Jesmyn Ward’s Let Us Descend is a chronicle of survival and liberation
Following her National Book Award-winning 2017 novel, Sing Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward returns with Let Us Descend, the story of an enslaved young woman’s journey toward liberation.
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Poet Terrance Hayes minds and mines language in a pair of new books
In a new poetry collection and a volume of prose and images, poet Terrance Hayes undertakes a multi-faceted exploration of expression. Terrance Hayes will appear at Tennessee State University’s Otis Floyd Campus Center in Nashville on October 18 at 7 p.m. as part of the 2023 Southern Festival of Books.
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Friends turn to each other in Brandon Taylor’s The Late Americans
With his second novel, The Late Americans, Brandon Taylor invites us into a study on the intersection of loneliness, belonging, and being happy.
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Scott Gloden’s debut story collection delves into America’s identity dilemma
The Great American Everything received the C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize, given annually to an emerging writer from a Southern state. Despite the expressly regional tag, the stories in Scott Gloden’s debut collection could be called new Americana.
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A posthumous collection captures a beloved writer’s brilliance
Black Folk Could Fly, a volume of selected writings by the late Randall Kenan, explores the many aspects of African American life in the South.
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Percival Everett plays with meaning and time in Dr. No
Percival Everett’s Dr. No is much ado about nothing. But in this novel, his 23rd, Everett explores the idea that perhaps nothing is something. Or everything.
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