In Barbara Kingsolver’s Partita, a middle-aged woman, once a promising concert pianist, remembers the summer when a passionate love affair destroyed her dreams of a musical career. Kingsolver will discuss Partita at Vanderbilt’s Langford Auditorium in Nashville on October 11 as part of the 2026 Southern Festival of Books.
Holding Lightning: The Life, Loves, and Art of Whitney Houston by Vanderbilt professor Emily Lordi stands as a reclamation of Houston’s story, placing her at the center not as an object but as the subject. Emily Lordi will appear at the 2026 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 17-18.
In Cormac McCarthy: A Legacy Revisited, author Tracy Daugherty tells the story of a literary icon who lived life to the fullest and a flawed man who put the writing above all else.
Ayad Akhtar’s The Radiance is a story about memory, knowledge, academia, and desire. Akhtar will appear at the 2026 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 17-18.
Lydia Mathis’ debut story collection, Desperate Bodies, lives at the perilous fault lines of contemporary girls’ and women’s lives, particularly those of Black girls and women. Mathis will discuss Desperate Bodies at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 17-18.
In her latest book, Triage, poet, essayist, and playwright Claudia Rankine explores the devastation in Gaza, Afro-Caribbean womanhood, whiteness, and other themes through the turbulent relationship of the narrator and a nonbinary character called “the theorist.” Rankine will appear at the 2026 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 17-18.
