After 17 years and a brief stint in Memphis, the Southern Festival of Books is still going strong. A fall tradition, the book fest brings together readers and writers from all over the country to take part in readings, panel discussions and book signings that encompass any and every part of Southern culture: fiction, poetry, history, food, sports, humor and more. As in years past, we’ve assembled our bookish scribes to pick their favorites of the more than 200 authors appearing this year, but we’ve gone one better as well: we’ve enlisted five authors from this year’s event to pick their own highlights. Below, you’ll find out which readings to put at the top of your list, along with musings on subjects as diverse as Eudora Welty and Dale Earnhardt. For more information about the book fest, running Oct. 7-9 at the Legislative Plaza downtown, see the program insert in this week’s issue, or visit the Humanities Tennessee website at www.tn-humanities.org. A Hearty Cook With a Clean Apron Ronni Lundy writes cookbooks that make you homesick By Roy Blount Jr. If you can’t write with gusto about Southern food, you can’t write with gusto about anything, but crisp, unsloppy gusto is a far less common thing, in writing or anywhere else, than it ought to be. Ronni Lundy as a writer might be described as a hearty cook with a clean apron. Well, I mean of course her apron would have food stains, that’s what it’s for, but you’d have no reservations about boiling it for soup. Her cookbooks eschew words like “scrumptious” and “sumptuous” and “Lordamercy,” yet they would make a dead man hungry. She has been wise, I think, to give those books titles not such as Come ’n’ Git It Y’all, but rather such as Butter Beans to Blackberries: Recipes From the Southern Garden (North Point Press, 1999). She derived that particular title from a passage by Eugene Walter that is so nice I don’t think you’ll mind if I re-quote it: On a summer evening some years ago, two of the South’s most celebrated writers, William Faulkner and Katherine Anne Porter, were dining together at a plush restaurant in Paris. Everything had been laid out to perfection: a splendid meal had been consumed, a bottle of fine burgundy emptied, and thimble-sized glasses of an expensive liqueur drained. The maitre d’ and an entourage of waiters hovered close by, ready to satisfy any final whim. “Back home the butter beans are in,” said Faulkner, peering into the distance, “the speckled ones.” Miss Porter fiddled with her glass and stared into space. “Blackberries,” she said wistfully. So Miz Lundy can find choice readables as well as write them. Now she has edited, in association with the Southern Foodways Alliance, a collection of food writing by others, called Cornbread Nation 3: Foods of the Mountain South (University of North Carolina Press, 280 pp., $21.95). There is nothing in it by me. Haven’t I written anything suitable? How about this: Properly prepared and served, Possum Is, though this is an over-used word, Awesome. Nah, that is what her prose is not, overbaked and scrabbly. I do think possum calls for slant-rhymes, but I’d better stop now before I think of one for marsupial. Here’s a sentence from her introduction to the new book: “Zealously we consumed vats of gold and glistening shuck beans mopped up with sops of brown-crusted, bacon-seasoned cornbread.” That’s good. That’s good. Ronni Lundy’s books make their own gravy, which you won’t want to leave any of on the plate. Roy Blount Jr., one of America’s foremost humorists, is the author of 19 books, including his newest collection of essays, Feet on the Street: Rambles Around New Orleans (Crown, 144 pp., $16). He reads Friday, 2-3 p.m., in War Memorial Auditorium. Ronni Lundy, a founding member of the Southern Foodways Alliance, is a journalist and author of several cookbooks. She will participate in a panel discussion with fellow Cornbread Nation 3 authors Sunday, noon-1:30 p.m., in the library auditorium. Eudora Welty and Us The legacy lives on in works by Suzanne Marrs, Pamela Duncan and Ron Rash By Clyde Edgerton It’s so good to get hands on the new detailed biography, Eudora Welty (Harcourt, 672 pp., $28), by Suzanne Marrs, who, with precision, clarity and insight, shows us a funloving, mischievous and complex Eudora Welty that previous biographers and several critics had all but flat-out denied ever existed. And Marrs’ One Writer’s Imagination: The Fiction of Eudora Welty (Louisiana State University Press, 2002) helps us read the stories and novels with new understanding. The writing—the craft—in bringing Welty and her works alive in these books is a tribute to the apparent influence of Eudora Welty’s own masterful, elegant style. To many contemporary Southern writers, Eudora Welty is an absent mentor, along with Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner. We may sometimes believe that we have, for better and for worse, no more of their Souths, and thus no contemporary Southern writers in any traditional sense. But