Chapter 16 - Part 19

Perpetually on the Lam

In On the Run, sociologist Alice Goffman examines the effect of zealous policing on one inner-city neighborhood

By Maria Browning | August 11, 2014

August 11, 2014 There is endless debate about whether zealous policing and harsh sentences are effective in reducing crime, but according to sociologist Alice Goffman they have a profoundly damaging effect on troubled, low-income communities. In On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, Goffman reports her observations from six years spent in a tough Philadelphia neighborhood, where she found that aggressive law enforcement cripples lives, ruins relationships, and creates a major barrier to escaping crime and poverty. Goffman will appear at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 10-12, 2014.

Before the Water Came

Amy Greene’s new novel, Long Man, tells the story of a place lost to progress

By Maria Browning | July 29, 2014

July 29, 2014 In Amy Greene’s richly told second novel, the year is 1936, and the fictional Tennessee town of Yuneetah has been doomed by a TVA dam project. Long Man is the story of a crisis among the community’s last holdouts, and it brings a lost world to life. Greene will appear at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 10-12, 2014. All festival events are free and open to the public.

Going into the Shadows

Poet Jesse Graves gracefully explores difficult territory in Basin Ghosts

By Maria Browning | July 15, 2014

July 15, 2014 There is abundant love and tender memory in poet Jesse Graves’s new collection, Basin Ghosts, but Graves also goes gracefully into some of the most difficult territory of life. Graves will discuss Basin Ghosts at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on July 26, 2014, at 2 p.m., and at the Southern Festival of Books, which will be held at Legislative Plaza in Nashville October 10-12, 2014.

Tunneling Along Memory

In his debut collection, Ghost Gear, poet Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum revisits his Nashville boyhood

By Maria Browning | July 11, 2014

July 11, 2014 In his debut collection, Ghost Gear, poet Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum excavates and explores memories of his Nashville boyhood, revisiting the past with a rough mix of tender feeling and strong, sometimes violent imagery. He will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on July 19, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.

Purely Dogs

Celebrated photographer Maude Schuyler Clay documents the un-pampered canines of the Mississippi Delta

By Maria Browning | July 9, 2014

July 9, 2014 In Delta Dogs, Maude Schuyler Clay captures the beauty, nobility, and sadness of rural Mississippi’s canine denizens. The book also features an introduction by fiction writer Brad Watson and an essay by poet Beth Ann Fennelly. Clay will discuss the collection at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on July 17, 2014, at 5:30 p.m.

Cinderella Revisited

Tracy Barrett spins a new story from an old one in The Stepsister’s Tale

By Maria Browning | June 18, 2014

June 18, 2014 Without violating the spirit of the folktale, Tracy Barrett reinvents the Cinderella story with a sensibility that is distinctly modern. In The Stepsister’s Tale, female independence and solidarity matter far more than male gallantry, but the romance and hopeful essence of the original remain. Barrett will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 24, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.

Tender Headed (National Poetry Series)

By Olatunde Osinaike
Akashic Books
80 pages
17.95

“In Tender Headed, Olatunde Osinaike asks the question, what makes a man, and what makes a man like me? As he interrogates the inner and outer workings of masculinity in all its sharp and tender parts, and the way a Black man meets the world, his poems strut and duck and weave across their pages. These poems unpack the ingredients of being and make a meal of language.”

~ Camille Rankine, author of Incorrect Merciful Impulses