Clay Risen talks about death, history, and the rebirth of America’s first spirit
Clay Risen’s American Rye presents a comprehensive guide to a uniquely American spirit. As with his previous books on bourbon and scotch, Risen explains the evolution and making of rye whiskey before offering reviews and tasting notes on 225 contemporary expressions of the spirit.
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Margaret Verble weaves the real and imagined in When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky
FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: In her beguiling When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky, novelist Margaret Verble, a 2016 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation, reimagines, for her own wily aims, the Nashville of a century ago, with allusions to Jim Crow, W.E.B. Du Bois’ Talented Tenth, and the city’s white gentry.
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A veteran religion writer considers the changing church
In Reorganized Religion, journalist Bob Smietana examines the evolution of America’s Christian institutions.
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Ross Gay incites revolutionary thinking through sharing joy, fruit, and poetry
In his latest book of essays, Inciting Joy, poet and professor Ross Gay explores 14 ways to find joy in difficult times like these (which is to say, always). Gay appears in conversation with Adam Ross at Nashville’s Parnassus Books on November 8.
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Rebecca Bernard explores dangerous territory in Our Sister Who Will Not Die
By carefully wielding dangerous points of view, Rebecca Bernard’s debut story collection, Our Sister Who Will Not Die, discovers a fascinating variety of ways to tell stories that push into risky terrain.
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Kevin Wilson’s latest novel considers the transformative power of art
“We were responsible for one of the weirdest mysteries in American pop culture,” admits Frankie, the protagonist and narrator of Sewanee author Kevin Wilson’s latest novel, Now Is Not the Time to Panic. Wilson will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on November 7 and SoLit’s Club Lit Fundraiser in Chattanooga on November 17.
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