close reading tells us that if these absent mentors are anything, they are American/World writers, and they will serve us well as long as we are human. As Eudora Welty herself once said, “I never doubted that imagining yourself into other people’s lives is exactly what writing fiction is…. The emotions, in which all of us are alike involved for life, differ more in degree than in kind.” Marrs reminds us of Welty’s willingness to write about bootleggers, tenant farmers and itinerant musicians, remnants of a South, and of a humanity that persists beneath the veneer of any region. Pamela Duncan and Ron Rash are among some of the 200 or so writers arriving in Nashville for the Southern Festival of Books (the best of its kind) who are hell-bent on getting below the surface of storybook Souths. They imagine themselves into other people’s lives, non-refined lives in some cases, and they refuse to linger on the surfaces of past and present Sunday School versions of the South—surfaces strewn with the sweet tea sipping and magnolia gazing of the genteel folks who chuckle about “The War of Northern Aggression.” Duncan has imagined the lives of three women in a mill town in her recent novel, Plant Life (Delta, 336 pp., $13). Rash has imagined a tragedy, a river and a political and emotional standoff in a small South Carolina town in his recent novel Saints at the River (Henry Holt, 288 pp., $24). Their insistence on writing about the best and worst in all of us brings to readers, as Welty said, “the emotions in which all of us alike are involved for life.” So, all in all, it’s good to get hands on the Welty biography by Suzanne Marrs, and it’s good to get hands on novels in which serious writers imagine themselves into other people’s lives in ways that make us proud to be part of the legacy of our now absent mentors. And it’s good to have such a fine festival as The Southern Festival of Books that encourages us to think and talk about our South, our mentors, our writers, our art. Clyde Edgerton is the author of eight novels, five of them voted Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times. His newest book, a memoir, is Solo: My Adventures in the Air (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 276 pp., $23.95). Edgerton will participate in a panel discussion, “Best of the South,” on Saturday, 11 a.m.-1 p.m., in War Memorial Auditorium; he will also give a reading in War Memorial Auditorium on Sunday, noon-1 p.m. Pamela Duncan’s first novel, Moon Women (Delacourte, 2001), was a Southeast Booksellers Association Award Finalist, and her second novel, Plant Life (Delacourte, 2003), won the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction; her third novel, Hurricane Season, is forthcoming. She will participate in a panel discussion, “May the Circle Be Unbroken: Connectivity in Contemporary Appalachian Writing,” on Saturday, 12:30-2 p.m., in Conf. Room IB. Suzanne Marrs lives in Jackson, Miss., and is professor of English at Millsaps College. She has written several books about her friend Eudora Welty. She will give a reading on Friday, 2:30-3:30 p.m., in TPAC Lobby B. Ron Rash, an NEA fellow in poetry, has published three books of poems, two collections of stories and a children’s book, in addition to his new novel, Saints at the River. He will participate in the “May the Circle Be Unbroken” panel on Saturday, 12:30-2 p.m., in Conf. Room IB. The Cosmic Possum Jane Hicks is caught between the country club and 4-H By Sharyn McCrumb It took me a while to figure out that Jane Hicks is the smartest person I know. When I met the guy who won the Nobel Prize for Physics, I was prepared for genius, but Jane is so low-key that her everyday self—an East Tennessee schoolteacher for 28 years—is almost a secret identity. She is perhaps best known as the poet who coined the term “cosmic possum,” which I borrowed for my novel The Songcatcher (Dutton, 2001). A cosmic possum is that first generation out of the holler: the college-educated mountaineer who respects his heritage, but is also at home in the global village. Or, as Jane herself put it: Caught between Country Club and 4-H Neither shrimp nor crawdad, Neither hip nor hillbilly, Neither feedsack nor cashmere. That concept has gained her a cult following, and many kindred spirits have blessed her for her insight. I met Jane a decade ago at the Hindman Settlement School’s Writers Week: she was taking poetry. I first knew her as a quilter, whose self-designed creations of textile art have been displayed throughout the region. She has quilted the cover art for my novels The Songcatcher and The Ballad of Frank Silver, as well as designs for author Silas House, who quotes her poetry in his novels. Mostly via email, we have discussed: the Civil War in Appalachia, astronomy, mountain ballads, English literature, folk medicine, pioneer history, Don Henley…. I realized that her gifted students were truly blessed to be taught by her. She’s a Renaissance woman. She once applied to be a teacher