Mothers—absent and otherwise—are the dynamic force at the center of Brit Bennett’s debut
In Brit Bennett’s debut novel, The Mothers, a teenage girl’s casual fling in the wake of her mother’s suicide profoundly recalibrates her life and the lives of those closest to her. Bennett will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on November 10 at 6:30 p.m.
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Appalachian writer Wilma Dykeman explores her mountain childhood in a newly-recovered memoir
Found after Wilma Dykeman’s death in 2006, Family of Earth details the writer and civil-rights activist’s childhood in the mountains around Asheville, North Carolina. This poignant memoir extends the reach of Dykeman’s renowned writing about southern Appalachian places and people.
Girl meets house, house has ghosts, in Cherie Priest’s new novel
With the continued existence of her family’s Nashville salvage business hanging in the balance, Dahlia Dutton leads a work team to dismantle an old house—an old haunted house—in Chattanooga in Cherie Priest’s delightfully spooky The Family Plot.
In his debut collection, Noah Warren accepts human limitations
In The Destroyer in the Glass, poet Noah Warren calmly considers the great mysteries of life and death. He will read at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on November 1 at 7 p.m. The event, part of the Gertrude Vanderbilt and Harold S. Vanderbilt Visiting Writers Series, is free and open to the public.
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In a new anthology, South Asian American daughters construct their own identities
Pushing past the pressure to be perfect daughters, the writers in Good Girls Marry Doctors provide a multifaceted look at women who are moving beyond and even reconstructing cultural and familial expectations. Editor Piyali Bhattacharya will discuss Good Girls Marry Doctors at Parnassus Books in Nashville on October 25 at 6:30 p.m.
The energy and attitude of punk music inspired Rob Rufus after a devastating diagnosis
As a teen growing up in the 1990s, Rob Rufus and his friends felt the classic alienation of youth. In Die Young with Me: A Memoir, Rufus tells the story of discovering punk music and his simultaneous battle with cancer.
