In her book Making Our Future: Visionary Folklore and Everyday Culture in Appalachia, Emily Hilliard presents what she calls “visionary folklore,” sidestepping nostalgia in favor of a cooperative approach that catalogs traditions while seeking to identify and participate in new cultural practices. Hilliard will appear at Vinyl Tap in Nashville on January 21 and Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on January 22.
FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: In Jeannette Brown’s The Illusion of Leaving, Jamie Wright leaves Silver Falls, Texas, gladly kicking the dust from her boots. But when her father’s impending death calls her back, Jamie must face her difficult past to imagine a different future. Jeannette Brown will take part in an author discussion, “Be the Final Writer,” at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on January 17.
Caroline Brooks DuBois’ second middle-grade novel tackles the healing power of poetry amid loss and destruction. DuBois will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on January 21.
In Jamila Minnicks’ debut novel, Moonrise Over New Jessup, Alice Young takes on a new life of love and tangled loyalties in an all-Black Alabama town embroiled in the escalating fight over desegregation.
Life moves rapidly in the 21st century, but Arwen Donahue invites readers to slow down and consider the small moments in Landings: A Crooked Creek Farm Year.
In Hillbilly Madonna, Sara Moore Wagner infuses her poems of Appalachian family trauma with deep compassion and an unusual focus on women’s experiences of addiction.
