Ann Patchett talks about the paperback edition of her number-one New York Times-bestselling novel Commonwealth, her desire to study acting, how being a bookseller affects her reading list, the nonfiction book she’s writing about women’s suffrage, and the importance of voting in our current age.
Holly Tucker’s City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris tells a fascinating true tale of murder, torture, and intrigue in seventeenth-century Paris—and explains how the City of Light got a nickname that has persisted for centuries. Tucker will discuss the book at Star Line Books in Chattanooga on June 8 on 4 p.m.
Stephen Usery speaks with Chattanooga writer Jamie Quatro about her collection of stories, I Want to Show You More. Quatro will give a reading at Refinery Nashville on February 17 at 6:30 p.m. This event, sponsored by the Porch Writers’ Collective, is free and open to the public.
In Screening Room, Alan Lightman—poet, novelist, and playwright—tells the story of his growing-up years in Memphis during the 1950s and ‘60s. The book centers on the family legacy of Lightman’s grandfather, a movie-palace magnate, but it is also wholly the story of Lightman himself as he struggles to understand his own place as a white, Jewish man in the segregated South.
Bren Owen has an unusual gift: he can create exact reproductions of maps from memory. Bren’s creator, Memphis-based author Barry Wolverton, has a similar gift for creating worlds, though he didn’t come to recognize his own talent until much later. Wolverton will read from The Dragon’s Gate at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on November 3 at 6:30 p.m.
Prior to his readings at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis, Barnes & Noble Vanderbilt, and the Southern Festival of Books, Commercial Appeal reporter Daniel Connolly talks with Chapter 16 about The Book of Isaias: A Child of Hispanic Immigrants Seeks His Own America. The interview is available in three formats: text, podcast, and streaming audio.
