Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

The Right to Decide

Take My Hand considers a terrible injustice fueled by prejudice and good intentions

Inspired by true events in 1970s Alabama, Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s third novel, Take My Hand, gives voice to a Black physician at the end of her career who can’t be at peace until she shares the story of two girls victimized by racism and the arrogance of good intentions. Perkins-Valdez will discuss Take My Hand at Novel in Memphis on May 7.

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Little Town Killer

Jeremy Scott delivers a fast-paced, complex murder mystery

Jeremy Scott, author of The Ables series and co-creator of YouTube’s CinemaSins, returns with the propulsive and thrilling When the Corn Is Waist High.

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The Bread of Life

Tallu Schuyler Quinn reflects on the ingredients of a good life in her posthumous memoir

Tallu Schuyler Quinn, the late founder and executive director of The Nashville Food Project, prepares for death through examining the ingredients of a good life in her posthumous memoir, What We Wish Were True. An event to celebrate What We Wish Were True will be held at Harpeth Hall’s Frances Bond Davis Theater in Nashville on April 19.

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First Love

A daughter seeks to fulfill her mother’s last wish in Here Lies

In the opening line of her debut novel, Here Lies, Olivia Clare Friedman captures an emotion that is both foundational and indefinable, a feeling so primordial it predates our own memory of existence: a child’s love for a parent. Friedman explores this love with power and insight.

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Made to Survive

Poet Ocean Vuong finds an original voice for grief in Time Is a Mother

In his new collection, Time Is a Mother, poet Ocean Vuong addresses his grief for his late mother and, through the lens of his own hard-won survival, brings energy and originality to this elegiac work. Ocean Vuong will discuss Time Is a Mother at a ticketed event at Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 12.

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Disaster-Colored Glasses

Mary Laura Philpott confronts life’s toughest questions with humor and heart

Making sense of the land mines of life is the theme of Nashville author Mary Laura Philpott’s new memoir in essays, Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives. Philpott will celebrate the launch of Bomb Shelter at an event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 10.

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