Maria Browning

April 8, 2014 With MaddAddam, the final book in Margaret Atwood’s trilogy about a bioengineered apocalypse, the story takes a turn toward the comic, transforming a dystopian vision into a darkly funny fairy tale for grown-ups. Atwood will discuss MaddAddam at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville on April 11, 2014, at 8 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

March 25, 2014 In his debut novel, The Visitors, Patrick O’Keeffe tells the story of a modern-day Irish immigrant who finds that the secrets and conflicts of his home village follow him to America, haunting his thoughts and pulling him toward a troubling encounter with a boyhood nemesis. Patrick O’Keeffe will discuss The Visitors at the University of Tennessee’s Hodges Library in Knoxville on March 31, 2014, at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

February 18, 2014 Elizabeth Spencer’s story collection, Starting Over, explores the exquisite tension between husbands and wives, parents and children, familial belonging and the yearning of the individual heart. Spencer has published seven previous story collections, and she won the first of her five O. Henry prizes in 1960. She is, by any measure, a master of the form, and the stories in Starting Over show all the deftness and insight for which she has long been known.