghue in her new story collection, Astray. “Travelers know all the confusion of the human condition in concentrated form. Migration is mortality by another name, the itch we can’t scratch.” The bestselling author of Room will read from Astray at the Nashville Public Library at 6:15 p.m. on November 13 as part of the Salon@615 series.

October 30, 2012 Between the 1980 publication of his first story collection, The Heart Never Fits Its Wanting, and the 2006 publication of his most recent, All Things, All at Once, Lee K. Abbott wrote some of the best short stories of his generation—hell, some of the best short stories of anybody’s generation. Set in the American Southwest and featuring a cast of male narrators who are both loquacious and vital, Abbott’s full-blooded tales earned the highest praise even as their style ran counter to the era’s minimalist chic. By the end of the century, Abbott—who recently retired from the M.F.A. program at Ohio State University, where he was a professor—was widely acknowledged as a master of the short story form. Lee K. Abbot will appear at two events this week at the University of Memphis. As part of the River City Writers’ Series, Abbott will read from his work October 30 at 8 p.m. in the University Center, Room 300 (River Room). A book signing will follow. He will hold an interview with students October 31 at 10:30 a.m. in Patterson Hall, Room 456. Both events are free and open to the public.