in space with NASA. Took flying lessons. And then there was NASCAR. In the summer of 2002 I told her that I was thinking of writing St. Dale, a NASCAR bus tour in memory of Dale Earnhardt, fashioned after a medieval pilgrimage. Jane’s immediate response was: “They could collect speedway pins instead of cockle shells.” (On the pilgrimage of Santiago de Compostela, pilgrims received a cockle shell to commemorate their journey.) Half in English, half in Spanish, we compared medieval pilgrimages to NASCAR. Jane knew both those worlds. I didn’t. I planned to write a novel about NASCAR and I thought Kurt Busch was the governor of Florida. Jane has been a racing fan all her life. So Mrs. Hicks taught me NASCAR 101. In a yearlong odyssey, we had glorious adventures. We saw races from skyboxes at three different speedways, visited the Petty Museum and DEI; met speedway owners, pit crew, Daytona 500 winners and Earnhardts. Now Jane Hicks is a published author. Her first collection of poems Blood and Bone Remember (Jesse Stuart Foundation, 78 pp., $10), published last winter by Kentucky’s Jesse Stuart Foundation, is a wonderful celebration of the mountain experience, wise in the ways of nature, and rich with imagery and insight. The cover of the book is a photograph of one of her own quilts. Now Jane is off doing author lectures and book signings, and I’m working on a book with a race car driver. I’m telling you, she changes people’s lives. Does Tennessee know how lucky they are to have her? Sharyn McCrumb is an Appalachian author whose bestselling books have been named Notable Books of the Year by both The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. Her latest novel St. Dale (Kensington Publishing Corporation, 311 pp., $25), imagines Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales set in NASCAR. She will give a reading on Saturday, 11 a.m.-noon, in the library auditorium. Jane Hicks is an award-winning poet and quilter who works as a teacher of gifted students in Sullivan County, Tenn. Her poems are frequently published in Southern journals and literary magazines. She will participate in a panel discussion, “May the Circle Be Unbroken: Connectivity in Contemporary Appalachian Writing,”  on Saturday, 12:30-2 p.m., in Conf. Room IB. Faulkner in New England Ernest Hebert has spent years populating a tiny Yankee hamlet By Cathie Pelletier We are American writers, and yet we find ourselves being placed in categories according to race, gender and geography, to mention just the Big Three. Speak the name of your favorite Southern author in New England and you may get a blank stare in return. This is why it feels a bit strange for me to “introduce” Ernest Hebert, one of New England’s most prolific authors. While he may not be new to many of you reading this piece, he is certainly new to the Southern Festival of Books. It’s our good fortune to welcome him to Nashville. Even though Ernest Hebert and I were born and raised in states that seem braced against each other, as if ready for the next big nor’easter (his New Hampshire and my Maine), I have never met this writer. Here’s what I know about him: More than one novelist from New England has told me that Hebert’s books, The Dogs of March (Viking, 1979) and Live Free or Die (Viking, 1990), were the impetus for them to write their own first novels. I know that fans of his work include John Irving, Stephen King, Richard Russo and Howard Frank Mosher. I know that his fictional landscape of Darby, N.H., has been compared to the Deptford of Robertson Davies and (get ready for this one, Dear Reader) the Yoknapatawpha of William Faulkner. I know from articles I’ve read about him, and from mutual writing friends, that Ernest Hebert is not the type of writer who likes to dine in the trendiest restaurants while peering over a glass of the latest fad wine and discussing his “work in progress.” (You know that type.) He understands that writing is a solitary journey. “The forest is my church,” Hebert has said. “Most of my writing starts at a secret place in the woods of New Hampshire. I sit with a notepad and wait until ideas creep out of the gloom.” And it’s not just the modern forests and hills of New England that interest him. His previous novel, The Old American (University Press of New England, 2000), is set in the mid-1700s. His research for that book, one that Kirkus calls “a brilliant work,” shows his love not just of history, but of the way humans define themselves in the smallest but most important ways: “If I say in a contemporary novel that a character wears a button-down shirt and tweed jacket, that says something about him. But it’s hardly exciting information. But if I say that a Native American in 18th century Vermont is wearing a birch bark hat, that’s exciting because it’s probably brand-new information for the reader.” I want that hat! Yes, it’s exciting information! And so is the fact that Ernest Hebert is coming to Nashville. His latest novel, the one he’s bringing to the