In Nina LaCour’s latest YA novel, a young woman faces her ghosts
Nina LaCour’s We Are Okay gives up its terrible secrets slowly. College freshman Marin Delaney is haunted by the ghosts of her past—what she remembers, what she now knows to be the truth, and what she has yet to understand. LaCour will appear at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15.
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In his new middle-grade novel, Alan Gratz illuminates the universal plight of refugees
Alan Gratz has distilled the horrors of Nazi Germany, Castro’s Cuba, and the Syrian refugee crisis into a beautifully written, heart-wrenching balancing act between three pre-teen protagonists separated by decades but united by courage. Gratz will discuss Refugee at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15.
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Sheba Karim’s meditation on desire and distance embraces and enlarges the YA genre
It’s the summer after high school, and Shabnam Qureshi has a simple plan: “Get through the summer. Get to Penn. Begin anew. Don’t look back.” But as Sheba Karim demonstrates in That Thing We Call a Heart, her second book for young adults, life is rarely so simple. Karim will appear on May 9 at 2 p.m. at Parnassus Books in Nashville.
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For two teenagers, a same-sex love affair plays out against a backdrop of family grief
In How to Make a Wish, Nashville YA author Ashley Herring Blake deftly describes the highs and lows of a burgeoning love affair between two young women dealing with personal problems that would challenge adults of any age. Blake will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 2 at 6:30 p.m.
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Anne Lamott offers her signature musings on mercy
In her new book, Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy, Anne Lamott is on the same page as Shakespeare when it comes to mercy, believing that it “blesseth him that gives and him that takes” and, frankly, that we all need a lot more of it. Lamott will discuss her new book, Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy, at First Presbyterian Church in Knoxville on April 9 at 7 p.m.
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Memphis’s Susan Cushman has curated a collection of essays by women, for women
In A Second Blooming: Becoming the Women We Are Meant to Be, Memphis writer Susan Cushman has compiled an anthology dedicated to female empowerment. Cushman and four Memphis contributors will read from and sign copies of the book at the Memphis Botanic Garden on March 26 at 3 p.m.
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