Aaron Robertson weaves personal and political history in The Black Utopians
Aaron Robertson’s exacting, poetic The Black Utopians tracks the rise of Black nationalism, skeptical to its core, through a cadre of Detroit activists, knitting their creative and often militant ideas with memoir and his formerly incarcerated father’s letters, centering the question: “What does utopia look like in black?”
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A neighborhood unites to protect a child in James McBride’s The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
James McBride’s The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store is a powerful tale of early 20th-century Jewish and African American communities bonding together to protect a disabled orphan. McBride will deliver the Nashville Public Library Foundation Literary Award lecture at Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Nashville on November 9.
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A literary star’s death reveals dangerous secrets in J.T. Ellison’s latest thriller
A Very Bad Thing, the latest thriller from Nashvillian J. T. Ellison, takes readers on a wild ride of secrets, lies, and hidden connections. Ellison will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on November 1.
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Didi Jackson merges the sacred with the natural world in My Infinity
Nashville poet Didi Jackson’s My Infinity explores the relationship between grief and nature through a rich companionship with the work and life of visionary Swedish painter and mystic Hilma af Klint. Jackson will discuss My Infinity at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on November 17.
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Soraya Cates Parr shares nature hidden in plain sight in Nashville Native Orchids
In Nashville Native Orchids, Soraya Cates Parr has written a fascinating first book that is part natural science, part field guide, and part cultural heritage. Native orchids turn out to be a key to unlocking hidden nature throughout the city.
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Steven Hale lays bare the humanity of those condemned on Tennessee’s death row
Between 2018 and 2020, Tennessee state officials killed seven men by electrocution or lethal injection, more than any other state in the country except Texas. In Death Row Welcomes You, journalist Steven Hale tells the stories of the condemned and the people who have come to know and love them. He also exposes the arbitrary nature of the death penalty and the hypocrisy of Tennessee governors. Hale will appear at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.
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