Facing what it means to lose the instrument of your dreams
May 7, 2010 Whether it’s a sixty-dollar pawnshop mutt or a purebred collectible, for musicians, a guitar is like a pet. They chose it. It’s theirs. It fits their lap; it fits their life. They keep it because it comforts them, and—as much as is possible for an inanimate object—they love it.
Read moreWhat if the worst natural disaster of your lifetime strikes, and you don’t even get a good story out of it?
May 7, 2010 Fortunate. Lucky. How many times have I said these words in the last week? How many times have I felt them as I clicked through photos of the devastation, feeling like a rubbernecker on the highway?
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Sparks fly in Jeffrey Stepakoff’s Fireworks over Toccoa
May 7, 2010 In Jeffrey Stepakoff’s Fireworks over Toccoa, it’s 1945, and Lily Davis Woodward is waiting for her husband to come back from World War II. In fact, the entire town of Toccoa, Georgia, is preparing to celebrate the return of its soldiers. The welcoming ceremonies will include a fireworks display, and the town has imported a technician named Jake Russo, a handsome young immigrant from Italy. Elaborate pyrotechnics are, of course, Jake’s stock in trade (and elaborate metaphors are this genre’s). Jeffrey Stepakoff will be in Nashville on May 10 at 7 p.m. to sign copies of his debut novel at Davis-Kidd Booksellers.
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Nobody gets off scot-free in Tim Johnston’s haunting story collection, Irish Girl
May 6, 2010 Tim Johnston’s Irish Girl, winner of the 2009 Katherine Anne Porter Prize, juxtaposes random incidents of violence and loss with moving portraits of repressed longing and regret. Written in elegiac, lyrical prose, these stories suggest that the past always weighs heavily on the present, and that, sooner or later, we will all be made to pay for our sins—or our innocence. Tim Johnston will appear at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on May 6 at 7 p.m., and at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on May 7 at 1 p.m.
Read moreMargaret Lazarus Dean advises would-be novelists to slow down
May 5, 2010 A need to hurry up and finish seems to be encoded in the writerly DNA, particularly for novelists. Poets and short-story writers can have something finished to show after a few weeks’—or even a few days’—work, but novelists slog along in pained isolation for months and months and months and months. And all the while they suspect their friends of secretly thinking, “Yeah, sure, you’re writing a book.” To be taken seriously, to be recognized as a real writer, you have to finish the book, sell it, and get it out there.
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Framed for murder and left to languish in a Nicaraguan prison, Eric Volz tells his story
May 5, 2010 In 2006, Eric Volz, a Californian with Nashville ties, was living and working in Managua, Nicaragua, when he received a phone call. A former girlfriend had been brutally raped and murdered. In the days that followed, Volz went from grieving ex-suitor to prime suspect. His trial and yearlong incarceration is a horror story of trumped-up charges, judicial corruption, and political intrigue; his release is a tale of hope. Eric Volz discusses and signs Gringo Nightmare at 7 p.m. on May 5 at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville.
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