Jeremy Lloyd, an educator at Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont, writes about the many forms of sustenance to be found in the natural world in Forest Time: Footnotes to an Outdoor Education. Lloyd will appear at Tree Fest Knoxville on April 24, Flock Beer & Wine in Knoxville on April 28, and Neighborly Books in Maryville on May 6.
In Nashville’s New Americans, Sheri Sellmeyer profiles more than 30 first-generation immigrants from all over the world, describing the many ways they enrich the life and culture of the city. Sellmeyer will discuss the book at the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville on April 11.
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.
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.
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.
With simple, poetic lines, The Weedy Garden: A Happy Habitat for Wild Friends invites young readers to imagine they’re the animals in a garden where a weed is not something to be pulled up and eradicated but an essential, life-giving force. Margaret Renkl and Billy Renkl will discuss The Weedy Garden at Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis on February 22, Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 24 and 28, David Lusk Gallery in Nashville on February 28, and Ijams Nature Center in Knoxville on March 19.
