George Saunders’s long awaited first novel examines a president in crisis
With Lincoln in the Bardo, his long-awaited first novel, George Saunders delivers a strikingly original work of fiction as strange as it is stirring. On February 24 at 6:30 p.m., Saunders will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville as part of the Salon@615 series.
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Tim Gautreaux’s new story collection draws tentative hope out of modern malaise
Tim Gautreaux’s wide-ranging new collection, Signals, expertly examines a variety of broken lives, speaking plainly of suffering but also offering glimpses of hope and redemption. He will discuss Signals at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on January 19, and at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 1.
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The burgeoning field of Cormac McCarthy scholarship offers surprising insights
To writers and scholars who have followed his career for decades, Cormac McCarthy is as notorious for his perceived reclusiveness as for his astonishing body of work. With Cormac McCarthy’s Literary Evolution, Daniel Robert King takes a deep dive into the McCarthy Archive at Texas State University and emerges with a lucid account of McCarthy’s transition from Tennessee to the Southwest.
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Adam Haslett’s Imagine Me Gone depicts a family grappling with a legacy of suicide
In Imagine Me Gone, Adam Haslett uses multiple points of view to limn the collateral consequences of a father’s suicide and a tight-knit family’s history of depression. Haslett will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 14-16, 2016. Festival events are free and open to the public.
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With Eligible, Curtis Sittenfeld delivers a contemporary adaptation of Pride & Prejudice
The Austen Project has commissioned six contemporary authors to write modern adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels. Tasked with the daunting challenge of reimagining the beloved Pride & Prejudice, bestselling novelist Curtis Sittenfeld has delivered Eligible, an inventive and irreverent update to a revered tale. Sittenfeld will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 14-16, 2016. All festival events are free and open to the public.
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Novelist Ed Tarkington reflects on the deep ambivalence that lies at the heart of Peter Taylor’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Summons to Memphis
June 17, 2016 In the sixth of a nine-essay series commemorating the centennial year of the Pulitzer Prizes, novelist Ed Tarkington considers the problematic culture depicted in Peter Taylor’s A Summons to Memphis, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1987.
