Spell Binding: The 31st Annual Southern Festival of Books Lineup Is So Good It’s Scary – Nashville Scene
The annual literary fest takes place Oct. 11-13 at War Memorial Plaza and the Nashville Public Library downtown
“I’m not really a sports person,” Southern Festival of Books director Serenity Gerbman says, “but I think we have a really deep bench.”
You don’t have to be a sports fan to appreciate that sentiment, especially with a lineup that’s stacked with talent. In its 31st year, the festival serves as the crescendo of what was a banner year for Nashville authors. Sure, we’ve come to expect seeing the name Ann Patchett splashed across headlines in national publications. But this year, the names Margaret Renkl and Mary Laura Philpott made similar splashes (Patchett blurbed both books), and suddenly the “local author” roster and the “nationally recognized author” roster at the 2019 festival overlap even more than usual.
And just as a number of local writers have connected with a national audience, the festival as a whole has benefited from Nashville’s rising profile. “People associate Nashville with different things than just being in the South and country music,” Gerbman says. In years past, an agent might wonder aloud whether a Nashville audience would really get their author. “I don’t really get that question anymore,” says Gerbman.
If you want to avoid parking, use Lyft code PARNASSUS1011 to receive two discounted rides to and from the festival. (Full disclosure: Parnassus Books is the official festival bookseller, and I work there.) Books and the people who write them are the focus of the fest, of course, but there’s plenty more. (“It’s called a festival and not a conference for a reason,” Gerbman reminds us.) In addition to the many readings, panels and book signings — all of them free and open to the public — there are food trucks, musical performances, kids-book characters, publisher booths and plenty more to take in. As always, it’s almost too much, and we barely have time to nick the surface here. But as Gerbman says of the festival itself, “It’s a good problem to have.” Elsewhere in our coverage, see book reviews and author interviews — courtesy of Chapter 16, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee — related to the Southern Festival of Books.
Friday
A mere hour into the festival, two of its biggest names go back to back in the Nashville Public Library Auditorium. First up at 1 p.m., there’s Ottessa Moshfegh, who has carved out a niche for herself with an odd, virtuosic, undaunted writing style that has few peers. My Year of Rest and Relaxation, recently published in paperback, ripples with irony, despair and ennui. (See our Q&A with Moshfegh.) Follow Moshfegh to the author’s tent to meet her and get your book signed, or just stay in your seat. At 2 p.m., sci-fi visionary Ted Chiang presents Exhalation, which one reviewer called “a collection of short stories that will make you think, grapple with big questions, and feel more human.” OK, fine, that wasn’t a reviewer — it was Barack Obama, a former president who is able to read. Also, Chiang wrote the story that the film Arrival was based on. You don’t want to miss this (NPL Auditorium).
Young adult readers have three great options today, though the first two overlap a bit. First up at noon in the NPL Teen Studio: Supernatural and Superhero YA Fiction, featuring Cassie Beasley (The Bootlace Magician), Jenn Bennett (The Lady Rogue) and Jeremy Scott (Strings — The Ables Book 2). Then at 1 p.m. in the NPL Teen Center, there’s Modern Tales of Survival: YA Novels, with Dave Connis (Suggested Reading), Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal (I’m Not Dying With You Tonight) and Courtney C. Stevens (Four Three Two One). And closing out the day at 4 p.m. in the NPL Auditorium, Old Kingdom fantasy series author Garth Nix presents his latest, Angel Mage.
The musically inclined should keep an eye on the performance schedules throughout the weekend. From 1:15-4:45 p.m., beloved community radio station WXNA will present a rolling program of live performances, DJs spinning songs with a literary bent, and a tribute to the late singer, songwriter, poet and former Nashvillian David Berman (Music Stage). At 2:30, Michael Washburn discusses his 331/3 series book on the Tom Petty album Southern Accents (NPL Teen Studio).
Speaking of music, the names Doug Hoekstra and David Olney are surely familiar to fans of the local singer-songwriters, but they’re at the festival for their poems. Hoekstra’s collection Unopened is his first (1 p.m. NPL Conference Room 3). Poetry fans will not want to miss Hanif Abdurraqib, whose new collection A Fortune for Your Disaster is one of the year’s best. Considering Abdurraqib was longlisted for the National Book Award for a different book he published this year — Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest — that’s no easy feat. He’s a great mind, a fantastic reader and a radiant presence (3 p.m., NPL Special Collections Room). Later in the afternoon, the poets of Southern Word will take to the Performing Arts Stage (4 p.m.).
