August 11, 2015 Perhaps the most striking feature of Appalachia Now: Short Stories of Contemporary Appalachia, a new anthology edited by Larry Smith and Knoxville writer Charles Dodd White, is the sheer variety of characters found in it. The people in these stories fight against preconceived types and offer a rich, bold picture of an Appalachia that defies categorization.
July 9, 2015 In Long Black Curl, the latest installment in Alex Bledsoe’s Tufa series, Appalachian blood feuds recur through the generations like repetitions of an Irish reel. When Bo-Kate Wisby, an exiled daughter of Cloud County, returns home, she initiates a brutal power struggle that will test her entire community. Alex Bledsoe will discuss Long Black Curl at Parnassus Books in Nashville on July 18, 2015, at 2 p.m.
June 15, 2015 In her acclaimed novel, Euphoria, Lily King draws from the life of Margaret Mead to create a story of three fictional anthropologists propelled into a passionate and dangerous love triangle. Lily King will discuss Euphoria at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 17, at 6:30 p.m.
May 21, 2015 In Fresh Water From Old Wells, Cindy Henry McMahon reveals a tumultuous family history that encompasses both civil-rights activism and backwoods hippie enclaves as she seeks to restore her own fractured memories. McMahon will discuss Fresh Water from Old Wells at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on May 31, 2015, at 2 p.m.
April 27, 2015 When Anna—the ex-pat heroine of Jill Alexander Essbaum’s debut novel, Hausfrau—falls into an extramarital tangle with a fellow foreigner, the affair seems contrary to her entire nature as a person and threatens the passive surface of her life. Jill Alexander Essbaum will discuss Hausfrau at The Skillery in Nashville on May 1, 2015, at 7 p.m. The event, sponsored by The Porch Writers’ Collective and Parnassus Books, is free and open to the public.
April 17, 2015 In Denton Loving’s debut poetry collection, Crimes Against Birds, the rhythms of the waking world and the dream world hold equal power. Set among the narrow mountain roads, apple orchards, and cattle pastures of southern Appalachia, these poems push beyond bucolic portraits of nature. They ask us to wake up even as we descend into dreams.
