2017 Southern Festival of Books

A Simple, Gentle Joy

A novelist reflects on the pleasures of the Southern Festival of Books, opening today in Nashville

By Susannah Felts | October 13, 2017

Every year, I’m reminded of how refreshing it is to be among folks who love the sorcery of the written word. The Southern Festival of Books draws a diverse crowd, a vast spectrum of ages and ethnicities. Some gobble up mysteries; some nip at the syllables of poetry. Some are there to share their work, some are there to support those who share their work, and all of us are there because we have fallen under the spell of what can be done with words on a page.

The Earth Remembers

Anna-Marie McLemore weaves a tale of cursed families and forbidden love

By Faye Jones | October 12, 2017

The cursed characters in Anna-Marie McLemore’s magical-realist novel, Wild Beauty, have the power to bring plants into bloom, but the people they love are doomed to vanish. McLemore will appear at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15.

Portal of the Years

Rodney Jones’s novel in verse, Village Prodigies, roves the lives of six childhood friends

By Emily Choate | October 11, 2017

Rodney Jones’s powerful novel in verse picks through the memories of six young men from a small Southern town. Jones will discuss Village Prodigies at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 13-15.

Religion and Dogs and Woods

Clyde Edgerton talks with Chapter 16 about the Southern literary landscape

By Michael Ray Taylor | October 10, 2017

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.

Reading, Thinking, Grieving, Drinking

In The Futilitarians, Anne Gisleson limns grief, loss, crisis, and regeneration

By Ed Tarkington | October 9, 2017

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.

The Most Wanted Man Since Dillinger

Philip Jett gives a nonfiction account of the 1960 manhunt for a Colorado killer in The Death of an Heir

By Tina Chambers | October 6, 2017

Philip Jett’s The Death of an Heir: Adolph Coors III and the Murder that Rocked an American Brewing Dynasty is a gripping tale in which wealth and privilege fail to shield a family from suffering. Jett will appear at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15, and at Novel in Memphis on October 25.

Tender Headed (National Poetry Series)

By Olatunde Osinaike
Akashic Books
80 pages
17.95

“In Tender Headed, Olatunde Osinaike asks the question, what makes a man, and what makes a man like me? As he interrogates the inner and outer workings of masculinity in all its sharp and tender parts, and the way a Black man meets the world, his poems strut and duck and weave across their pages. These poems unpack the ingredients of being and make a meal of language.”

~ Camille Rankine, author of Incorrect Merciful Impulses