February 3, 2012 Richard Bausch’s last novel, Peace was a war story set in Northern Italy during World War II. A spare, gorgeous book hardly longer than a novella, the book was profoundly praised all over the literary world and won for Bausch the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. The Memphis writer’s forthcoming novel opens on September 11, 2001, and promises to be another examination of the human cost of war:
January 31, 2012 Lydia Peelle–a Nashville fiction writer and former speechwriter for Governor Phil Bredesen–has joined the faculty of Southern New Hampshire University’s low-residency M.F.A. program in creative writing.
January 30, 2012 When Michael Sims walked into a used bookstore in his hometown of Crossville, he discovered a set of children’s encyclopedias from the 1950s and ’60s—books which first spoke to him in the hybrid language of knowledge, curiosity, and wonder—that made him want to be a writer:
January 27, 2012 The Living End: A Memoir of Forgetting and Forgiving is the story of the way Robert Leleux navigates the labyrinth of hospitals and specialists he is cast into when his beloved grandmother is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. To anyone unfamiliar with Leleux’s sense of humor and unerring ability to locate and memorialize absurdity in all its guises, this will no doubt sound like a dreary tale best avoided until life offers no way around it. In fact it is an absolute pleasure to read this gentle, funny, deeply wise memoir of how an encounter with incurable illness turns a boy into a man, and angry people into a family again. Leleux answered questions from Chapter 16 via email prior to his appearance at Parnassus Books in Nashville on January 30 at 6 p.m.
January 24, 2012 Yesterday at a ceremony in Dallas, the American Library Association announced the winners of the Caldecott, Newbery, and Coretta Scott King awards for children’s literature. Nashville native Patricia C. McKissack has won a prestigious Corretta Scott King Honor Book Award for her children’s picture book, Never Forgotten,” illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon. The awards were announced here.
January 23, 2012 At a gala Saturday night, the National Book Critics Circle announced the names of finalists for the 2011 NBCC Awards. Representing Tennessee n the shortlist is John Jeremiah Sullivan, whose collection of essays, Pulphead, was published in November and continues to be reviewed in rhapsodic terms. Read the full list of finalists here. Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on March 8 at 6 p.m.
