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.
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.
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.
Be Gay, Do Crime surveys the long history of queer defiance and resilience through a daily catalog of notable events and key figures. Zane McNeill, one of the book’s editors, answered questions from Chapter 16 about the research challenges of the project and how queer history can help the community hold on to joy.
In Eliana Ramage’s debut novel, To the Moon and Back, Steph Harper is a queer Cherokee girl whose sole ambition is to become the first Cherokee astronaut.
Lydi Conklin’s Songs of No Provenance sets empathy alongside shame, showing us how to root for every version of its protagonist.
