Maria Browning

August 7, 2015 Azar Nafisi is a devout believer, to put it mildly, in the transformative power of literature. In her 2003 bestseller, Reading Lolita in Tehran, books are a spiritual lifeline amid the horrific violence and repression of post-revolutionary Iran. In The Republic of Imagination: A Life in Books she considers whether they can serve a similarly critical purpose here. Nafisi will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 9-11, 2015. All festival events are free and open to the public.

July 22, 2015 Novelist Alan Lightman is the grandson of M.A. Lightman, who founded the Malco movie theater chain and was the formidable patriarch of a smart, talented, temperamental family. In Screening Room Lightman recounts the history of his remarkable kin and the Memphis they helped to shape. He will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 9-11, 2015. All festival events are free and open to the public.

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.

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.