David Cady explores the rise, fall, and reformation of a Pentecostal church in Religion of Fear
In Religion of Fear, David Cady tells the shocking tale of how easily well-meaning people can be seduced by evil dressed in “the brows of grace.” Cady will discuss the book at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on August 4.
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A young woman seeks to unravel her family’s dark secret
House of Salt and Sorrows follows a young heiress as she grapples with a mysterious family curse. Erin A. Craig will discuss the book at Novel in Memphis on August 6 and Parnassus Books in Nashville on August 24.
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Humanities Tennessee announces the lineup for its 31st annual Southern Festival of Books
Humanities Tennessee today released its lineup of award-winning, bestselling authors who will headline the 31st annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville on October 11-13. The roster includes Samantha Power, Ann Patchett, Ottessa Moshfegh, Pico Iyer, Paul Theroux, Saeed Jones, Casey Cep, Dani Shapiro, and Derrick Barnes, among many others.
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A Chapter 16 writer remembers the first moon landing
I happened to be at an afternoon performance under the tent on July 20, 1969, when the conductor suddenly halted the orchestra in mid-flight, turned to the audience, and shouted in a joyful voice, “I’ve just been informed that the Americans have landed on the moon!” Then he turned to the orchestra and whipped it into the Star-Spangled Banner.
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Bill Brown grew up in West Tennessee ten miles from the Mississippi River. He is the author of eight poetry collections and a writing textbook. Formerly the director of the writing program at Hume-Fogg Academic High School in Nashville, he was named a Distinguished Teacher in the Arts in 1995 by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts and the 2011 Writer of the Year by the Tennessee Writers Alliance. His latest book is The News Inside. “When the Dust Settles” is from his 2008 collection, Late Winter.
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For more than three decades, Patricia McKissack has been writing children’s books that bring to life the stories, and the truth, of her ancestors
As she was coming of age in Nashville in the 1950s, there were many places award-winning children’s author Patricia McKissack was not allowed to go. She remembers hotels and restaurants that forbade African Americans entry, and movie theaters with a separate doorway in the alley for black patrons. The farthest reaches of the Grand Ole Opry’s balcony, known as the buzzard’s roost, was the only seating open to African Americans, McKissack recalls. She never partook: “My grandfather said that watermelons would bloom in January if any of his children went down there. ‘We don’t sit in no buzzard’s roost,’ he said. ‘We’re human beings, not buzzards.'”
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