Beth Waltemath

April 14, 2015 What Comes Next and How to Like It, Abigail Thomas’s newest memoir, both exemplifies and transcends its genre as Thomas meditates on what it means to edit life down to essentials: love, forgiveness, pleasure, and letting go. Thomas will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 21, 2015, at 6:30 p.m

November 24, 2014 Short Stories by Jesus, the latest book by Vanderbilt professor Amy-Jill Levine, analyzes a misunderstood and nearly forgotten literary form: the parable. Levine, a professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt, argues that Jesus’s parables have been domesticated into easy lessons, robbed of their power to surprise, subvert, and indict.

April 23, 2014 A married father of two fighting a rare cancer, Christian Wiman faces the bottomless questions of existence and craves the “poetry and prose of knowing.” His memoir, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer, draws on both forms to describe his own experiences of grace. Wiman will speak at the Buechner Institute at King University in Bristol on April 24, 2014, at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

April 9, 2013 Cheryl Strayed’s ability to tell her story while inviting others to ask questions of their own lives has attracted the attention of Oprah Winfrey, who made Wild the first pick in Oprah’s Book Club 2.0, and Reese Witherspoon, who will produce and star in the film version of the book. With Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things appearing within months of each other last year—and with both shooting straight to The New York Times bestseller list—Strayed’s success seems nothing less than meteoric. She will appear at the Nashville Public Library on April 18 at 6:15 p.m. as part of the Salon@615 series. The event is free and open to the public.