Former Scene sales rep Scott Hylbert toured the country with his dystopian tech thriller Task Lyst (and got a nice mention in Parade to boot; see our review of Hylbert’s book here). He’ll be in the NPL Teen Studio at 1:30 p.m. Keep working a mystery with The Secrets That Destroy: Three Mysteries (2 p.m., NPL Conf Room 1A), where the featured speakers are Rea Frey (Because You’re Mine; see story here), Karen Golightly (There Are Things I Know) and R.J. Jacobs. Fans of true crime — or rather, fans of reading about true crime — should be sure to catch pop historian Karen Abbott, author of The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, the Women Who Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shook Jazz Age America. She’ll be in the NPL Auditorium at 3 p.m. Fans of the truth — minus the crime and plus some nerdiness — should check out Stephen Ornes, author of Math Art: Truth, Beauty, and Equations, at 3 p.m. in NPL Conference Room 3.
Saturday
Coffee With Authors, presented by the Women’s National Book Association, gets the second day going strong at 9:30 a.m. with a terrific lineup: Anissa Gray, author of The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls, which Anjali Enjeti, writing in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, calls a “luminous debut novel”; Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of the hugely popular novel-as-oral-history-of-a-made-up-rock-band Daisy Jones and the Six, which The New York Times Book Review’s Eleanor Henderson calls “a way to love the rock ’n’ roll of the 1970s, without apology”; and Alexi Zentner, author of the novel Copperhead, praised by NPR’s Maureen Corrigan as “a smart, propulsive story about racism, class and the limits of individual possibility” (NPL Auditorium). See our interview with Gray here.
I recently heard an author remark that the literary world undervalues sports books. Prove the literati wrong by catching Barry Goheen, former game-winning clutch-shot specialist, as he discusses Buzzer Beaters and Memorial Magic: A Memoir of the Vanderbilt Commodores, 1987-1989 (10 a.m., NPL Special Collections Room).
At 11 a.m. in NPL Conference Room 1B, Elliot Ackerman and Clay Risen come together for Reckonings: 21st Century War Stories of Global Power. National Book Award finalist Ackerman’s Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning focuses on Syria through the lens of his own experiences as a Marine. Nashville native and deputy editor of The New York Times opinion page, Risen has earned high marks for The Crowded Hour: Theodore Roosevelt, the Rough Riders, and the Dawn of the American Century (see story here). Talk about versatile: Last year, Risen was at the festival for a book about whiskey. At 11:30 a.m. in the NPL Auditorium, Pico Iyer presents A Beginner’s Guide to Japan: Observations and Provocations.
Got a young reader in your life? At 10 a.m. in NPL Conf Room 1A, Judy Schachner will present her picture book Stretchy McHandsome, about a ginger cat who isn’t always well-behaved. Also at 10 a.m., in the NPL Teen Studio, two authors with middle-grade (i.e., the level between chapter books and YA) titles: Marina Budhos (The Long Ride) and Jamie Sumner (Roll With It). Also for middle-grade: When Summer Seemed Simple: Novels for Young Readers, featuring Shannon Greenland (Scouts) and Gillian McDunn (Caterpillar Summer). That’s at noon in the NPL Teen Studio. The aforementioned Schachner is also the creator of the character Skippyjohn Jones, who will be appearing with Clifford at a party of some sort every day at 2 p.m. on the Youth Stage.
At 11 a.m. in NPL Conf Room 1A, photographer Heidi Ross presents Nashville: Scenes From the New American South alongside Ann Patchett, who wrote the captions. The collaborative collection, released late last year, captures slices of life from around the city. (See our story here. Patchett also appears at 2 p.m. at War Memorial Plaza; see below.)
In the category of timely for all the wrong reasons, Nashville poet Kate Daniels presents her latest collection, In the Months of My Son’s Recovery. Daniels, whose son is a recovering heroin addict, says the book and her readings from it “have all been undertaken with the knowledge and approval of my real-life child — who I think of as my anonymous co-author — who has been through the fire” (11 a.m., NPL Commons Room).
