Nashville Ballet artistic director Paul Vasterling on Lincoln in the Bardo and tsundoku
Paul Vasterling, artistic director of Nashville Ballet since 1998, has created more than 40 works, including the beloved Nashville’s Nutcracker. For the latest installment of “The Glorious Pastime,” he shares some thoughts with Chapter 16 about his first literary love and the genius of George Saunders.
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On the power of feeding people during hard times
Hard times have always pushed me into the kitchen, a place where I feel comfortable and safe. Feeding other people also makes me feel a little less powerless.
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W.M. Akers returns to his mythical Jazz Age New York City, where time is out of joint
In W.M. Akers’ Westside Saints, set in an alternative version of 1920s New York, detective Gilda Carr must solve mysteries surrounding the appearance of the dead, including her late mother.
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Mike Maden hits another bullseye with Tom Clancy Firing Point
Trouble has a way of finding President Jack Ryan and his son, Jack Jr., the legendary heroes of the late Tom Clancy’s clandestine spy thrillers who are back for another go in Tom Clancy Firing Point by Knoxville’s Mike Maden. The author will hold a virtual discussion about the book with Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on June 14.
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Lisa Alther’s Swan Song sends its grief-stricken 60-something heroine on a cruise
Swan Song: An Odyssey, the eighth novel by Kingsport native Lisa Alther, is a witty meditation on loss and longing in late-middle age.
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Jessica Pearce Rotondi explores her family’s grief in What We Inherit
The journalist Jessica Pearce Rotondi was 8 years old before she heard her mother speak the name of her uncle, Jack Pearce, who vanished when his plane was shot down over Laos in March 1972. In her propulsive memoir, What We Inherit, Rotondi probes her family’s agonized search for truth across three generations.
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