Beyond Monumental Figures
In I’ll Make Me a World: The 100-Year Journey of Black History Month, Harvard professor Jarvis R. Givens interrogates how historical consciousness should be grounded in everyday life.
Book Reviews
A Haunted Town
The Witch’s Orchard, Archer Sullivan’s debut novel, is both an excellent mystery and a study of how a small, isolated community endures a series of soul-shaking events.
Hell’s Kitchen
In W.M. Akers’ new mystery, To Kill a Cook, set in 1972, a restaurant critic rushes to solve the murder of a chef and simultaneously save her career and her upcoming marriage. Akers will discuss To Kill a Cook at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 4.
Elevation
George Saunders’ Vigil raises nuanced questions about kindness and what we owe the living — and the dead. Saunders will discuss the book with Ann Patchett at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville on January 30.
‘When You’re Dead We’ll Cherish You Again’
In her mesmerizing debut, Helen of Troy, 1993, poet Maria Zoccola merges the mythological and the modern, casting Helen of Troy as a restless housewife and mother in Sparta, Tennessee. Zoccola will be a featured author at ETSU’s Emerging Writers Series on February 9.
Mississippi Delta Blues
W. Ralph Eubanks chronicles a long and brutal war on poor people in When It’s Darkness on the Delta.
