Jeff Mann reflects on life as a gay Appalachian
Jeff Mann’s Loving Mountains, Loving Men, a hybrid work of poetry and memoir, explores the struggle and resilience of the LGBTQ community in Appalachia. Mann will discuss the book at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on June 9.
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Music critic Ann Powers shows us how Joni Mitchell made her own way
Ann Powers’ Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell weaves research, reportage, and analysis to tell the iconic singer-songwriter’s story in a conversational way. Powers will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 12.
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Small-town lovers grapple with an unexpected pregnancy in Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne’s Holding on to Nothing
In her 2019 debut novel, Holding on to Nothing, Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne creates a fresh, moving story of young lovers in a small East Tennessee town and the myriad forces that trouble them as they set out to make a family. The book has just been released in a new paperback edition
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A small-town deputy comes to terms with his past as he tries to save an innocent man
In Henry Wise’s debut novel Holy City, a tormented police officer investigates a murder that digs up secrets the county would rather keep buried. Wise will appear at Novel in Memphis on June 2.
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Willie, Waylon, and the Boys tells the stories of Nashville’s quintessential outsiders
The music scene in Nashville is tricky and hard to describe until you figure out how obsessed the city is with the relationship between conformity and rebellion. Brian Fairbanks provides plenty of detail about the full-cylinder lives of country music iconoclasts Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings in Willie, Waylon, and the Boys: How Nashville Outsiders Changed Country Music Forever.
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A high school couple tries to bridge the social divide between wealth and poverty
Susan Beckham Zurenda’s new novel, The Girl from the Red Rose Motel, examines the challenges faced by high school lovers from opposite sides of the tracks in small-town South Carolina. Zurenda will be the keynote speaker for the 2024 Clarksville Writers Conference at Austin Peay State University on June 5-7.
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