Set against the backdrop of a planned community, Celeste Ng’s second novel, Little Fires Everywhere, explores motherhood, teenage angst, cultural representation, and the life of the artist. Along with Shanthi Sekaran, author of Lucky Boy, Ng will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on September 28 at 6:30 p.m.
The surprising appearance of twin newborns—one dark-skinned, the other pale and freckled—creates upheaval in a Depression-era South Georgia community. Eleanor Henderson will discuss The Twelve-Mile Straight at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 13-15.
In the alternative history Ben H. Winters creates in Underground Airlines, slavery has flourished in the Hard Four—Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and a unified Carolina—because it is essential to the economic prosperity of the plantations. Winters will appear at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 13-15. Festival events are free and open to the public.
At the center of Nick White’s striking debut novel, How to Survive a Summer, is the burden of an unconfronted trauma at a long-defunct “gay conversion therapy” camp. White will discuss How to Survive a Summer at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 13-15.
At times Leah Weiss’s debut novel, If the Creek Don’t Rise, reads like an Appalachian Rashomon, with multiple voices describing similar events in the tiny community of Baines Creek, North Carolina. Weiss will appear at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on September 21 at 6 p.m., at Parnassus Books in Nashville on September 23 at 2 p.m., and at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 13-15.
Daren Wang’s debut novel makes it clear that the sin of slavery was never only a Southern thing. Wang will discuss The Hidden Light of Northern Fires at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on September 20 at 5:30 p.m., and at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 13-15.
