An author finds his own teenage ghost in a thrift-shop book
What I saw was not a dusty old book but a boy in a wheelchair by a window in a ramshackle house farther east in Tennessee—two hours away, on the Cumberland Plateau near Crossville.
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With Frankenstein Dreams, editor Michael Sims presents twenty vintage works of science fiction
In his new anthology, Frankenstein Dreams: A Connoisseur’s Collection of Victorian Science Fiction, Michael Sims explores early science fiction, a genre born during the rapid scientific and technological advances of the nineteenth century. Sims will discuss the book at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15.
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The New York Times celebrates three Tennessee authors: Lydia Peelle, Michael Sims, and Kevin Wilson
For a writer, the Holy Grail of book reviews is a positive notice in The New York Times, the newspaper of record for American literature. In the past month, three Tennessee authors—novelists Lydia Peelle and Kevin Wilson, and nonfiction writer Michael Sims—have found their way into those august pages.
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Michael Sims investigates the very real origins of the greatest fictional detective
With The Story of Charlotte’s Web and The Adventures of Henry Thoreau, Michael Sims invented what amounts to a new genre: the biography of a particular book. In Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes, he follows literary and historical clues to identify the origins of the most famous fictional detective in the world.
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Book excerpt: Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes
Michael Sims’s new book of nonfiction, Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes, will be released on January 24, 2017. Today Chapter 16 readers have a sneak peek at the first chapter.
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A writer remembers Nashville’s BookMan/BookWoman, which will close its doors at the end of the year
Shelves groaned from overpopulation. But it was this gaudy Shakespearean excess, the Mumbai crowds of jostling books, that made it such a heady experience to visit BookMan/BookWoman. It was the archaic opulence of it all, as if you might come home smelling of myrrh.
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