In her new memoir, Whit Hill remembers the pre-icon Madonna
September 15, 2011 In her new memoir, Not About Madonna, Nashville songwriter remembers her skinny, wise-cracking, indefatigable college roommate—before she became an international icon. Hill will appear at the 2011 Southern Festival of Books, held October 14-16 in Nashville.
Read more“The Mountaintop” by Katori Hall opens October 13
September 15, 2011 Katori Hall, a 29-year-old playwright from Memphis, has suddenly found herself not just Broadway-bound but also part of an historic moment for the Great White Way: Hall’s play, The Mountaintop, will be performed during the same season as new work by two other African-American women, Lydia R. Diamond and Suzan-Lori Parks.
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Memphis author and bookseller Corey Mesler talks about art and commerce
September 14, 2011 Corey Mesler has eight books of poetry and fiction to his credit and has received praise from the likes of John Grisham and Robert Olen Butler, but he’s probably best known to his fellow Memphians as the co-owner of Burke’s Books, a venerable store founded in 1875. With two new books this year—Before the Great Troubling, a volume of poetry, and a collection of short fiction, Notes Toward the Story & Other Stories—he talks with Chapter 16 about his art and his business. Mesler will read and sign Before the Great Troubling and Notes Toward the Story & Other Stories at Burke’s Books on September 15 at 6 p.m.
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In Diana Abu-Jaber’s new novel, a teen leaves home for no reason—and upends her family’s future
September 13, 2011 Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber is structured like literary Chinese handcuffs: no character in this book can be free without first moving closer to the others, and no reader can finish it without looping backwards, too, through her own history. Abu-Jaber will discuss and sign copies of Birds of Paradise at the Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on September 21 at 6 p.m.
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Tracy Barrett’s retelling of the Theseus myth subverts ancient tradition—and will delight young readers
September 12, 2011 Tracy Barrett has a way with classical myth. Her last young-adult novel, the brilliant King of Ithaka, is an astonishingly original and surefooted reworking of Homer’s Odyssey, in which she somehow discovered new paths on what must be the Western canon’s most heavily trodden ground. Her newest book, Dark of the Moon, takes another famous Greek legend—the story of Theseus and the Minotaur—and makes it fresh and fascinating, even as it honors the foundations of the original tale.
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Acclaimed journalist Melissa Fay Greene delivers a witty account of her exceptional family
September 9, 2011 For acclaimed journalist Melissa Fay Greene and her husband, the prospect of being home alone after their four children grew up was not a happy one. No Biking in the House Without a Helmet is Greene’s account of how her family adopted five more children—a son from Bulgaria, and three sons and a daughter from Ethiopia—and found all their lives “enlivened and enriched” in the process. Melissa Fay Greene will appear at the 2011 Southern Festival of Books, held October 14-16 in Nashville.
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