In her debut story collection Sidle Creek, Jolene McIlwain fashions a world and characters as complicated as they are enduring. These stories let us come to know a small Appalachian community in Western Pennsylvania through its people, from hunters to diner workers to miners.
Ruta Sepetys — the award-winning, bestselling, Nashville-based author of five young adult historical novels — offers guidance for novice as well as experienced writers in You: The Story.
Baroness Marie Catherine finds herself tangled in a web of lies, crossdressing, and back-alley dealings in Celia Bell’s gripping debut novel, The Disenchantment. Bell will discuss the book at Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 22.
Matthew Vollmer’s All of Us Together in the End contemplates the certainties of life and its mysteries – whether natural or supernatural. Vollmer will discuss the book at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on May 23 and The Bookshop in Nashville on May 24.
The Great American Everything received the C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize, given annually to an emerging writer from a Southern state. Despite the expressly regional tag, the stories in Scott Gloden’s debut collection could be called new Americana.
Justin Warren, the protagonist of Lauren Thoman’s debut novel, I’ll Stop the World, finds himself in a bit of a pickle. It seems he’s suddenly time-traveled to the 1985 version of his hometown, where he has a week to solve a mystery and save his grandparents’ lives. Lauren Thoman will discuss her work at a “Birthing the Book” event hosted by The Porch in Nashville on May 11.
