Octopus is popular in cuisines around the world, creating a level of demand that naturally inspires interest in farming it — but that’s easier said than done, as Richard Schweid explains in Life on the Octopus Farm. Schweid will appear at the 2026 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 17-18.
Melissa Range’s poetry collection Printer’s Fist, awarded the 2025 Vanderbilt University Literary Prize, draws on archival research into 19th-century antislavery newspapers, pamphlets, and broadsides. Range will appear at the 2026 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 17-18.
In his latest Southern crime novel, award-winning author Henry Wise grapples with the violent history of an impoverished small town. Wise will appear at at Trezevant Manor in Memphis on September 8 and the 2026 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 17-18.
Emilee Hackney’s debut All That’s Unseen: An Appalachian Memoir traces her journey from Virginia’s coal country to Harvard, intertwining her own story with those of people and places often overlooked by the powerful. Hackney will appear at the 2026 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 17-18.
In All the Sunshine in the World, her third middle-grade novel in verse, Nashville poet and educator Caroline Brooks Dubois once again examines the aftermath of tragedy in the life of a young girl. This time, her subject is the sudden, shocking loss of a sibling. The author will appear at the 2026 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 17-18.
The Foursome, the latest novel by Christina Baker Kline, illuminates a striking piece of American history that requires a bold but deft hand in retelling: the double marriage of two sisters from North Carolina to conjoined brothers Eng and Chang Bunker. Kline will appear at the 2026 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 17-18.
