Drew Lanham’s new collection is an ode to joy in a harsh world
Poet and wildlife biologist J. Drew Lanham calls humanity to embrace the wild possibilities of a better way of living in Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves.
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Marjorie Garber studies Shakespeare’s influence on the Bloomsbury group of writers
Marjorie Garber’s Shakespeare in Bloomsbury surveys the variety of ways English modernists used the Bard to inspire their own work. Garber will appear at Novel in Memphis on April 11. For a complete list of Garber’s events during her April 10–12 visit to Memphis, please see the Shakespeare at Rhodes website: www.rhodes.edu/shakespeare
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Patti Callahan Henry tells a story of two sisters and the power of fairy tales
Operation Pied Piper, initiated by the British government in September 1939, relocated thousands of children in an effort to protect them from war bombing. In Patti Callahan Henry’s novel The Secret Book of Flora Lea, young sisters Hazel and Flora find themselves displaced with so many others, thrust into a terrifying adventure. Henry will appear at the East Tennessee History Center in Knoxville on April 2.
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Ross Gay reprises his practice of everyday delight
Poet Ross Gay returns to finding joy in the everyday with his latest essay collection, The Book of (More) Delights. Gay will appear at a fundraiser for The Porch in Nashville on April 5 and will give a free reading at the downtown branch of the Nashville Public Library on April 6.
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Two books of Afrofuturist fiction envision Black possibility and protest
Black Panther: Panther’s Rage by Sheree Renée Thomas and the anthology Africa Risen, which Thomas coedited, imagine worlds rich in Black life and agency. Sheree Renée Thomas will appear at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City on March 27.
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Past and present mingle in collections by Loving, Shockley, and Underwood
In their recently published collections, poets Denton Loving, Evie Shockley, and Susan O’Dell Underwood each find an original expression for the mingling of past and present that presses at the edges of contemporary life. Susan O’Dell Underwood and Denton Loving will appear at the 2024 Tennessee Mountain Writers Conference in Oak Ridge, April 4-6
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