Trauma runs throughout Tiana Clark’s I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood
The poems in Tiana Clark’s debut collection, I Can’t Talk About The Trees Without The Blood, propel us into encounters with traumas ancient and immediate, blurring any distinctions of time.
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Patti Smith chronicles her idiosyncratic path through the creative life in Year of the Monkey
As evidenced by the travels depicted her most recent memoir, Year of the Monkey, Patti Smith has embodied the nomadic spirit of the public troubadour for decades. Whether she’s performing riotous sets with her band or working side by side with literary lights, Smith has forged a role in our arts culture unlike any other.
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Novelist Louise Erdrich draws from her own family history for The Night Watchman
Drawn from her own family history, Louise Erdrich’s stirring new novel, The Night Watchman, unfolds around dedicated Chippewa tribal councilman Thomas Wazhushk, who enlists the help of many in his community to fight encroaching legal threat to their tribe’s survival.
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Lorraine López sends up the foibles of arts faculty in Postcards from the Gerund State
Lorraine M. López’s sharply funny collection of linked short stories, Postcards from the Gerund State, focuses on a group of women faculty navigating life and work at a small conservative women’s college.
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Ta-Nehisi Coates turns his talents toward fiction in a powerful debut novel
Journalist and essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates brings compassion and mastery to his debut novel, The Water Dancer, a story of slavery, freedom, and the mystical power of memory. Coates will discuss The Water Dancer at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville on November 6 at 6:15 p.m.
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Two small town lovers grapple with an unexpected pregnancy in Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne’s Holding on to Nothing
In her debut novel, Holding on to Nothing, Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne creates a fresh, moving story of young lovers in a small East Tennessee town and the myriad forces that trouble them as they set out to make a family. Shelburne will discuss Holding on to Nothing at The Porch in Nashville on Oct. 10 and at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville on Oct. 11-13.
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