Padgett Powell exercises free imaginative play in the absurd stories of Cries for Help, Various
September 1, 2015 With his new collection of short fiction, Cries for Help, Various, Padgett Powell provides a lively medley of voices that live up to the author’s dicta that fiction should “be alive” and “be surprising.” Powell will read from and discuss his new book at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 9-11, 2015.
In Barefoot to Avalon, David Payne meditates on his brother’s death, his family’s tragedies, and his own shattered psyche
August 13, 2015 David Payne has always written about his family’s adversities, though only through the veil of fiction. In his new memoir, Barefoot to Avalon, he steps around the curtain to tell the real story of his brother’s death and his family’s history of self-destruction. Payne 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.
In Matthew Thomas’s debut novel, We Are Not Ourselves, striving Irish Americans learn to improvise when tragedy threatens to derail their dreams
June 2, 2015 In Matthew Thomas’s debut novel, We Are Not Ourselves, Eileen Tumulty is determined to rise above her Irish working-class roots. When she meets Ed Leary, a scientist who is also from Queens, she thinks she has found the perfect companion to accompany her on the upward journey. Matthew Thomas will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 5, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.
In Joshua Ferris’s To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, cyber-stalking leads to personal revelation
March 4, 2015 The new novel by Joshua Ferris, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, tells the story of a Manhattan dentist, Paul O’Rourke, whose practice is in perfect working order but whose personal life is an unqualified mess. Ferris will appear at Salon@615 at 6:15 p.m. at the Nashville Public Library on March 10, 2015. The salon is a free, ticketed event.
The young hero of Where All Light Tends to Go, David Joy’s debut novel, struggles to overcome a legacy of crime
February 24, 2015 Jacob McNeely, the eighteen-year-old hero of David Joy’s Where All Light Tends to Go, dreams of starting a new life somewhere else but feels stuck in his piddling Appalachian home town, doomed to follow the path of his meth-dealing father. David Joy will appear at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on March 3, 2015, at 6:30 pm.; at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 1, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.; and at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on May 2, 2015, at 2 p.m.
Scott Blackwood’s See How Small, inspired by real-life murders, depicts one community’s grief over an unsolved crime
February 5, 2015 In See How Small, Scott Blackwood uses the 1991 yogurt-shop murders in Austin as the inspiration for a novel that expresses the ineradicable damage tragedy inflicts on survivors. Blackwood will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 12, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.
