Candacy Taylor documents the revolutionary guide that helped black travelers navigate a segregated America
In Overground Railroad, Candacy Taylor conjures the menacing byways and backwaters black Americans traveled in the era of Jim Crow — and the revolutionary guide that lit their way. Taylor will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 17 and at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis on February 27.
Read more
How Hancock County embraced its Melungeon secret
In Beyond the Sunset: The Melungeon Outdoor Drama, 1969-1976, Wayne Winkler explores how Tennessee’s poorest county turned to an unlikely source for economic revival: an outdoor drama about the region’s Melungeon heritage. The play ran for just five seasons but changed the county’s view of its mixed-race neighbors forever.
Read more
A junior entrepreneur and a budding drag queen set their sights on stardom
In Greg Howard’s second middle-grade novel, Middle School’s a Drag: You Better Werk!, entrepreneurial pre-teen Mikey Pruitt thinks his new talent agency can’t miss, now that he’s representing an eighth-grade aspiring drag queen. Readers won’t be surprised to find out that things don’t go as smoothly as Mikey anticipates. Howard will discuss the book at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 11, at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on February 13, and at the SE-YA Book Fest in Murfreesboro on March 12-14.
Read more
In The Resisters, Gish Jen depicts an eerily plausible near-future dystopia
Gish Jen’s fifth novel, The Resisters, imagines a world where the poor struggle to survive on houseboats buffeted by swollen seas, the rich live comfortably on high ground, and a young woman’s talent for baseball can lead to revolution. Gish Jen will appear in conversation with Ann Patchett to discuss The Resisters at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 12.
Read more
William Eggleston’s photographs illuminate Southern spaces in surprising ways
The Beautiful Mysterious: The Extraordinary Gaze of William Eggleston, collects 55 of the artist’s works from the 1960s through the 1980s. Primarily everyday scenes from the South during a transitional period in the region’s history, Eggleston’s photographs make the ordinary extraordinary or even dreamlike, capturing time and place but not without significant historical allusions.
Read more
Kristin O’Donnell Tubb’s second novel in her New York Public Library series considers the true value of stories
The Story Seeker, the second entry in Nashville writer Kristin O’Donnell Tubb’s New York Public Library series for middle school readers, takes place in early 1929. Its protagonist, a vivacious 11-year-old named Viviani, is a lover of stories — and a mystery-solving sleuth. Tubb will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on January 30 and at Barnes & Noble at Hamilton Place Mall in Chattanooga on March 24.
Read more
