Editor’s Notes

We’ve got reviews of two titles by Southern Festival of Books authors this week, each focused on a gifted woman — one fictional, one real. We also take a look at a hefty new biography of a Tennessee literary heavyweight. (If you’re prepping for the festival, be sure to check out all Chapter 16’s festival coverage…

A reminder for readers attending the Southern Festival of Books: There are tickets available for Authors in the Round, festival volunteers are needed, and there’s still time to register for the pre-festival writing workshops. The party is just three weeks away! Ayad Akhtar will be at the festival to discuss his new novel, The Radiance.…

This year’s Tennessee Book Award winners have been announced! The award for fiction goes to the novel Run for the Hills by Sewanee writer Kevin Wilson. This Changes Everything: A Surprisingly Funny Story About Race, Cancer, Faith, and Other Things We Don’t Talk About by Nashville actor, musician, comedian, and activist Tyler Merritt receives the…

This year’s Southern Festival of Books is a little over a month away, and the schedule of sessions has been announced. Barbara Kingsolver and Yiyun Li will headline pre-festival events on October 11 and October 15, respectively, and the gathering in downtown Nashville gets underway on Saturday, October 17, with authors including Emily Yellin, Ann Patchett, David Haskell, Ayad Akhtar, and Claudia Rankine. The lineup on Sunday,…

After the announcement of his death last week, Barbara Kingsolver wrote, “We’ve lost Wendell Berry. Prophet, good farmer, gentle literary giant, Kentuckian of the finest order and friend to all that is good.” There were tributes from Silas House, Margaret Renkl, Kathy Mattea, and many more. Berry’s work touched readers deeply, as revealed in a Substack post by novelist Claire Gibson and an essay by Nashville writer…

In Tennessee and around the world, we’ve been immersed in remembrances of Dolly Parton. Her gifts as a singer-songwriter, her personal kindness, and her tremendous generosity have been widely celebrated, so we won’t try to round up all those tributes here (though we can’t resist sharing Margaret Renkl’s Dolly story and this thoughtful piece by Nashville music writer Craig Havighurst).  But…