At noon in the NPL Commons Room, the panel American Misadventures: Tragicomic Tales brings together three writers: Belle Boggs, author of the novel The Gulf (also appearing Friday with Marshall Chapman and Samia Serageldin, editors of Mothers and Strangers: Essays on Motherhood From the New South, at 2 p.m. in the same room); Brock Clarke, author of the novel Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe?; and George Singleton, author of the short story collection Staff Picks (see story here).
Sometimes two writers just have a great rapport, even though their books are rather different. WNPT’s A Word on Words co-host Mary Laura Philpott’s memoir-in-essays I Miss You When I Blink is a funny, self-deprecating dissection of her own perfectionism; Dani Shapiro’s Inheritance explores the aftermath of her discovery of a family secret through a DNA test (12:30 p.m., NPL Auditorium). Similarly different, Nashville literary light and Parnassus Books co-owner Ann Patchett’s latest novel The Dutch House, her eighth, is about two siblings exiled by their stepmother in 1950s Pennsylvania (see story here), whereas Nashville literary light and New York Times columnist Margaret Renkl’s debut memoir is an imagistic, formally experimental meditation on life, loss and nature, alternating mostly between Nashville and Lower Alabama (2 p.m., War Memorial Plaza; see story here).
Memphis-born poet and writer Saeed Jones, who recently spent time as a BuzzFeed editor and host of its web series AM 2 DM, presents his new memoir How We Fight for Our Lives, which Kirkus, in a starred review, says “marks the emergence of a major literary voice” (3 p.m., NPL Conference Room 1B). At 3:30 p.m. in the NPL Auditorium, Southern Foodways Alliance presents the John Egerton Prize with a program featuring John T. Edge, journalist and Vanderbilt professor Amanda Little, author of the eye-opening The Fate of Food: What We’ll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World, and New Orleans novelist Maurice Carlos Ruffin, author of the wickedly funny and dark novel We Cast a Shadow.
At 4 p.m. in NPL Conference Room 1B, Kendra Allen (When You Learn the Alphabet) joins fellow memoirist Jennine Capó Crucet (My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education; see story here).
Sunday
The last day of the festival is a good one for the audio-minded. Start at noon in NPL Conference Room 1B for Quit Playing and Hit Record: Starting Your Own Podcast, featuring WPLN’s Meribah Knight (The Promise), Kristen Meinzer (So You Want to Start a Podcast: Finding Your Voice, Telling Your Story, and Building a Community That Will Listen) and Stephen Usery (WYPL’s Book Talk). Then at 1 p.m., check out Talking Audiobooks With Dion Graham and Ellen Myrick, which will cover publishing’s fastest-growing segment (NPL Commons Room). Also at 1 p.m., Susan Neiman will discuss her book Learning From the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (NPL Conference Room 1B); see our review here.
It’s also a good day for Margaret Renkl fans, who get a second chance to see the Late Migrations author — this time with Casey Cep, author of the fascinating personal history Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee (see story here). That’s at noon in the NPL Auditorium. Local history buffs should head to the NPL Special Collections Room at noon for Old Nashville in Memory and Photos, featuring Brian Allison (Notorious Nashville: Scoundrels, Rogues and Outlaws), Jay Farrell (Abandoned Nashville: Dark Corners of Music City), Elizabeth Goetsch (Lost Nashville) and George Zepp (Hidden History of Nashville). For a wider-angle view, Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power presents her latest, The Education of an Idealist — a memoir of her journey from Irish immigrant to journalist to cabinet member (2 p.m., NPL Conference Room 1B).
And for the culmination of the Borders and Belonging session track, Migration Narratives: New Fiction and Nashville Stories will feature Melissa Rivero, author of The Affairs of the Falcóns (see story here), At-Large Metro Councilmember Zulfat Suara, and student activists Keitlyn Alcantara (Vanderbilt University) and Berenice Oliva (Trevecca Nazarene University) (3:30 p.m., NPL Teen Center).
Read more coverage of the Southern Festival of Books:
Ottessa Moshfegh discusses beauty, humor and the ecstasy she finds in writing
Susan Neiman considers America’s moral possibilities in Learning From the Germans
Furious Hours tells the true story of Harper Lee’s plan to out-Capote her old friend Truman Capote
With Staff Picks, George Singleton once again proves his mastery of the comically absurd
Anissa Gray discusses family, process and her absorbing debut novel
Clay Risen explains how Teddy Roosevelt helped usher America onto the world stage
In her novel The Affairs of the Falcóns, Melissa Rivero explores the plight of an undocumented mother in 1990s New York
