Chapter 16 - Part 555

The Magnificence of Pain

In The Illumination, Kevin Brockmeier imagines a world in which suffering becomes incandescent

By Ed Tarkington | February 7, 2011

February 7, 2011 In the world we wake up to every day, even when the sight of a body in pain is riveting, the image nevertheless arouses a compulsive cringe. But what if we woke up instead to a world in which bodily trauma was somehow made, literally, beautiful? In The Illumination, novelist Kevin Brockmeier imagines a world in which all pain glimmers and shines, transforming the very nature of suffering. Brockmeier will read from and discuss The Illumination at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on February 7 at 6 p.m.

Ecrire des Poèmes

Join poet Marilyn Kallet for a sensuous workshop in France

By Margaret Renkl | February 7, 2011

February 7, 2011 Poet Marilyn Kallet, director of the creative-writing program at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, will once again host a poetry workshop in Auvillar, France. The program runs May 14 through May 21 at the Brune gîte, a luxury bed and breakfast in a 12th century village that is, according to Kallet, “one of the hundred most beautiful villages in France.” Read more about this unique program here. Two partial scholarships, as well as a number of discounts, are available.

Payback, Finally

Rebecca Skloot’s foundation benefits the descendents of Henrietta Lacks

By Margaret Renkl | February 4, 2011

February 4, 2011 Thanks to enormous pre-publication buzz, former Memphis writer Rebecca Skloot had a bestseller on her hands within a day of launching The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, her nonfiction book about the woman behind the first immortal cell line in medical history. But unlike the pharmaceutical companies who owe many of their most successful drugs to research involving HeLa cells, Skloot was determined from the beginning to make sure that the descendants of Henrietta Lacks would benefit from her own windfall.

Magic Surrealism

In his stunning first novel, poet Philip Stephens journeys deep into the Missouri Ozarks

By Michael Ray Taylor | February 3, 2011

February 3, 2011 Philip Stephens’s debut novel, Miss Me When I’m Gone, is a brilliant quest narrative featuring two protagonists, one light and one dark, who move through a landscape where the magic realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez operates in a setting that evokes William Faulkner and with a soundtrack that could have come straight out of Willie Nelson’s fever dreams. Stephens will read from Miss Me When I’m Gone at Borders Books in Nashville on February 5 at 2 p.m.

Starting with a Footnote

Dolen Perkins-Valdez turns a little-known bit of history into a powerfully moving novel

By Susannah Felts | February 2, 2011

February 2, 2011 Wilberforce University, near Xenia, Ohio, is one of the nation’s oldest historically black universities, the first to be owned and operated by African Americans. Behind its founding in 1863 is a fascinating yet all-but-forgotten piece of history: the school stands on what was once the site of Tawawa Resort, a place where Southern slaveholders vacationed, often in the company of their enslaved mistresses. It’s this setting that Dolen Perkins-Valdez imagines as the backdrop for her engrossing debut novel, Wench, which Publishers’ Weekly called “heart-wrenching, intriguing, original and suspenseful.”

Peachtree Memories

When you come from a family who never heard of the Southern storytelling tradition, your only recourse is literature

By Tina LoTufo | February 1, 2011

February 2, 2011 Unlike most publishing houses, we accepted unsolicited manuscripts, and it was my job to wade through the slush pile and pluck out the undiscovered gems. At least half of them turned out to be memoirs of the authors’ rural childhoods. Although there were times when I thought I would go mad if I had to read one more account of hog-killing time, I wrote scores of rejection letters in which I tried to soften the blow with assurances that their children and grandchildren would treasure these priceless written histories for years to come. I doubt the recipients were much comforted, but I was sincere. In fact, I was envious.

Tias and Primas: On Knowing and Loving the Women Who Raise Us

By Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, illustrated by Josie Del Castillo
Seal Press
304 pages
$30

“Within these pages, I found my abuela, my tías and my primas — laughing, crying, and nodding alongside me. This book is a gift of understanding, and loving one’s family, even when our families are complicated and painful. It’s a beautiful reminder of the power of storytelling and the profound connection of kinship.”

~ Paola Mendoza, author, organizer and filmmaker