With her latest Lady Astronaut novel, The Martian Contingency, Mary Robinette Kowal leans into a feminism that embraces multiculturalism, antiracism, and disability theory, confronting historical stereotypes in both playful and serious ways. Kowal will appear at the 2025 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 18-19.
In his memoir House of Smoke, Southern food writer and cultural commentator John T. Edge turns the spotlight on himself, seeking to understand his personal history and evolution. Edge will appear at The Rosecomb in Chattanooga on September 18, Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on October 16, the 2025 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October on 18-19, Novel in Memphis on October 22, and Parnassus Books in Nashville on October 27.
Paul Burch gets in the head of country music legend Jimmie Rodgers in his novel Meridian Rising. Burch will appear at Memphis Listening Lab on October 8 and the 2025 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 18-19.
James Wade’s Narrow the Road, set in the Shawnee Prairie of East Texas in 1932, follows the odyssey of William Carter, a 15-year-old left in charge of a failing farm and a dying mother. The boy’s quest through a damaged land to retrieve his absent father carries echoes of John Steinbeck, Cormac McCarthy, and even Ray Bradbury — yet it is wholly original and breathtaking. And there’s a gorilla. Wade will speak at the 2025 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 18–19.
By turns plaintive and exhilarating, Silas House’s All These Ghosts conjures an attentive, nuanced reckoning with what it means to call a place our home ground. House will discuss All These Ghosts at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 18-19.
In The Curious Calling of Leonard Bush, Susan Gregg Gilmore has crafted a compassionate story about a community of flawed people and the 12-year-old boy who tries his best to deliver them from the weight of the world. Susan Gregg Gilmore will appear at Novel in Memphis on September 2, Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on September 11, and the 2025 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 18-19.
