In The Black Family Who Built America: The McKissacks, Two Centuries of Daring Pioneers, Cheryl McKissack Daniel chronicles her family’s emergence from artisanal construction work as enslaved laborers to prominence as architects and builders with a Nashville-based company. She will appear at the 2025 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 18-19.
Carrie R. Moore’s Make Your Way Home is a collection of 11 stories that are deeply researched and deeply rooted in both the American South and the Black experience there. Moore will appear at the 2025 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 18-19.
Nature’s Messenger: Mark Catesby and His Adventures in a New World, the second book from Sewanee-based writer Patrick Dean, relates the history of a little-known man and his greatest achievement. Dean will appear at the 2025 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 18-19.
Facts tend to lose the battle with myths, but Peter Guralnick keeps fighting the good fight for the truth in The Colonel and the King: Tom Parker, Elvis Presley, and the Partnership that Rocked the World. Guralnick will discuss the book at Graceland in Memphis on August 15 and Parnassus Books in Nashville on August 20.
Lydi Conklin’s Songs of No Provenance sets empathy alongside shame, showing us how to root for every version of its protagonist.
In three recent poetry collections — Stephanie Niu’s I Would Define the Sun, Richard Tillinghast’s Night Train to Memphis, and Abby N. Lewis’ Aquakineticist — the nonhuman world offers potent spaces which alchemize human memory and reflection.
