February 1, 2016 Mary Karr, one of the contemporary masters of memoir, is a true believer in the transformative power of the form. In The Art of Memoir, she offers a short course in the joys and challenges of writing the story of your own life. She will appear in discussion with songwriter Rodney Crowell at the Green Door Gourmet in Nashville on February 6, 2016. The event is a benefit for The Porch Writers’ Collective.
January 28, 2016 The Upper Cumberland region—i.e. the watershed counties of the upstream half of the Cumberland River in Kentucky and Tennessee—was relatively isolated for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; as a result, it was neglected by historians. Its history is rich and worth investigating, however, as editors Michael E. Birdwell and W. Calvin Dickinson prove with People of the Upper Cumberland.
January 26, 2016 Working with Tennessee-based author Jane Lorenzi, Today-show host Hoda Kotb tells the stories of ordinary people who discovered their purpose in life. Kotb will discuss Where We Belong: Journeys That Show Us the Way at the Nashville Public Library on January 31, 2016, at 3 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
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January 20, 2016 Historian of technology Michael Bess talks with Chapter 16 about the human relationship to machines, representations of the future in science fiction, the problem of labor and work in a bioengineered society, and what it will mean to be human in the coming decades. His new book is Our Grandchildren Redesigned: Life in the Bioengineered Society of the Near Future.
January 15, 2016 A Good-Natured Riot, Charles K. Wolfe’s classic history of the Grand Ole Opry’s early years, delivers an engaging and essential history of an almost forgotten era in country music. The book, originally released in 1999, is now available in paperback.
January 13, 2016 A gritty rock club and a modest home kitchen might seem like opposite ends of the earth. But in Freda Love Smith’s new book, Red Velvet Underground, the two are deliciously twined. A memoir seasoned with recipes, this story charts the coming of age of both mother and child as Smith teaches her teenage son how to cook. Smith will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on January 19, 2016.
