Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Trepidation Is Big Business

Jonathan Metzl wants to reframe the gun debate

In What We’ve Become, Vanderbilt professor Jonathan Metzl demonstrates why gun reform has failed and offers new strategies for changing the debate. Metzl will appear at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.

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The Way Back: A Geechee Homecoming

Neesha Powell-Ingabire’s Come by Here revives the complex history of coastal Georgia

In their debut memoir-in-essays, Come by Here, Neesha Powell-Ingabire returns home to Georgia’s Geechee coast, unearthing regional histories while igniting a path to personal healing. Powell-Ingabire will appear at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.

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Tragicomic Collaboration

Tyler Mahan Coe limns a legendary country music marriage in Cocaine and Rhinestones

In Cocaine and Rhinestones: A History of George Jones and Tammy Wynette, Tyler Mahan Coe explains how the two greatest singers in country music history balanced conservatism and innovation in a blatantly commercial genre. Coe will appear at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.

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Coal Catastrophe

In Valley So Low, Jared Sullivan details the long fight for justice after a TVA environmental disaster

In his first book, Valley so Low, Jared Sullivan, a journalist who has written for The New Yorker, Time, and The Bitter Southerner, tells the story of a decade-long legal battle for Tennessee workers sickened and killed by the coal sludge from the 2008 Kingston Fossil Plant disaster. Sullivan will appear at Landmark Booksellers in Franklin on October 15; Williamson County Public Library in Franklin on October 16; East Tennessee History Center in Knoxville on October 17; ArtsBuild in Chattanooga on October 23; and the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.

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A Steely Commitment to Change

Historian David Greenberg explores John Lewis’ lifetime of making good trouble

John Lewis’ career in public affairs spanned over 60 years, and he came to embody past, present, and future. In John Lewis: A Life, historian David Greenberg explores how the civil rights icon’s moral compass guided him from decade to decade. David Greenberg will appear at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.

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Loving the World More Fully

Margaret Renkl wants us to pay attention and stay hopeful

Leaf, Cloud, Crow, a companion to Margaret Renkl’s 2023 book The Comfort of Crows, is a weekly journal organized by season, encouraging readers to look closely at the plants and creatures that surround them, “to understand them more intimately, and to love them more fully.” Margaret Renkl will appear at the 2024 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, October 26-27.

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