How Hancock County embraced its Melungeon secret
In Beyond the Sunset: The Melungeon Outdoor Drama, 1969-1976, Wayne Winkler explores how Tennessee’s poorest county turned to an unlikely source for economic revival: an outdoor drama about the region’s Melungeon heritage. The play ran for just five seasons but changed the county’s view of its mixed-race neighbors forever.
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Alice Faye Duncan’s Just Like a Mama explores the bond between a child and the grandmother raising her
Alice Faye Duncan’s latest picture book, Just Like a Mama, with illustrations by debut artist Charnelle Pinkney Barlow, pays tribute to the caregivers who raise children with abundant love and devotion.
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Book Excerpt: Letters to the Home
Michael Gray Bulla is a writer and poet from Franklin. He was named the 2017 Nashville Youth Poet Laureate with Southern Word, and his work has been published in Nashville Arts Magazineand Stonewall’s Legacy: A Poetry Anthology. Letters to the Home is his first poetry collection.
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A trip through the mind of civil rights icon Julian Bond
Race Man: Selected Works, 1960-2015 collects a wide array of writings from civil rights leader Julian Bond, whose life provides a model of servant leadership.
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A junior entrepreneur and a budding drag queen set their sights on stardom
In Greg Howard’s second middle-grade novel, Middle School’s a Drag: You Better Werk!, entrepreneurial pre-teen Mikey Pruitt thinks his new talent agency can’t miss, now that he’s representing an eighth-grade aspiring drag queen. Readers won’t be surprised to find out that things don’t go as smoothly as Mikey anticipates. Howard will discuss the book at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 11, at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on February 13, and at the SE-YA Book Fest in Murfreesboro on March 12-14.
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Investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell cracks cold cases from the civil rights movement
Race Against Time, written in the gripping style of a crime thriller, describes how crusading investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell helped to deliver justice in long-ago murders of civil rights activists. Mitchell will speak about his book at Novel in Memphis on February 12 and at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 24
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