Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Finding Roots in Rubble

Preparing for the birth of her first child, Hannah Palmer tries to find her own childhood

When Hannah Palmer returns to her home town, she finds that Atlanta has been forever changed by the “world’s busiest airport.” Part personal memoir, part investigative journalism, Flight Path is a compelling read for anyone who lives in a rapidly-growing city. Palmer will appear at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15.

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Dreams of Happiness

Two generations struggle for love and success in Stephanie Powell Watts’s No One Is Coming to Save Us

In No One Is Coming to Save Us, Stephanie Powell Watts takes up themes from The Great Gatsby—wealth, social position, the search for love—and explores them through a twenty-first-century African-American family in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. Watts will appear at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15.

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“Ugly Love”

Book Excerpt: Ugly Love (Notes from the Negro Side of the Moon)

Earl S. Braggs is the Herman H. Battle Professor of African American Studies at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga. He is the author of ten collections of poetry. Braggs is the recipient of the Anhinga Prize, the Jack Kerouac Prize, the Gloucester College Prize, and the Cleveland State Prize. He will appear at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15.

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Booty, Booty, Booty, Booty, Rockin’ Everywhere

Ann Powers examines popular music’s propensity for sexual healing

In her new book, Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music, Ann Powers details the history of erotic power in American popular music. Powers will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on August 17 at 6:30 p.m.

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Before Extinction

Claire Cameron’s The Last Neanderthal gives words to a human ancestor who used very few

The Last Neanderthal, Claire Cameron’s third novel, toggles between the life of a fierce Neanderthal woman struggling alone to survive and give birth, and the life of an equally determined scientist struggling to defend her work as she too anticipates the birth of a child. Cameron will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15.

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See Us. Hear Us. Help Us.

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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