On finding the right team to root for
The Golden State Warriors’ broadcast on a local station was an excuse for Stanford students to congregate in common rooms and eating clubs, a break from studying and a topic of conversation. Plus, the Warriors of 1986-87 were a lovable, ragtag, perennially second-tier squad whose best player, Eric “Sleepy” Floyd, was famous for having the league’s most apt nickname.
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Padgett Powell’s new collection of nonfiction takes you inside the mind of an unconventional novelist
The essays in Padgett Powell’s Indigo, his first collection of nonfiction, introduce readers to the bizarre characters and brilliant prose that fans of his fiction have come to expect.
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In The Prophets, debut novelist Robert Jones Jr. reimagines the slave narrative
The plantation at the center of Robert Jones Jr.’s The Prophets is called Empty, but this bold and poetic slave story is replete with passionate characters and disturbing events. Jones will discuss The Prophets at a 2021 Southern Festival of Books virtual event on September 30.
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In Robert Olen Butler’s Late City, America’s last surviving WWI soldier reports his life story to God
In Late City, Robert Olen Butler imagines a deathbed dialogue between God and a 115-year-old man who happens to be America’s last surviving veteran of World War I. Butler will discuss Late City at the online 2021 Southern Festival of Books.
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Mary Adkins’ Palm Beach probes the ethics of the ultra-rich
In Mary Adkins’ third novel, Palm Beach, a journalist and an actor from New York learn about the eccentricities of the ultra-wealthy when they start working for billionaires in South Florida.
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In The Speaking Stone, Michael Griffith considers the contingent nature of existence
In The Speaking Stone, a collection of essays, Michael Griffith ambles among the gravestones of a Cincinnati cemetery to track the subtle ways history intersects with individuals. He reminds us, in light-hearted prose, that pride and ambition lead inexorably to oblivion.
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