Howlin’ Books in Nashville makes room on the shelf for music books and more
June 13, 2013 Howlin’ Books at Grimey’s Too is the brainchild of bookseller Gwil Owen and bookkeeper Jessica Kimbrough, who saw an under-served audience among Nashville’s readers. In the three months since the store opened, Howlin’ has become ground zero for the city’s bohemian literary set—post-hippies, neo-Beats—and the next generation of Kurt Vonnegut fans couldn’t be happier.
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J.M. Blaine writes about his life as a mental-health interventionist and unconventional Christian
June 12, 2013 Early in his new memoir, Nashville author J.M. Blaine responds with humor when asked about his job as a late-night crisis counselor: “I’ve made tens of dollars in mental health,” he says, pointing to his battered Saturn. But the truth is more complex, and Midnight, Jesus & Me is a powerful work of creative nonfiction that describes Blaine’s own unusual spiritual journey.
In an astonishing memoir, David Berg pieces together his brother’s life and death
June 11, 2013 Run, Brother, Run traces the split arcs of two brothers’ lives: one a celebrated trial attorney, the other murdered in 1968 by a hired assassin. David Berg will discuss his memoir at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 15, 2013, at 2 p.m.
A new anthology of Appalachian literature celebrates mountain writers
June 10, 2013 The aptly titled Appalachian Gateway: An Anthology of Contemporary Stories and Poetry is meant to be less an exhaustive representation of the region’s great talents than an introduction that will draw more readers into the field. With a diverse and prize-winning group of writers including Nikki Giovanni, Barbara Kingsolver, Jeff Daniel Marion, Sharyn McCrumb, Ron Rash, Lee Smith, and Charles Wright, the collection will no doubt do that and more.
Legendary musician Steve Earle makes another foray into the literary world
June 7, 2013 In a wide-ranging interview with Exclaim!’s Jason Schneider, musician Steve Earle has announced his plans to write a memoir in addition to the novel he already has in progress. “It’s the book I swore I would never write,” he said, explaining that the motivation for changing his mind was clear: “There were a lot of reasons that mainly had to do with money. My little boy has autism, and the school that he just started in last week, finally, is really expensive, and I don’t have that much money,” Earle explained.
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Twenty-five years after the publication of his memoir about Southern politics, journalist James D. Squires talks with Chapter 16 about The Secrets of the Hopewell Box
June 6, 2013 When it first appeared in 1986, The Secrets of the Hopewell Box by James D. Squires was a Tennessee sensation, dealing with the seldom-exposed underbelly of ward politics in a Southern city on the cusp of social change. The book got good regional and national exposure for a couple of years, but inexplicably the publisher let it go out of print. Now, Vanderbilt University Press has reissued it in paperback, giving readers a second chance to be entertained by and instructed about a period of local history that had national implications in politics, civil rights, reapportionment, and the sensational federal trial of labor boss Jimmy Hoffa.
