Robert Gipe’s Weedeater portrays a coal town overrun with opioids
Robert Gipe’s new illustrated novel, Weedeater, brings back Dawn Jewell, the unforgettable protagonist of Trampoline, and adds a second narrator: the laconic title character, a lawn worker who watches the opioid crisis roll through coal country.
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Woody Skinner’s A Thousand Distant Radios tunes into odd frequencies
In his debut story collection, A Thousand Distant Radios, Woody Skinner captures the absurdity of contemporary life with spare language and offbeat humor. Skinner will appear at Novel in Memphis on March 18.
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Characters come of age in the secret city of Oak Ridge in Janet Beard’s The Atomic City Girls
The Atomic City Girls by East Tennessee native Janet Beard is set within the top-secret “instant city” of Oak Ridge during World War II. Beard will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 13 and at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on February 14.
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Clyde Edgerton talks with Chapter 16 about the Southern literary landscape
Two of Clyde Edgerton’s beloved early novels, Raney and The Floatplane Notebooks, have been reissued by the University of South Carolina Press in its Southern Revivals series. Edgerton will appear at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 13-15.
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Kristen Radtke’s Imagine Wanting Only This weaves a haunting memoir around abandoned spaces
In Imagine Wanting Only This, a graphic work of nonfiction that is part personal memoir and part travelogue of urban ruins, Kristen Radtke combines brilliant comic art with poetic prose. Radtke will appear at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15.
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Peter Cooper writes of secrets, legends, and laughs in Johnny’s Cash & Charley’s Pride
Peter Cooper—Nashville music critic, singer, and senior director of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum—relates some of his greatest musical adventures in Johnny’s Cash & Charley’s Pride. Cooper will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 16 at 6:30 p.m. and at The Station Inn in Nashville on May 26 at 8 p.m.
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