2023 Southern Festival of Books

Operation Pied Piper, initiated by the British government in September 1939, relocated thousands of children in an effort to protect them from war bombing. In Patti Callahan Henry’s novel The Secret Book of Flora Lea, young sisters Hazel and Flora find themselves displaced with so many others, thrust into a terrifying adventure. Henry will appear at the East Tennessee History Center in Knoxville on April 2.

Images of ordinary life convey warmth, grief, and complicated emotion in Edgar Kunz’s second poetry collection, Fixer. Edgar Kunz will appear at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on March 21.

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Julia Watts’ latest novel, Lovesick Blossoms, nestles the reader in the 1953 university culture of Kentucky and the lives of LGBTQ+ individuals trying to juggle public and private personas. Watts will appear at the 2023 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 21-22.

Kelsey Norris’ debut story collection, House Gone Quiet, chronicles characters at a turning point. Norris will appear at the 2023 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 21-22.

In All That Consumes Us, Erica Waters uses the supernatural to critique prestigious colleges’ very real, often elitist obsession with the past. Waters will discuss the book at Parnassus Books in Nashville on October 18.