In the alternative history Ben H. Winters creates in Underground Airlines, slavery has flourished in the Hard Four—Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and a unified Carolina—because it is essential to the economic prosperity of the plantations. Winters will appear at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 13-15. Festival events are free and open to the public.
The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore, an account of Jared Yates Sexton’s year on the 2016 campaign trail, describes Donald Trump’s rise to power and Hillary Clinton’s unexpected crash. Sexton will appear at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 13-15.
At the center of Nick White’s striking debut novel, How to Survive a Summer, is the burden of an unconfronted trauma at a long-defunct “gay conversion therapy” camp. White will discuss How to Survive a Summer at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 13-15.
Woman Walk the Line: How the Women in Country Music Changed Our Lives explores the work of the first females of country music. Holly Gleason, the book’s editor, will appear at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 13-15.
At times Leah Weiss’s debut novel, If the Creek Don’t Rise, reads like an Appalachian Rashomon, with multiple voices describing similar events in the tiny community of Baines Creek, North Carolina. Weiss will appear at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on September 21 at 6 p.m., at Parnassus Books in Nashville on September 23 at 2 p.m., and at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 13-15.
Daren Wang’s debut novel makes it clear that the sin of slavery was never only a Southern thing. Wang will discuss The Hidden Light of Northern Fires at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on September 20 at 5:30 p.m., and at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 13-15.
