A debut story collection depicts magical metamorphoses in the wake of catastrophe
Nathan Elias’ debut work of fiction, The Reincarnations, is billed as a story collection but feels like a coherent whole. The 12 stories feature recurrent characters and incidents described from…
George Saunders shares his passion for 19th-century Russian masters of the short story
In the introduction to A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders explains that this book emerged from a course on the 19th-century Russian short story he teaches…
Michael Farris Smith imagines the troubled pre-Gatsby years of Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway
At first glance, Michael Farris Smith, known for novels that explore the kudzu-darkened backroads of Mississippi, seems a world away from F. Scott Fitzgerald, the writer who coined the phrase…
Daniel Hornsby’s novel Via Negativa follows a retired priest’s troubled pilgrimage
The narrator of Via Negativa, the debut novel from Memphis writer Daniel Hornsby, conceals his name for 90 pages, until he visits a roadside attraction in Kansas called “Martin’s Hole…
In David James Poissant’s Lake Life, a family’s farewell to their summer home leads to traumatic reckoning
The vacation home at the center of Lake Life, David James Poissant’s first novel, is cramped and inelegant, a double-wide trailer with a makeshift porch overlooking Lake Christopher in western…
Greetings from New Nashville considers the city’s transformation and its future
When did Nashville become new? In Greetings from New Nashville, a collection of essays, editor Steve Haruch and 17 other contributors nominate various watershed years. Was it 1998 (Haruch’s own…
