Novelist Lauren Groff headlines the 2016 Mid-South Book Festival
Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff’s third novel, was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in fiction. Groff will be among seventy writers at the 2016 Mid-South Book Festival, held in Memphis September 9-11, 2016. Today she speaks with Chapter 16 about marriage, the trials of portraying anger and death in fiction, and the pleasures of writing in longhand.
Patrick Ryan’s new stories place buoyant, striving characters in a small patch of Florida
Set in Cape Canaveral in the late twentieth century, Patrick Ryan’s stories conjure a rich variety of intriguing souls, from a pregnant teen who wants to be Miss America to a gay sixteen-year-old with a crush on an ex-astronaut. Ryan will discuss The Dream Life of Astronauts in conversation with Ann Patchett at Parnassus Books in Nashville on July 19, 2016, at 6:30 p.m.
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A life with pets forms the scaffolding of a new memoir by columnist Rheta Grimsley Johnson
May 6, 2016 Syndicated columnist Rheta Grimsley Johnson will talk about The Dogs Buried Over the Bridge: A Memoir in Dog Years, at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on May 10, 2016, at 6:30 p.m. and at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on May 15, 2016, at 2 p.m. The book chronicles Johnson’s loves, losses, and Mississippi home life by way of the dogs who shared the journey.
Siblings stare down their childhoods in Ann Packer’s The Children’s Crusade
April 11, 2016 Bestselling novelist Ann Packer will appear at The Skillery in Nashville on April 14, 2016, at 6:30 p.m. to read from and sign The Children’s Crusade, released this month in paperback. The novel, about a family that puts down roots in the 1950s in a wooded area that will become Silicon Valley, shifts among narratives by four siblings, each affected by the chemistry of their mother’s indifference and their father’s devotion.
Nation on the Take by Wendell Potter and Nick Penniman explains how the wealthy control Washington
March 30, 2016 In Nation on the Take, investigative journalists Wendell Potter and Nick Penniman make an overwhelming case that money is polluting government and buying not just influence but legislation favorable to, and sometimes written by, special interests.
Human traffickers bring harsh reality to a bachelor party in Chris Bohjalian’s latest novel
January 12, 2016 Chris Bohjalian’s new novel, The Guest Room, brings the violence of the international sex trade to a well-to-do New York suburb, as a bachelor party becomes the scene of a bid for freedom by two young women held by Russian mobsters. Bohjalian will appear at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis January 13, 2016.
