May 3, 2011 In her new book, Gone: A Photographic Plea for Preservation, architect and photographer Nell Dickerson teams up with the late Shelby Foote, her cousin by marriage, to offer two intertwining tales of a disappearing South. The first is a Foote novella that recounts the loss of historic structures to the torches of Union soldiers during the Civil War nearly 150 years ago. The second is the story told through Dickerson’s images, which document the neglect, poverty, and apathy that have caused the disappearance of so many historic buildings since the war. Nell Dickerson will discuss Gone: A Photographic Plea for Presentation at DK Booksellers in Memphis on May 7 at 1 p.m.

April 29, 2011 On myriad motherhood subjects—think sanctimommies, sex after baby, the challenges of monogamy, and an endless stream of dirty socks—Kyran Pittman is an eminently quotable writer with a sharp wit, a kind of David Sedaris for modern breeders. To read her memoir-in-essays, Planting Dandelions: Field Notes from a Semi-Domesticated Life, is to want to copy and paste sentences and whole passages repeatedly into emails to your mom pals. In these essays, Pittman’s quippy, often self-deprecating humor makes for a lively read as she simply and eloquently homes in on the significance of universal domestic ups and downs. Pittman will read from Planting Dandelions at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on May 5 at 5:30 p.m.