Southbound
Imani Perry’s South to America weaves history, travelogue, and memoir to argue that the U.S. South is not a place apart, but central to the American story.
2022 Southern Festival of Books
Defining One’s Place in the World
When a young woman’s estranged father is found dead, her investigation into a seemingly insignificant vintage map in his possession leads her down a path fraught with riddles, conspiracies, secrets, and lies. Peng Shepherd’s The Cartographers is an otherworldly thriller that will appeal to fans of V.E. Schwab’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library.
Let’s Go, Girls
In Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be, Marissa R. Moss gets to the deep struggles women in country music have faced and argues for a more inclusive industry. Moss will discuss Her Country at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 10 and at the Tennessee State Museum on June 9.
Reckoning as an Act of Love
In My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song, Emily Bingham reveals the strange career of revisions, evasions, lies, mythmaking, and forgetting behind Stephen Foster’s iconic ballad.
“Behind”
Watermark is Jeff Hardin’s seventh collection of poetry. His work has been honored with the Nicholas Roerich Prize, the Donald Justice Poetry Prize, and the X.J. Kennedy Prize. Hardin will discuss Watermark at a virtual event hosted on Zoom on April 14 at 6 p.m. CDT.
The Right to Decide
Inspired by true events in 1970s Alabama, Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s third novel, Take My Hand, gives voice to a Black physician at the end of her career who can’t be at peace until she shares the story of two girls victimized by racism and the arrogance of good intentions. Perkins-Valdez will discuss Take My Hand at Novel in Memphis on May 7.
