August 26, 2014 The four friends at the center of Nickolas Butler’s debut novel, Shotgun Lovesongs, teeter between nostalgia for the young guys they once were and hopes for the men they will become. Now in their mid-thirties, they have begun to feel the weight of the choices they’ve already made. Nickolas Butler will discuss Shotgun Lovesongs at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014. All festival events are free and open to the public.
August 6, 2014 In Richard Bausch’s new novel, Before, During, After, the events of 9/11 rush Michael Faulk and his fiancée, Natasha Barrett, into a new era. Poised to begin their new life together in Memphis, they find that their experiences of that day have cast their love, and their future, into danger.
July 18, 2014 Two summers ago, when I learned I’d been accepted to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, I was weeks into a debilitating illness that had left me unable to walk and unsure how much mobility I’d ever regain. I was in constant pain, barely able to stand up on crutches. My friends and family tried to look supportive when I insisted that I would be well enough to go to Sewanee. Then they’d find a tactful way to ask me whether I’d ever seen the University of the South—all those steep hills and narrow stone steps.
June 16, 2014 In Lisa Howorth’s debut novel, Flying Shoes, Mary Byrd Thornton’s eccentric small-town world is disrupted by a call that unearths memories her family would rather forget. Howorth will discuss Flying Shoes at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 19, 2014, at 6:30 p.m., and at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on July 10, 2014.
June 9, 2014 Each summer Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art offers a colorful addition to Nashville’s literary landscape with a reading series called Annotations. Local authors discuss their work surrounded by the stunning atmosphere of the Sigourney Cheek Literary Garden. Beginning on June 13, 2014, with novelist Victoria Schwab, the events will take place at 6:30 p.m. on the second Friday of each month during the summer.
May 12, 2014 Southern Sin: True Stories of the Sultry South and Women Behaving Badly, an essay collection edited by Lee Gutkind and Beth Ann Fennelly, is about blowing it, betraying loved ones, sleeping with the wrong people, breaking the law, and, most importantly, having the nerve to fess up. In the South, this is not as easy as it may seem.
