Larry D. Thacker’s fictional Labor County brims with the weird and wondrous
Larry D. Thacker’s short story collection Working It Off in Labor County creates a small world where wild-hair notions are the norm and the odd miracle is not out of the question. Thacker will appear with Shuly Xóchitl Cawood and Ciona Rouse at a virtual event hosted by East Tennessee State University on March 3.
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Michael Eric Dyson’s Long Time Coming is an elegy and a call to action
Michael Eric Dyson’s Long Time Coming: Reckoning with Race in America focuses on life, breath, and death, particularly regarding Black bodies. Dyson beatifies the slain and enjoins those newly “woke” to approach social justice work with humility.
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Humor and peril collide in The Uncollected Stories of Allan Gurganus
The Uncollected Stories of Allan Gurganus corrals nine ambitious, verbally rich narrative worlds. Through humor or gut-punching drama, these stories showcase Gurganus’ penchant for lifting the veneer of small-town niceties, exposing the vast terrain of his characters’ interior lives.
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Kim Trevathan revisits the Tennessee River from a new direction
In Against the Current: Paddling Upstream on the Tennessee River, Maryville College professor and nature writer Kim Trevathan travels the length of the waterway a second time to discover “how the river had changed in twenty years, and how the passing of two decades had changed me.” Trevathan will discuss Against the Current at a virtual event hosted by Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on February 25.
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My Year Abroad traces an ordinary young man’s journey to a weird hell and back
My Year Abroad, Chang-rae Lee’s sixth novel, is an exuberant — and strange — coming-of-age tale. Lee will discuss the book with Ann Patchett at a virtual event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 19.
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Travel writer Jedidiah Jenkins trades in cross-continental treks to map a more personal terrain.
In Like Streams to the Ocean, travel writer and Instagram personality Jedidiah Jenkins turns his energetic gaze to the interior landscapes we map between childhood and death. Jenkins will appear at a virtual event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 18.
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