News & Notes

April 12, 2013 Memphis native and playwright Katori Hall is causing an international stir with her play, The Mountaintop, which chronicles the last night of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and the events that took place in his hotel room after his famous “Mountaintop” speech. The original production premiered in 2010 in London, where Hall earned the coveted Olivier Award before returning home to open the play on Broadway in 2011. Only a year after its close on Broadway, The Mountaintop has become one of the most widely produced plays in the nation.

March 4, 2013 Perhaps most celebrated for her novels, including the bestselling Bel Canto and State of Wonder, and for her independent book store, Parnassus Books in Nashville, Ann Patchett has recently enjoyed a morsel of fame on the HBO sitcom Girls. The show, well into its second season, makes a habit of aggressive name-dropping and has decided to bring Patchett into the spotlight.

February 13, 2013 Roger D. Hodge, a Sewanee grad and the freshly appointed editor of the Oxford American, dropped by to chat with Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report about the release of his first issue as editor.

January 28, 2013 In March the Nashville Public Library will launch the second Nashville Reads, a citywide reading campaign to encourage teens and adults to read the same book at the same time as a way of creating a shared experience of reading in the city. Life of Pi, a novel by internationally acclaimed author Yann Martel, is the selection for this spring’s program. On March 2 at 3 p.m., Martel will give a free public lecture at the Nashville Public Library as a kickoff to the event.

January 28, 2013 When a person takes a late lunch break and heads over to the local bookshop on a mid-week winter afternoon, she might expect to spend a quiet hour in the abandoned stacks.