2026 Southern Festival of Books | Chapter 16

A Complex and Gorgeous Tapestry

By Michael Ray Taylor

March 16, 2026

David George Haskell’s How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature’s Revolutionaries provides a fascinating glimpse into the evolution of all life on Earth (including us) by focusing on one small, beautiful aspect of it. Haskell will speak at Sewanee: The University of the South on March 25, Warner Parks Nature Center in Nashville on March 26, and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga on March 27. He’ll deliver the keynote address for Trails and Trilliums in Beersheba Springs on April 11.

Broke-Down Blessing

By Emily Choate

March 16, 2026

Nashville poet Donovan McAbee’s first full-length collection, Holy the Body, brims with depictions of the spiritual life that refuse dogma or sentimental cliché. McAbee will discuss Holy the Body at a book launch event at Woodmont Christian Church in Nashville on March 24, with featured guests including Ciona Rouse, Thomm Jutz, Mark Jarman, and Mary Gauthier.

Snapshots of a City

By Amy Lyons

February 23, 2026

Susan Finch’s linked short story collection, Dear Second Husband, takes readers on a layered journey through the lives of Nashvillians facing a range of emotional entanglements and predicaments. Susan Finch will appear at The Porch in Nashville on March 3 and Vanderbilt Bookstore in Nashville on April 7.

Soul Force

By Aram Goudsouzian

February 9, 2026

In collaboration with Emily Yellin, the Rev. James Lawson penned Nonviolent, a memoir explaining the principles, personalities, and struggles of a movement for social change. Yellin will speak at the Historic Woolworth Theatre in Nashville on February 18, the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis on February 20, and Novel in Memphis on March 26.

Pulling the Loose Thread

By Liz Garrigan

January 12, 2026

Boss Brooks is a decidedly untidy Southern story that is both sensational — a small-town Tennessee banker fakes his own death using a corpse stolen on a dark winter night — and quietly devastating, especially for the family he left behind. His granddaughter Kathy Bingham Turner spent years researching what she and co-author Leon Alligood characterize as “The Lie,” a carefully orchestrated deception involving friends, family, and a community willing to believe the story it was told. Turner and Alligood will discuss Boss Brooks at Appalachian WordFest in Sevierville on February 28.

Ink-Stained Elegy

By Liz Garrigan

November 10, 2025

In Come Again No More, David Wesley Williams resurrects the spirit of a dying newsroom with the lyrical gusto of a man both mourning and celebrating his first love. This is a novel about, among other things, the end of an era — the collapse of American newspapers, yes, but also the twilight of a man who is skeptical, rumpled, and in love with ink. David Wesley Williams will discuss Come Again No More at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on November 13.

“This book features fifteen notable campus forests in eleven states in the eastern United States, stretching from North Georgia, on up through the Ohio Valley and the mid-Atlantic region, into coastal Maine. … Woodlands of the Mind serves as a travel book for wanderers and armchair adventurers alike. These fifteen narratives, or “rambles,” guide readers through forests that range from small, hidden parks to vast preserves.”

~ the publisher