Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Fragments Swarming Together and Apart

Jenny Offill discusses the unexpected success of Dept. of Speculation

“The threat to the narrator may be existential in nature but it’s still a threat,” Jenny Offill says of her novel Dept. of Speculation. “Her life is falling down around her.” Offill will read at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on April 6 at 7 p.m.

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Echoes and Disaster

In White Tears, Hari Kunzru summons up the voices of early American blues and its ghosts

Hari Kunzru’s White Tears is a literary thriller and a ghost story that deals directly with race, privilege, and American history. Kunzru will appear with musical guest Patrick Sweany at The Basement in Nashville on March 30 at 7 p.m., as part of the Books, Bars and Guitars series sponsored by Parnassus Books and The Porch Writers’ Collective.

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Something to Lose

In Hannah Tinti’s The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, a father’s past haunts his daughter

In Hannah Tinti’s The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, a father with a long criminal history settles down with his daughter on the Massachusetts coast in a futile search for normalcy. Tinti will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on March 29 at 6:30 p.m.

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Call the Coroner

Mississippi Blood, the last book in the bestselling trilogy by Greg Iles, piles up the bodies on the way to redemption

With Mississippi Blood Greg Iles brings his epic trilogy of old violence and present-day loyalties to a thundering conclusion. Iles will appear on March 24 at the Memphis Public Library and on March 25 at the Nashville Public Library. Both events are free and open to the public.

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Moving Pictures All the Time

Novelist Meg Wolitzer talks about time, friendship, and why you can’t go home again

“Early friendships take place at a time when you are experiencing all kinds of ‘firsts.’ And for another person to witness your firsts, or let you see hers, can be especially intimate and meaningful.” Prior to her appearance at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on March 23 at 7 p.m., Meg Wolitzer talks about her novel The Interestings.

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Strays

Desperation Road is Michael Farris Smith’s redemptive tale of two broken lives

“To tell you the God’s honest truth, I don’t know what the hell is going on,” says Russell Gaines, the reckless but noble protagonist of Michael Farris Smith’s Desperation Road. Smith is a Southern master in the tradition of Larry Brown and Daniel Woodrell, but with a soulful, generous voice that’s all his own. He will discuss Desperation Road at Parnassus Books in Nashville on March 20 at 6:30 p.m.

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