Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Defying the Logic of Love

A debut story collection depicts magical metamorphoses in the wake of catastrophe

Nathan Elias’ debut story collection, The Reincarnations, features characters who attempt to redefine themselves after enduring heartbreak and grief.

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Courting Justice

Vanderbilt law scholar Sara Mayeux chronicles the role of the public defender in American history

The ideal of the public defender evolved over the course of 20th-century America, as Sara Mayeux describes in Free Justice. Mayeux, who has a Ph.D. in history and a law degree from Stanford University, is a law professor at Vanderbilt University.

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Live and Let Spy

In Sometimes You Have to Lie, Leslie Brody traces the origin story of an author and her fictional heroine

Leslie Brody’s Sometimes You Have to Lie tells the story of the free-spirited life and revolutionary times of the famously secretive Harriet the Spy author, Louise Fitzhugh.

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The Bard of Memphis

Corey Mesler’s hippie poet returns in The Adventures of Camel Jeremy Eros

Corey Mesler’s The Adventures of Camel Jeremy Eros follows its titular hero from boyhood in “one of the poorer sections of Frayser, a poorer section of Shelby County, north of the perpetually poor Memphis” to San Francisco’s Summer of Love, literary stardom, and beyond.

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On the Ice

The Arctic Fury imagines adventure and tragedy for a group of 19th-century women

Greer Macallister’s historical novel The Arctic Fury focuses on an extraordinary woman tasked with an extraordinary mission: to lead a team of women into the Arctic to recover any evidence of the lost expedition of Sir John Franklin and his crew. Greer Macallister will discuss the book at a virtual event hosted by Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on January 28.

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Home Is a State of Mind

Simon Han’s debut novel considers what it means to live between two worlds

Simon Han’s appropriately titled debut novel, Nights When Nothing Happened, is a beautifully rendered meditation on what it means to belong — to a family, to a culture, to a particular place and time. Han will appear at a virtual event hosted by The Porch in Nashville on February 15.

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