William Gay’s Fugitives of the Heart is an homage to Twain
Times are hard for the characters who populate William Gay’s Fugitives of the Heart, the last in a string of posthumous novels pieced together by his friends from an attic full of scenes Gay left behind. For J.M. White, Sonny Brewer, and the other writers who figured out how the scenes fit together, the effort was worth it, a forensic labor of love they feel even now for a writer who died in 2012.
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I’ll Take You There is a collaborative guide to places in Nashville shaped by social justice work
I’ll Take You There, edited by Amie Thurber and Learotha Williams Jr. and written by more than 100 local contributors, guides readers to Nashville places shaped by resistance to power and injustice.
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With gratitude for Edward Hirsch and his expansive body of work
With over 2.7 million lives lost worldwide in just one year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic — nearly 550,000 in the United States alone — there are few poets whose work is more suited to guide us through this overwhelming grief than Edward Hirsch, who has said, “We need poetry to help us transform the oceanic depths of feeling into art.” Hirsch will appear at a virtual event hosted by Vanderbilt University on April 8.
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Southern Word connects young people to their voices, each other
Students and recent alumni of Southern Word have published books, produced music, given TEDx Talks, been featured on national broadcasts and in newspapers like The New York Times, and even received invitations from Michelle Obama to visit the White House for a student poetry celebration. Southern Word will host the annual BlackLift Poetry House, held online February 20.
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The meaning of the Southern Festival of Books in a season of loss
We often conceive of loss only as a falling away, but it is also a binding. Think of the groups whose only purpose is to bring together people who have lost the same thing.
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After three decades in children’s books, acclaimed author-illustrator David Wiesner is still eager to innovate
David Wiesner talks to Chapter 16 about his newest picture book, Robobaby, and returning to the Southern Festival of Books after nearly 30 years. Wiesner will appear at the 2020 Southern Festival of Books, held online October 1-11.
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