November 12, 2013 In The Valley of Amazement, bestselling author Amy Tan revisits her hallmark themes of female identity and struggle through the story of a young half-American courtesan in early twentieth-century Shanghai. Tan will be in Nashville to discuss and read from the novel on November 18, 2013, at 6:15 p.m. at the Hume-Fogg Academic High School Auditorium. The event, which is free and open to the public, is part of the Salon@615 series.
November 7, 2013 Dead Meander, a collection of personal essays by Nashville author and translator Adria Bernardi, captures traumatic experiences frozen in time. Bernardi acts as the fact-checker of her own life and emotions, as researcher and reporter charged with accounting for each experiment’s contributing factors, however minor their effect.
November 5, 2013 Best known for starkly realistic novels depicting the hardscrabble lives of poor Americans, Russell Banks is also a prolific author of short stories that encompass similar themes of loss, regret, and peril among the misbegotten. His new collection, A Permanent Member of the Family, raises lingering questions about the nature of human connection in our fractured, fragmented time. Banks will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on November 14, 2013, at 6:30 p.m. as part of the “Wine with the Author” series.
October 31, 2013 For Red Holler: Contemporary Appalachian Literature, John Branscum and Wayne Thomas have compiled a group of stories, essays, poems, and graphic narratives from the work of twenty-three Appalachian authors. As the book’s subtitle suggests, the selections are truly contemporary, and many stretch the boundaries of traditional literary forms. They also stretch the old Appalachian stereotypes of primitive violence, poverty, and ignorance.
October 29, 2013 In The Men Who United the States: America’s Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics, and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible, Simon Winchester lauds those who physically united a nation. The inventions and public works he describes have served to bring – and hold – together one of the largest and most diverse countries on the planet. Winchester will discuss The Men Who United the States at Parnassus Books in Nashville on November 7, 2013, at 6:30 p.m.
October 23, 2013 Garrison Keillor’s popular NPR program, A Prairie Home Companion, has provided the basis for Keillor’s many novels and story collections, a film starring Meryl Streep, and now a volume of comic verse. Keillor will read from O, What a Luxury on October 28, 2013, at 6:15 p.m. at the Nashville Public Library. The event, part of the Salon@615 series, is free and open to the public.
