Allan Gurganus takes a darkly comic look at small-town life in Local Souls
October 3, 2013 In Local Souls, Allan Gurganus offers up a trio of comic novellas set in fictional Falls, North Carolina, a twenty-first-century village where the insular coziness of small-town life is being diminished by newcomers, digital communication, and natural calamity. Gurganus will appear at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13, 2013.
Poet Mary Jo Salter’s new collection, Nothing by Design, is heavy and light by turns
September 11, 2013 The poems in Mary Jo Salter’s Nothing by Design display her characteristic wit, erudition, and formal grace, along with real depth of feeling. They are entertaining in the truest sense, speaking to the reader’s mind and heart with equal urgency, and they have a bit of silliness thrown in for good measure. Salter will appear at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13, 2013. All festival events are free and open to the public.
In Claire of the Sea Light, Edwidge Danticat explores the secrets of a small Haitian town
August 20, 2013 Born in Haiti and raised there by her extended family until she joined her parents in the U.S. when she was twelve, Edwidge Danticat is a writer who can interpret both cultures, and she has a keen eye for the tensions between them. In Claire of the Sea Light, she offers a story of modern Haiti and its enduring spirit. Danticat will appear at the Nashville Public Library on August 28 at 6:30 p.m.
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Love, life, and loss are inseparable in Jill McCorkle’s new novel
August 6, 2013 Jill McCorkle’s novel Life After Life focuses on old age and death as way of seeing into the human heart. In this multi-layered narrative, death and loss are ever-present, and so is love. Jill McCorkle will read from and sign Life After Life at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13. All festival events are free and open to the public.
In David Wesley Williams’s debut novel, three generations of bad-boy musicians land in Memphis
July 30, 2013 The stories of three generations of hard-living, wife-leaving, dream-chasing musicians run through Long Gone Daddies, the debut novel by Memphis writer David Wesley Williams. A coming-of-age story, pilgrimage tale, and homage to the city of Memphis, Williams’s novel delivers a gritty saga in lyrical prose that swings from sly humor to despair with the gutsy style of a great blues song. He will appear at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13. All festival events are free and open to the public.
In a new collection edited by Lorraine López, women writers speak across the boundaries of class
July 26, 2013 The eighteen contributors to An Angle of Vision: Women Writers on Their Poor and Working-Class Roots are a multicultural group: black, white, Native American, Asian, Latina, lesbian, straight—and that’s not even a complete list of their declared identities. But for all the writers’ apparent diversity, the personal essays in this collection reveal them to be sisters under the skin. Americans don’t like to acknowledge the profound, lingering influence of class, but the stories that Vanderbilt professor Lorraine López has collected in An Angle of Vision describe a set of experiences shaped by poverty that is shared across all boundaries of color and community. Feelings and memories echo so insistently throughout the book that the writers seem almost to be speaking with a single voice. Lopez will appear at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13. All festival events are free and open to the public.
