Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

At Childhood’s End

Four young friends discover more about the world — and themselves — than they bargained for

Shannon Greenland’s Scouts is an old-fashioned summer adventure story, complete with wild animals, a menacing mountain clan, spooky caves, and dangerous strangers. Greenland will appear at the 2019 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville on October 11-13.

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Deflection and Redemption

Susan Neiman considers America’s moral possibilities in Learning from the Germans

Through anecdote, testimony, and thorough research, Susan Neiman explores moral responses in postwar Germany and throughout the American South in Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil. Neiman will appear at the 2019 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville on October 11-13.

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Learning to Speak Silence

Pico Iyer’s observations and provocations about Japan leave quiet spaces for the reader’s voice

In A Beginner’s Guide to Japan, Pico Iyer explores what it means to pay attention to a culture you can’t hope to fully understand. Iyer will appear at the 2019 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville on October 11-13.

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Fields of Dreams

Patriarchal mores and the ghosts of genocide haunt a Cambodian farming family

In Three Flames, novelist Alan Lightman weaves together a rural Cambodian family’s stories, as each struggles against poverty, the wounds of war, and rigid societal expectations. Lightman will discuss the book at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on September 19.

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Of Facts and Fables

Maurice Carlos Ruffin discusses his mesmerizing debut novel, We Cast a Shadow

Maurice Carlos Ruffin casts a satirical spell in his debut novel, We Cast A Shadow. Its unnamed narrator, driven by fierce love for his son, makes decisions that expose his family to the dangers of a world that may seem dystopian but in fact lies excruciatingly close to our own. Ruffin will appear at the 2019 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville on October 11-13.

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Miami Meets Middle America

A Cuban American writer recounts the revelations of her own otherness in white America

In My Time Among the Whites, Jennine Capó Crucet, the American-born daughter of Cuban refugees, describes a childhood spent in the relative cultural comfort of Miami and then, as an adult, her disparate life experiences against the wider American landscape. Crucet will appear at the 2019 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville on October 11-13.

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