In his ninth book, Invisible Nation: Homeless Families in America, Richard Schweid surveys the plight of homeless children in five cities and considers possible solutions. Schweid will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 14-16.
In his novel Robert Walker, Corey Mesler gives readers a glimpse into the mind and heart of a homeless man wandering the streets of Memphis. Mesler will discuss Robert Walker at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on September 29 at 5:30 p.m.
June 1, 2016 The poems in Linda Parsons’s This Shaky Earth take their material from the prosaic and the deeply personal, but there’s nothing narrow about them. Rich with all the mystery and complexity of human feeling, they often depict the pleasures of home darkened by troubled memories. Parsons will discuss This Shaky Earth at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on June 5, 2016, at 2 p.m.
April 21, 2016 Sonja Livingston’s second essay collection, Ladies Night at the Dreamland, is a kind of literary search-and-rescue effort. In twenty-one delicately crafted pieces, she brings forth a remarkable group of little-known women and girls from the past, imagining her way into their lives with lyrical intensity. Livingston will discuss the book at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on April 26, 2016, at 6:30 p.m.
March 29, 2016 Written from a perspective shaped by a passionate, unorthodox sympathy for dogs, Vanderbilt University professor Colin Dayan’s With Dogs at the Edge of Life explores the troubling contradictions in the human-canine relationship.
March 10, 2016 Vanderbilt alum Nate Marshall grew up on Chicago’s troubled far South Side, miles and worlds away from the city’s tourist attractions and gleaming skyscrapers. His debut poetry collection, Wild Hundreds, evokes the beauty and joy that exist there alongside the struggle. Marshall will give a free public reading at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on March 18, 2016, at 4 p.m.
