Book Excerpt: Visiting Hours
Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum, a Nashville native, is the author of Ghost Gear and editor of Apocalypse Now: Poems & Prose from the End of Days. He’s the acquisitions editor for Upper Rubber Boot Books and the founder and editor of PoemoftheWeek.com and the Floodgate Poetry Series.
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Multimedia artist Jessica Ingram explores the South’s racist history in Road Through Midnight
Multimedia artist Jessica Ingram, who grew up in Nashville, commemorates acts of resistance to segregation and white supremacist terror in Road Through Midnight. The book includes her photographs of sites scarred by racial violence, as well as interviews with victims’ families and journalists who covered the crimes.
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Madison Smartt Bell discusses the life and work of novelist Robert Stone
In the preface to Child of Light, his biography of novelist Robert Stone, Madison Smartt Bell describes Stone as a man who “confronted the world with the bright, acidic irony of an extraordinarily perceptive, bitterly disappointed idealist.” It’s a vivid and precise summary of the complex artist who emerges in this comprehensive book.
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YA author Court Stevens ratchets up the suspense in The June Boys
“Someone is stealing Tennessee’s boys. Report suspicious behavior.” Ominous messages on local billboards set the scene in Court Stevens’ latest young adult mystery, The June Boys.
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Erik Larson brings Churchill and the Blitz to life
In The Splendid and the Vile, bestselling author Erik Larson explains how Winston Churchill inspired the British people to keep fighting through the dark days when Britain stood alone against the Nazis.
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How Hancock County embraced its Melungeon secret
In Beyond the Sunset: The Melungeon Outdoor Drama, 1969-1976, Wayne Winkler explores how Tennessee’s poorest county turned to an unlikely source for economic revival: an outdoor drama about the region’s Melungeon heritage. The play ran for just five seasons but changed the county’s view of its mixed-race neighbors forever.
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