Q & A

September 26, 2012 Ben Marcus’s new novel, The Flame Alphabet, takes place in a world that seems at first not too dissimilar from our own, but there is one exception: speech and the written word have become fatally poisonous. Young children appear to be the source of the “infection,” and Marcus’s protagonist, Samuel, must find a way to care for his ailing wife and hang on to his increasingly distant daughter, who carries the poison of language and, like all other children, has become an enemy to adults. Ben Marcus will discuss The Flame Alphabet at Nashville’s Southern Festival of Books on October 13 at 3 p.m. in Legislative Plaza, Room 16. All festival events are free and open to the public.

September 25, 2012 The Cutting Season, the second literary thriller from Attica Locke, opens with a murder: the body of a sugarcane field worker, her throat slit, is found in a shallow grave on the grounds of Belle Vie, an antebellum plantation that’s now a tourist attraction and event site. Belle Vie’s manager, Caren Grey, grew up on the plantation grounds. But as clues about the murder begin to surface, Caren sees her vision of Belle Vie’s future, and her own shaky sense of security, begin to crumble. Attica Locke will discuss The Cutting Season at Nashville’s Southern Festival of Books on October 12 at 2 p.m. in Conference Room 1A of the Nashville Public Library. All festival events are free and open to the public.

September 24, 2012 J.R. Moehringer, author of The New York Times bestselling memoir The Tender Bar, has always said he wanted to write a novel. So it’s fitting that his first is a work of historical fiction based on the life of William “Willie” Sutton, whose hardships as an Irish-American kid in Brooklyn during the Depression led to a four-decade-long criminal career. “Willie the Actor” was a pacifist bank robber known for using disguises. Though Sutton is a work of Moehringer’s imagination, it also hangs on reams of fascinating research into the life and career of this American folk hero. J.R. Moehringer will discuss Sutton at Nashville’s Southern Festival of Books on October 13 at 1 p.m. in the Nashville Public Library Auditorium. All festival events are free and open to the public.

September 17, 2012 Scottish-born writer Margot Livesey first read Jane Eyre at the age of nine, and the book has been a literary touchstone for her ever since. After publishing six acclaimed novels, Livesey has returned to Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece and re-created its archetypal heroine as a young woman in 1960s Scotland. The Flight of Gemma Hardy draws heavily on the spirit of Jane Eyre yet tells an original story of struggle, secrets, and love that stands beautifully on its own. Livesey recently answered questions from Chapter 16 about, as she puts it, “writing in the shadow” of a classic. She will discuss The Flight of Gemma Hardy at the twenty-fourth annual Southern Festival of Books, held October 12-14 at Legislative Plaza in Nashville. All events are free and open to the public.