A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

A Lot of Patience and a Dumpster

Memphis native Elizabeth Passarella’s second collection of essays, It Was an Ugly Couch Anyway, covers a lot of ground, both personally and existentially. Earthy, articulate, and uninhibited, Passarella is an engaging storyteller with a wicked sense of humor. She’ll discuss the book at Novel in Memphis on May 2.

Toward the Trail of Tears

The vicious Creek War determined control of the Southeast. In A Brutal Reckoning: Andrew Jackson, the Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South, Peter Cozzens places Old Hickory at the war’s epicenter.

Scarred Souls

In Michael Farris Smith’s Salvage This World, a young mother, fleeing unknown pursuers, seeks asylum with her estranged father while a hurricane threatens to decimate the Gulf Coast. Smith will discuss the book at Novel in Memphis on May 1 and Parnassus Books in Nashville on May 2.

Not Too Blue

In her new memoir Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You, Lucinda Williams tells the backstory of her songs and her life.

A Part, a Whole, a Root, a Bloom

Katy Simpson Smith’s The Weeds links the stories of two unnamed women, working in different centuries, who both find themselves apprenticed to male botanists cataloguing every species of plant growing among the stones of the Roman Colosseum.

Tales She’ll Tell

Lee Smith’s ability to spin tragedy into comedy is challenged as never before in her new novel, Silver Alert, as a motley cast of characters navigates a world filled with pain and loss, while at least one stubbornly clings to her hope for a better future.

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