Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Life, Breath, and Death

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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Nobody Untended

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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A Wayfaring Experiment in Democracy

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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A Long, Strange Trip

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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Streams of Consciousness

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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Decency at the End of the World

David Arnold’s The Electric Kingdom finds beauty in the darkness

David Arnold, author of the acclaimed YA novels Mosquitoland, The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik, and Kids of Appetite, returns with The Electric Kingdom, an achingly beautiful and timely book that transcends simple classification. Arnold will discuss The Electric Kingdom at a virtual event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 11.

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