November 26, 2012 Emily Arsenault’s third mystery features extensive excerpts from a fictional memoir, a pregnant detective, and a strong undercurrent of Nashville’s music heritage. In a world in which most mysteries are plot- or character-driven, Miss Me When I’m Gone can fairly claim to be driven by relationships—the kinds of relationships that have inspired many a country song.
November 20, 2012 In 1999, the award-winning, bestselling novelist Barbara Kingsolver founded The Bellwether Prize, an award given biennially to an unpublished debut novel that addresses matters of social justice and responsibility. Carrying a $25,000 prize—funded entirely by Kingsolver herself—and a publishing contract, the Bellwether is “designed to be a career-founding event for writers with outstanding literary skills, moral passion, and the courage to combine these strengths in unusually powerful fiction,” as Kingsolver’s website puts it. Susannah Felts will interview Naomi Benaron and Hillary Jordan, two Bellwether winners, at Parnassus Books in Nashville on November 29 at 6:30 pm. The event is free and open to the public.
November 19, 2012 Barbara Kingsolver’s epic 1998 novel, The Poisonwood Bible, offers a profound inquiry into the nature of faith and the meaning of family. At its core, her new novel asks another fundamental question: “Where will we go from here?” On November 27, Barbara Kingsolver will discuss Flight Behavior at the Nashville Public Library as part of the Salon@615 series. The event begins at 6:15 p.m.; doors open at 5:45.
November 13, 2012 The difficulty of finding work during the Depression drew poet and novelist James Still to Knott County, Kentucky, but it was the wild beauty of the place that kept him there. As he got to know the fiercely independent inhabitants of a harsh landscape, he began to write about their lives. In The Hills Remember, editor Ted Olson, professor of Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, has put together a collection of Still’s short pieces spanning more than forty years. In them Still’s own voice emerges, as clear and as pure as a dipperful of cold mountain water.
November 8, 2012 David Madden’s prodigious research—and his boundless imagination and curiosity—are evident everywhere in London Bridge in Plague and Fire. For readers interested in historical fiction, this novel stands out for its multi-dimensional plot, dynamic wordplay, and richly nuanced characters. The book is a treasure trove of entertainment and suspense. David Madden will read from London Bridge in Plague and Fire on November 12 at 7 p.m. in the Hodges Library Auditorium on the Knoxville campus of the University of Tennessee. This free public event, part of the “Writers in the Library” series, is co-sponsored by the UT Creative Writing Program.
November 7, 2012 “Emigrants, immigrants, adventurers, and runaways—they fascinate me because they loiter on the margins, stripped of the markers of family and nation,” writes novelist Emma Donoghue in her new story collection, Astray. “Travelers know all the confusion of the human condition in concentrated form. Migration is mortality by another name, the itch we can’t scratch.” The bestselling author of Room will read from Astray at the Nashville Public Library at 6:15 p.m. on November 13 as part of the Salon@615 series.
