Margaret Lazarus Dean’s prizewinning Leaving Orbit wows the critics
October 22, 2015 Prior to Margaret Lazarus Dean’s reading at Parnassus Books in Nashville on October 23, 2015, Chapter 16 surveys the critical reception of Dean’s Graywolf Nonfiction Award-winning book, Leaving Orbit: Notes from the Last Days of American Spaceflight.
In Linda Lee Peterson’s latest novel, a San Francisco editor returns to her Southern roots to unravel ancient family intrigue and forbidden love
October 22, 2015 In Linda Lee Peterson’s third novel, The Spy on the Tennessee Walker, San Francisco magazine editor Maggie Fiori learns that her great-great-great grandmother was a nurse who treated soldiers on both sides of the Civil War and who engaged in a love affair with a freed slave. Peterson will appear at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on October 27, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.
Barry Moser’s memoir about growing up in Chattanooga tackles hard questions of race and family
October 21, 2015 On the first page of his new memoir about growing up with his brother in postwar Chattanooga, the artist Barry Moser makes it clear that this won’t be the usual story of a Southern boyhood, full of swimming holes and fishing poles: “Without opportunity to be otherwise,” he writes, “Tommy and I were racists.” Moser will discuss We Were Brothers at Parnassus Books in Nashville on October 26, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.
In Raymond Barfield’s new novel, a young woman accepts her simple life and flawed neighbors as they are, and the result is an unusual love story
October 20, 2015 When Yslea, the narrator of Raymond Barfield’s debut novel, The Book of Colors, wanders past three row houses along the railroad tracks in North Memphis and asks for a glass of water, she begins a difficult but ultimately life-affirming series of relationships.
Knoxville native David Madden examines the complex legacy of the Civil War
October 19, 2015 In The Tangled Web of the Civil War and Reconstruction: Readings and Writings from a Novelist’s Perspective, David Madden illustrates the difficulty inherent in unraveling the various narratives and ongoing effects of America’s defining conflict. He will discuss the book at the East Tennessee History Center in Knoxville on November 10, 2015, at noon.
October 16, 2015 Gaylord Brewer is a professor at Middle Tennessee State University, where he founded and for more than twenty years edited the journal Poems & Plays. His most recent books are a ninth collection of poetry, Country of Ghost, and the cookbook-memoir The Poet’s Guide to Food, Drink, & Desire, both published in 2015. At noon on October 23, 2015, Brewer will give a free public reading at University Center on the campus of the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga.
