Book Lovers, Fear Not

Ingram CEO Skip Prichard isn’t afraid of what lies ahead for publishing

by Margaret Renkl

July 30 This bulletin just in: the sky, contrary to earlier reports, is not falling. Books are not dying, beloved authors are not destined for the poorhouse, and neither the Kindle nor the iPad will murder serious literature. That’s what David “Skip” Prichard, CEO of the LaVergne-based Ingram Content Group, believes, at least. And if anyone should know whereof he speaks on this subject, surely it’s the guy in charge of running a company with 2.6 million books for sale.

Published Friday, 30 July 2010

I Think I Attract the Mentally Ill

An author on book tour encounters his public

by Robert Hicks

July 30, 2010 The truth was there before me from that first event at my local bookstore, when two devotees of a book they have never read—a man and a woman—got in a slugfest over who would be last to meet me, and the woman won. Somehow in the commotion, as the staff was ushering me out a side door, I knew in my heart that this was going to be a long book tour.

Published Friday, 30 July 2010

"Lighter"

by Blas Falconer

July 29, 2010 Blas Falconer is an assistant professor at Austin Peay State University, where he serves as the poetry editor of Zone 3 Magazine and Zone 3 Press. Falconer received his M.F.A. from the University of Maryland and his Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. He is the author of The Perfect Hour (Pleasure Boat Studio, 2006) and A Question of Gravity and Light (University of Arizona Press, 2007), and his work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Another Chicago Magazine, Third Coast, Puerto del Sol, Poet Lore, New Delta Review, and the Baltimore Review. "Lighter" originally appeared in the Hampton-Sydney Review.

Published Thursday, 29 July 2010

A Captured Mind

In his new novel, David Madden explores the psychological consequences of witnessing a terrible crime

by Susannah Felts

July 28, 2010 Based on plot summary alone, Abducted by Circumstance, a new novel by acclaimed Knoxville-born author David Madden, sounds like a poolside page-turner. Yet this quiet and finely crafted novel is less a psychological thriller than an engrossing, complex exploration of a troubled woman’s identity. It is also a daring narrative experiment in point of view.

Published Wednesday, 28 July 2010

Pornography for Oenophiles

Matthew Gavin Frank's account of the six months he spent picking grapes in Barolo is ripe reading for lovers of wine, food, and Italy

by Liz Garrigan

July 27, 2010 After making over-medium eggs in Juneau for an ex-goldpanner, Matthew Gavin Frank decided to take the advice of the patron who'd just spit out his food: "In a world full of idiots, you have to go to the place with the fewest idiots." Barolo is Frank's account of the six months he spent living and working—the back-breaking labor of grape harvesting—in Barolo, Italy (pop. 646), in the country's northern Piedmont region. He will read from his book at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on July 27 at 6 p.m. and at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on July 28 at 7 p.m.

Published Tuesday, 27 July 2010

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