Southern Festival of Books, is Spoonwood (Hardscrabble Books, 307 pp., $24.95), the first in his Darby series in 15 years. In this novel, the protagonist carves wooden spoons using only handmade tools. Hebert, a hobby woodcarver, has made these same spoons, this same way, knowing exactly how the wood peels away, how the curls fall to the floor, knowing that it’s what is left behind that really matters. Cathie Pelletier is the author of 11 books, including the widely acclaimed novel The Funeral Makers (MacMillan, 1986), which will begin filming next fall from a script she has written. She is also a successful agent, representing books by Tanya Tucker and Rosemary Kingsland, among others. Her new novel is Running the Bulls (Hardscrabble Books, 276 pp., $24.95). She will give a reading on Saturday, 1-2 p.m., in TPAC Lobby B, and participate in a panel discussion, “The World of Book Publishing,” Saturday, 3-4:30 p.m., in the children’s theater. Ernest Hebert is a professor of English at Dartmouth College and the widely acclaimed author of the Darby novels. He will be part of a panel discussion, “Masterful Novels of Family and Crisis,” on Friday, 3:30-5 p.m., in Conf. Room IB. Tragicomedy in North Carolina Michael Parker’s coming-of-age novel takes on Samuel Beckett By George Singleton Michael Parker should be a household name to the literary book-buying public if said public enjoys laughing on one page and crying the next. Parker’s characters emanate, mostly, from the clapboard-sided houses of eastern North Carolina. They survive hand-to-mouth existences, trudge through addictions and keep eyes cocked skeptically toward authority figures. Michael Parker, for me, shows us the tragicomic better than about anyone writing today. Algonquin Books has published If You Want Me to Stay (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 192 pp., $19.95), his latest novel, and I doubt that he’ll be soon forgotten from here on out. In the novel, his narrator Joel Junior reminds me of the best adolescent storytellers in American fiction: Mattie Ross, Huck Finn, Holden Caulfield. This is a story about a boy-turned-man-early in order to save his little brother Tank, find his runaway sister Angie, figure out the truth about his captive brother Carter and the whereabouts of their mother. Meanwhile, there’s the father: “It occurred to me to wonder where my daddy was but when he’s All Clear he likes to get up early and mess around outside…. But sooner than later it turned itchy and hot out in that garden and my daddy would tell us it’s okay boys y’all are now officially off the clock and we’d get on our bikes and take off. Bye now, Daddy, you better put on some sunscreen! He’d holler back at us to be sure and hydrate. We might see him again in an hour or sometimes not until suppertime, it did not matter when he was All Clear.” Here’s a taste of the Samuel Beckett-like tragicomic: Joel Junior is on a quest to find his mother in some coastal place called The Promise Land, a commune of sorts. Along the way, a young man named Landers lures young Joel Junior to blow into a strange tube coming out of Landers’ El Camino’s steering column. He says he’ll direct Joel Junior presently, once he blows like a whistle. Joel Junior’s there to help out anyone, not knowing that Landers is, obviously, under a court order to pass a breathalyzer before his engine turns over. The El Camino revs up. Landers drives off. Joel Junior stands there in a beach town, confused, naive, still lost. Parker’s voice is true to eastern North Carolina, and infectious as TB: “My daddy used to say that when Otis brung in that song to record his people looked at him like he was gone off. They were looking for hits, said my daddy, they were wanting another ‘I’ve Been Loving You Too Long’ or ‘Try a Little Tenderness.’ What other song do you know with any whistling in it but the old theme from Andy of Mayberry?...” Without giving up the plot line, let me say that Daddy’s not All Clear whatsoever throughout the story, or at its wonderfully lyrical end. Oh—and If You Want Me to Stay could also be used for any college course in Rhythm and Blues, 1960-Present. But that’s another story. At the festival, I’m betting, Parker’s going to sing and wail. In the past four years, George Singleton has published three collections of stories and one novel, called Novel (Harcourt, 352 pp., $24), all set in the fictional towns of Gruel and Forty-Five, S.C. He lives in Pickens County, S.C., and teaches at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts. He will give a reading on Friday, 4-5 p.m., in the library auditorium. Michael Parker has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post,  Oxford American, Five Points and New Stories from the South. He is a professor in the M.F.A. writing program at University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He will participate in a panel discussion, “Feel the Beat: Coming of Age in Time to Popular Music,” on Friday, 1-2:30 p.m., in Conf. Room II.