Ruta Sepetys on her passion for sharing underrepresented history
FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: With her latest novel, I Must Betray You, award-winning YA author Ruta Sepetys returns to the difficult task of telling an unfamiliar story from history: the struggles of people living under the brutal Ceaușescu regime in Romania in the late 1980s. Sepetys will appear at the 2022 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 14-16.
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Woman of Light explores the persistence of stories
Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s debut novel, Woman of Light, is about stories — who gets to tell them and which ones survive. Fajardo-Anstine will appear in conversation with Destiny O. Birdsong at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 6.
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Take My Hand considers a terrible injustice fueled by prejudice and good intentions
Inspired by true events in 1970s Alabama, Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s third novel, Take My Hand, gives voice to a Black physician at the end of her career who can’t be at peace until she shares the story of two girls victimized by racism and the arrogance of good intentions. Perkins-Valdez will discuss Take My Hand at Novel in Memphis on May 7.
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Tara Stringfellow’s Memphis weaves a family’s complex stories
Tara M. Stringfellow’s debut novel Memphis opens with the North family tree, simply but beautifully designed. We can’t know where this family is going to take us, but we know there will be complexity and depth. A family tree contains multitudes. Stringfellow will celebrate the book’s release at Novel in Memphis on April 5.
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Lisa Russ Spaar’s Madrigalia curates her rich body of work
In Madrigalia, poet Lisa Russ Spaar demonstrates a deft hand and a careful eye as she combines selections from an oeuvre spanning more than 20 years. Spaar will read from her work at Vanderbilt University’s Buttrick Hall on February 17.
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Elizabeth Passarella on being a “muddled mashup of everything”
Raised in a conservative corner of Memphis, Elizabeth Passarella now makes her home in New York City, and Good Apple: Tales of a Southern Evangelical in New York tells her story: of moving to the city, getting married, becoming a Democrat, and raising a family, all while maintaining her unquenchable Christian faith.
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