The Center for Southern Literary Arts holds its first festival in June
The inaugural Memphis Literary Arts Festival will begin June 15 with a ticketed benefit, “Dinner at the Hibiscus Salon,” and continues from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on June 16 with a series of talks, readings, and performances by writers, musicians, and artists from across the country. An after-party with DJ Siphne Aaye will begin at 7:30 p.m. June 16.
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Jerry Joyner’s inventive 1975 collaboration with Remy Charlip hits shelves in a new edition
Thirteen, Jerry Joyner’s 1975 collaboration with artist Remy Charlip, returns to shelves this month in a new edition for a new generation of young readers. Joyner will visit Parnassus Books on May 23 to discuss the book, as well as his remarkable career.
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A historian considers Taylor Branch’s The King Years
Taylor Branch is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author of The King Years, a selection of excerpts from his trilogy on the civil-rights movement. Branch will deliver the keynote address of the MLK50 symposium at the University of Memphis Holiday Inn on April 3.
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The new Center for Southern Literary Arts brings Tayari Jones to Memphis
On February 27, the Center for Southern Literary Arts in Memphis will bring novelist Tayari Jones to the stage of the Halloran Centre for Performing Arts to talk about her new book, An American Marriage.
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A Nashville theologian considers the genius of James P. Carse
For James P. Carse, people are never not playing in one way or another. How we play—the expectations we bring and the invitations we are open to from moment to moment—is the whole human deal. Carse will give a free public address at Belmont University in Nashville on February 8 as part of Belmont’s Faith and Culture Symposium. The event is free and open to the public.
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Novelist Steve Stern found his fictional world by searching for a lost Jewish tradition
June 1, 2015 I grew up wanting something I couldn’t name. I was raised in the Reform Jewish “tradition,” though the word here is gross hyperbole. The temple I attended as a kid in Memphis represented a variety of Judaism designed to be invisible, to blend indistinguishably with the Christ-haunted Southern landscape. As a consequence, I was virtually untouched by tradition and had not even an awareness of its absence. Nevertheless, one Sunday, playing hooky from confirmation class, I went exploring the old red brick pile of our temple along with a couple of partners in crime.
