Chapter 16 - Part 358

Making a Necessity of Memory

Poet Natasha Trethewey talks about history, her work, her biracial identity, and the violence in her past

By Maria Browning | March 16, 2015

March 16, 2015 Natasha Trethewey won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2007 for her third book, Native Guard, which explores the complex interplay of personal and collective history. Natasha Trethewey will give a reading at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on March 19, 2015, at 7 p.m. The event, which will be held in Wilson Hall Room 126, is free and open to the public.

Poetry in the Air

On the weekly radio show “Difficult Listening,” David M. Harris shares poetry, music, world news, advice, and memories

By Sarah Norris | March 13, 2015

March 13, 2014 Broadcast on Sunday mornings from 10 a.m. to noon, Radio Free Nashville’s “Difficult Listening” program is hosted by David M. Harris. The show centers on poetry: Harris, a writer himself, reads poems on the air and offers his own interpretations.

“I'd Rather Be There than Any Place I Know”

In Beale Street Dynasty, Preston Lauterbach chronicles the tumultuous history of Memphis

By Randy Fox | March 12, 2015

March 12, 2015 Preston Lauterbach’s Beale Street Dynasty: Sex, Song, and the Struggle for the Soul of Memphis paints a beguiling portrait of American ambition, ingenuity, tragedy, and the birth of the blues. Lauterbach will discuss the book at Rhodes College in Memphis on March 19, 2015, at 6 p.m. in the McCallum Ballroom of the Bryan Campus Life Center. The event, part of the three-day Beale Street Symposium, is free and open to the public.

What Makes Us Who We Are?

In her debut novel, Memphis native Moriah McStay explores the way our experiences shape us

By Tracy Barrett | March 11, 2015

March 11, 2015 Fiona Doyle’s face was horribly scarred when she was a little girl. But what if the accident had never happened? Moriah McStay’s Everything That Makes You follows Fiona and an alternative, unscarred version of herself, exploring how much (and how little) would change if we could turn back the clock and “fix” what we think is wrong with our lives. McStay will read from her debut novel at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on March 17, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.

Crazy in Mississippi

Jamie Kornegay’s Soil introduces a Faulknerian character stuck in a world of Internet conspiracies and noisy four-wheelers

By Michael Ray Taylor | March 10, 2015

March 10, 2015 What would happen if the grandson of a Snopes studied sustainable agriculture and Internet-fueled apocalypse scenarios? Nothing good, as Jamie Kornegay suggests in Soil, his beautifully written debut novel. Kornegay will read at Parnassus Books in Nashville on March 17, 2015, and at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on March 18, 2015. Both events will take place at 6:30 p.m.

Fiction as Autobiography

Claire Vaye Watkins talks with novelist Adam Ross about her celebrated debut story collection, Battleborn

By Adam Ross | March 9, 2015

March 9, 2015 Claire Vaye Watkins, writes novelist Adam Ross, has “known the worst kind of loss. She’s also transformed it into startling, original fiction.” Watkins will appear at Vanderbilt University on March 12, 2015, at 7 p.m. This event, part of the Vanderbilt Visiting Writers Series, is free and open to the public.

The Rise and Fall of Treason in English History

By Allen Boyer and Mark Nicholls
Routledge
340 pages
$180

The book “explores the reasons why treason coalesced around specific offences agreed by both the monarch and the wider political nation, why it became an essential instrument of enforcement in high politics, and why, over the past three hundred years, it has gradually fallen into disuse while remaining on the statute book.”

~the publisher