In Warlight, Michael Ondaatje delivers a literary mystery and a meditation on the power of memory
“In 1945 our parents went away and left us in the care of two men who may have been criminals.” Thus begins Michael Ondaatje’s newest novel, an engrossing literary mystery with echoes that hearken back to The English Patient. Ondaatje will discuss Warlight at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 19.
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Southern Writers on Writing, a new essay collection edited by Susan Cushman, offers new answers to an old question
Southern Writers on Writing is not the first attempt to ask what it means to tell about the South, but it is distinguished by the presence of diverse voices, from sage elders like Clyde Edgerton and Lee Smith to rising stars like Julie Cantrell, M.O. Walsh, and Michael Farris Smith. Cushman will join several contributors for a panel discussion at Novel in Memphis on May 5.
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Daniel Wolff’s Grown-Up Anger examines the social impact of American folk music
In Grown-Up Anger, Daniel Wolff looks at the rise and fall of organized labor and folk music’s role in speaking truth to power. Wolff will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 2. Joining him will be musicians Rayna Gellert and Abigail Washburn.
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In Fire Sermon, Jamie Quatro explores the intersections of love, obsession, and spirituality
With virtuosic lyricism and the striking juxtaposition of religious and erotic obsession, Jamie Quatro’s Fire Sermon delivers an unforgettable and astonishingly original portrait of the moral and psychological consequences of unfaithfulness. Quatro will discuss Fire Sermon at Arts Build in Chattanooga on January 11 and at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 6.
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In The Futilitarians, Anne Gisleson limns grief, loss, crisis, and regeneration
In 2011, still recovering from the loss of her twin sisters (to suicide) and her beloved father (to leukemia), Anne Gisleson helped form the Existential Crisis Reading Group: a book club bent on exploring the big questions through reading and discussion. Gisleson will discuss The Futilitarians at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15.
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In The Last Ballad, Wiley Cash explores the bloody history of Depression-era textile mills
In The Last Ballad, Wiley Cash delivers a searing account of the conflict between labor and ownership in the textile mills of early twentieth-century Appalachia. Cash will appear at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15, and at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on October 12 at 6 p.m.
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