There’s something that’s always on our minds come mid-October — and no, it’s not any of the sad Tennessee football teams. Each fall, the Southern Festival of Books brings a delightfully eclectic group of authors to town, from novelists to poets to historians to chefs to politicians. There are far more events than any one person can see in one weekend, which is the best part about it — no one has the same taste in reading material, and that’s something to be celebrated, not disparaged by snooty “I only read literary fiction” types with their Paris Review tote bags.
To be sure, there will be plenty of literary fiction authors in attendance. On Friday, Jennifer Egan will discuss her new novel, Manhattan Beach, which was one of the most coveted advanced reading copies of the summer, per New York publishing Instagram. It’s her first book since 2010’s A Visit From the Goon Squad, which won the Pulitzer Prize and National Books Critics Circle Award, so it’s a big-deal fall book.
Also on Friday, Jami Attenberg will discuss her hilarious and heartbreaking novel All Grown Up, the story of a 30-something woman in New York who is anything but mature. Beth Ann Fennelly, a poet and professor at the University of Mississippi who’s just as funny as Attenberg, will read from her latest, Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs. Less humorous likely will be Anne Gisleson discussing her memoir, The Futilitarians: Our Year of Thinking, Drinking, Grieving, and Reading, about a book club she started with her friends in New Orleans called the Existential Crisis Reading Group.
For those in search of a more glamorous read, Denise Kiernan’s new book, The Last Castle: The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation’s Largest Home, tells the story of the massive Biltmore Estate in Asheville, N.C. — it’s original acreage (some since sold off) was three times bigger than Washington, D.C. Another historian, Michael Sims, tells the true story of how Sherlock Holmes came into existence in Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes. And for those in search of a crime novel, Michael Farris Smith will discuss his latest, Desperation Road, a tale of violence and redemption in Mississippi that Southern Living deemed one of the best books of the year.
On Saturday, Ann Beattie, perhaps the pre-eminent chronicler of upper-middle-class malaise of Northeastern baby boomers, will talk about the work of Memphis writer Peter Taylor with University of Tennessee at Knoxville professor and novelist Michael Knight. Another Tennessee professor, Sewanee’s Kevin Wilson, will read from his latest, Perfect Little World (in which things are, unsurprisingly, not perfect). Tim Gautreaux will discuss his latest collection of short stories, and Nicole Krauss will read from Forest Dark, a novel about divorce and Israel that is in no way about her divorce from fellow novelist Jonathan Safran Foer (who also recently published a novel about divorce and Israel).
One of Canada’s bestselling authors, Claire Cameron, will discuss themes of motherhood in her new novel, The Last Neanderthal. And two debut authors, Stephanie Powell Watts and Nick White, are on hand with their much-lauded novels — respectively, No One Is Coming to Save Us, a retelling of The Great Gatsby set in North Carolina, and How to Survive a Summer, about a traumatic season at a pray-the-gay-away camp in Mississippi.
The big political draws Saturday will be former Vice President Al Gore and conservative blogger Erick Erickson — unfortunately, they won’t be sharing the same stage. But don’t overlook Omar El Akkad, the Egyptian-Canadian journalist, whose new dystopian novel American War, about a second U.S. civil war in 2075, seems all too plausible. Duke historian Nancy K. MacLean’s Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America has become hugely controversial since its publication in early summer, as allegations of flaws in her scholarship turned into threats — expect heated questions at this session.
If you’re a dog lover, you’ll want to hear Lee Dugatkin talking about her book, How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog): Visionary Scientists and a Siberian Tale of Jump-Started Evolution, which tells the true story of Russian scientists domesticating wild foxes. If you’re a fan of boxing, then you can’t miss Jonathan Eig discussing Ali: A Life, the first unauthorized and comprehensive biography of the legendary boxer.
On the autobiographical side, Lol Tolhurst — yes, the famous musician — will be reading from his account of how he and Robert Smith founded The Cure in Cured: The Tale of Two Imaginary Boys, so get your black eyeliner ready. Former Harper’s and Oxford American editor Roger Hodge tells how he went from a small Texas town to big-city editor in his new memoir Texas Blood. And Kristen Radtke’s graphic memoir, Imagine Wanting Only This, is a meditation on loss, love and confronting grief.
For younger readers, Saturday offers a range of options, including YA historical novelist Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, middle-grade author Corabel Shofner and picture-book author and teacher Jessica Young.
Poet Ciona Rouse, recently featured on WPLN’s new podcast Versify, will also read Saturday, and a live recording of Versify with poet Joshua Moore will take place at the festival Sunday.
Also Sunday, YA fans will line up to see beloved author Sarah Dessen. They’ll also want to hear Sheba Karim, whose new novel That Thing We Call a Heart tells the coming-of-age story of a Pakistani-American teenager.
YA fans also might want to pop in earlier to see Clyde Edgerton, whose 30-year-old novel Walking Across Egypt has become a Southern classroom staple. Edgerton will reflect on the early novels that made his career, including Raney and The Floatplane Notebooks.
Poet and Columbia State professor Jeff Hardin will read from his latest, No Other Kind of World, which contemplates the complications of modernity. One such complication? An angry electorate, which Jared Yates Sexton profiles in The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore: A Story of American Rage. Sexton’s dispatches from last year’s presidential campaign are disturbing and have been called a “leftist counterweight to Hillbilly Elegy.”
Also disturbing? The new book by Philip Jett, The Death of an Heir: Adolph Coors and the Murder That Rocked an American Dynasty, the true story of the kidnapping of the Coors CEO in 1960 during the middle of a labor battle. But don’t worry, on Sunday you can also pop in to see pastry chef Stella Parks, aka food blogger Bravetart, whose first cookbook by the same name is the ultimate companion for dessert lovers. No word on whether she’ll be bringing cookies, but we’ll cross our fingers.
Read on for more coverage of the Southern Festival of Books — interviews with authors, book reviews and excerpts — courtesy of Chapter 16, and visit humanitiestennessee.org for more details and a full schedule.
Visit Chapter16.org — an online publication of Humanities Tennessee — to see reviews, excerpts and interviews with authors participating in the festival.
