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.
February 3, 2013 Writer, physicist, teacher, and philanthropist Alan Lightman is best known for his novels, including the widely acclaimed Einstein’s Dreams, but in his new collection of essays, The Accidental Universe, he sets fiction aside to confront head-on some of the big questions about reason, faith, and our place in the cosmos. Lightman will appear at Rhodes College in Memphis on February 6, 2014, at 7:30 p.m. and at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on February 7, 2014, at 5:30 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public.
January 21, 2014 In Prosperous Friends, her third novel, Christine Schutt surveys the marriage of Ned and Isabel, a deeply unhappy pair. Through a succession of exquisitely wrought scenes, she conveys the yearning sadness of a love that never quite happens. Schutt—a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize—recently answered questions from Chapter 16 via email. She will give a free public reading at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on January 23, 2014, at 7 p.m. in Buttrick Hall Room 102.
December 11, 2013 In Diddy Wah Diddy, Memphis author Corey Mesler offers up a collage of short pieces that create a fanciful fictional history of Beale Street, the birthplace of the blues. Mesler calls the book a “collage novel,” a hint about the rich mix of fantasy, wordplay, and good-hearted bawdiness to be found therein.
November 13, 2013 Nikki Giovanni is a poet who speaks directly about the business of living, whether she’s celebrating simple pleasures, observing the difficulties of love, or denouncing injustice. On November 20, 2013, at 6:15 p.m., she will discuss her new collection, Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid, at the Nashville Public Library. The event, part of the Salon@615 series, is free and open to the public.
