Sonja Livingston explores femininity and fertility in Queen of the Fall
July 1, 2015 Queen of the Fall: A Memoir of Girls and Goddesses by University of Memphis professor Sonja Livingston takes on themes of femininity and fertility in a direct and quietly fierce style. Livingston will discuss Queen of the Fall at the Mid-South Book Festival, held in Memphis September 9-13, 2015.
In Hold Still, photographer Sally Mann interrogates the past that shaped her
May 18, 2015 Photographer Sally Mann’s body of work—which includes haunting images of her family and the Southern landscape, as well as unsettling studies of death and decay—is remarkable for its beauty and singular intensity. Hold Still, her new memoir, is a fascinating meditation on the sources of that work, as well as a reckoning with the unreliability of both memory and photography as ways of preserving the past. Mann will discuss the book in a conversation with novelist Ann Patchett at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville on May 21, 2015, at 6:15 p.m.
Caki Wilkinson’s The Wynona Stone Poems is a comic novel in verse
May 11, 2015 Caki Wilkinson’s second collection, The Wynona Stone Poems, tells the story of a smart, spirited woman who, in spite of having her fair share of talent and passion, can’t quite make her life happen.
Corey Mesler’s Memphis Movie is a wild ride of a novel
April 21, 2015 An almost-washed-up movie director returns to his hometown to make an indie film that just might salvage his career. That’s the premise of Memphis Movie, Corey Mesler’s wild ride of a novel, which combines Hollywood cynicism with Memphis soul to create a comic tale with a sweet afterglow. Mesler will read from his novel at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on April 30, 2015, at 5:30 p.m.
A Chapter 16 writer considers the complications of kindness
March 25, 2015 One day in early January the weather reports were full of breathless predictions about a brutal cold snap on its way. When I drove by Leon’s house that afternoon I saw the dog out there, and knowing it would soon shiver in a sub-zero wind chill, I suddenly couldn’t take it anymore. It was unbearable to continue doing nothing.
The Celebration of Southern Literature brings many of the South’s finest writers to Chattanooga
March 23, 2015 The Fellowship of Southern Writers—a group that includes luminaries like Bobbie Ann Mason, Ron Rash, and Natasha Trethewey—will gather in Chattanooga April 16-18, 2015, for the Celebration of Southern Literature, an event that is part writers’ conference, part book festival, and part homecoming for a diverse group of authors who share a connection to the region. Tickets to the biennial event are available now.
