Step into the Circle brings together Appalachian writers and photographers to profile some of the region’s beloved literary forces. Contributors Silas House, Lee Smith, Jason Kyle Howard, Wiley Cash, and Mallory Cash will appear at the 2020 Southern Festival of Books, held online October 1-11.
In her new essay collection, Vesper Flights, English naturalist Helen Macdonald reveals that the interconnectivity between humans and wildlife is constant, often fraught, and — on occasion — sublime. Macdonald will discuss Vesper Flights with Margaret Renkl in a ticketed online event benefiting Humanities Tennessee, hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on September 15.
Fortune telling — through tarot cards, palm readings, or other means of divination — was a way of life for Miracelle and her mother, whose bond forms the heart of Karen Salyer McElmurray’s novel, Wanting Radiance. After years on her own, Miracelle sets her sights on the past, including her mother’s unsolved murder.
By delving into intimate moments of her characters’ lives, Johnson City writer Shuly Xóchitl Cawood taps a deep well of compassion in her story collection, A Small Thing to Want.
In Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco, Alia Volz crafts a loving portrait of Sticky Fingers Brownies, the empire of pot-laced edibles that her mother built amid the tumultuous events that rocked San Francisco during 1970s and 80s.
Readers who love history for its grand, sweeping scale will find the premise of Katy Simpson Smith’s novel, The Everlasting, irresistible: a quartet of characters whose stories span almost 2,000 years and whose experiences delve into the chaotic, multilayered, enduring heart of Rome.
