Cary Fowler is the driving force behind the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a storehouse of genetic diversity located beneath the icy landscape of northernmost Norway. In Seeds on Ice, Fowler explains how the vault came to be and offers a virtual visit to its Arctic home via photographs by Mari Tefre. Fowler will appear at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on December 10.
Whether she’s writing about her tough, spirited characters or her own difficult life, Dorothy Allison seems determined to defy all narrow categories, seeking instead to express the full complexity of human experience. Allison, who serves as the 2016 Acuff Chair at the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts at Austin Peay State University, will speak on October 27 at 8 p.m. in Clement Auditorium on the APSU campus. The event is free and open to the public.
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.
