An accidental food writer looks for lessons from the canon
Maybe part of a food writer’s job is to contribute to much-needed reckonings, whether the topic is race, food justice, climate change, workplace inequity … or genocide and disappearing cultural memory. In that sense, maybe nothing is food writing. Maybe everything is.
Read more
Campbell Hale investigates the case of the missing socialite
In Gone Missin’, the second installment in Peggy O’Neal Peden’s Nashville mystery series, travel agent Campbell Hale is not surprised when her friend Bitsy Carter decides to escape a dreary winter in Nashville for sunny Mexico. Trouble is, no one has seen Bitsy since the day she checked in at the resort. Peden will appear at a virtual event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on January 24.
Read more
Katherine Paterson’s new middle grade novel considers fear, faith, family, and friendship
In Katherine Paterson’s new middle grade novel, Birdie’s Bargain, 10-year-old Elizabeth “Birdie” Cunningham is sure that her dad’s third tour of duty overseas with the National Guard will end with his death. As Birdie struggles with jealousy, loss, anger, anxiety, and the trustworthiness of both God and man, Paterson allows her readers into the inmost thoughts of this conflicted and unhappy character.
Read more
Women prevail in an inventive debut story collection
Gwen E. Kirby’s bold debut story collection connects an unlikely cast of heroines across time and space, each encountering her own series of obstacles in pursuit of survival, pleasure, and fulfillment. Kirby will appear with Kevin Wilson at a virtual event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on January 11.
Read more
I hadn’t yet learned what being lost feels like
Sometimes during my wanderings, I would hear an announcement over the public address system for a child who had been lost. The microphone would crackle, then I’d hear “We have a little lost girl,” followed by her name and a description. The announcements seemed plaintive, urgent, important.
Read more
My father wasn’t about to buy a tree
Cutting one’s own Christmas tree certainly does evoke images of a happy family pulling a sleigh through snowy landscapes in the Appalachian Mountains. But my family’s Christmas tree acquisition process wasn’t quite what Norman Rockwell had in mind.
Read more
