The protagonist of Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake tells her daughters the full story of her past. Or does she? Patchett will discuss Tom Lake at Harpeth Hall School in Nashville on July 31, Novel in Memphis on August 18, and the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 21-22.
Abraham Verghese mines the history of Kerala’s St. Thomas Christians — and larger debates about faith and science — in his sprawling second novel, The Covenant of Water. Verghese will discuss the book at a ticketed event at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 18.
FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: In her beguiling When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky, novelist Margaret Verble, a 2016 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation, reimagines, for her own wily aims, the Nashville of a century ago, with allusions to Jim Crow, W.E.B. Du Bois’ Talented Tenth, and the city’s white gentry.
In The Marriage Portrait, Maggie O’Farrell spins a tale that flows like quicksilver beneath heavy gowns and gilt pageantry. O’Farrell will appear in conversation with Ann Patchett at Parnassus Books in Nashville on October 12.
In her vibrant new novel, Dear Ann, Bobbie Ann Mason imagines the life that might have been for Ann Workman, a graduate student who pursues love and English literature against the turbulent backdrop of the 1960s. Bobbie Ann Mason will appear at the online 2021 Southern Festival of Books on October 9.
Kristen Radtke’s Seek You explores the pain and pleasure of solitude in a time of isolation. Radtke will appear at the online 2021 Southern Festival of Books.
