The Southern Festival of Books, now in its 36th year, is one of the best free events in Nashville, with often ideal weather, musical performances, food trucks, kid-friendly activities, hundreds of authors and thousands of visitors.
Among the books this year’s festival will celebrate are two food-related titles: Alice Driver’s Life and Death of the American Worker, an investigation into Tyson Foods and its negligence and employee mistreatment, and Crystal Wilkinson’s culinary memoir Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, which examines five generations of Black Appalachian women. Nonfiction heavy hitter Erik Larson will speak about The Demon of Unrest, his book examining the origins of the Civil War. In fiction, Jayne Anne Phillips’ Night Watch, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, is at the top of our list.
Particularly notable is this year’s lineup of talented Nashville-based writers — including several current and former Scene writers. If you read our monthly Crawl Space column about the city’s First Saturday visual-art events, you’ll be happy to see that longtime contributor Joe Nolan is on the docket. His history of Nashville’s underground art scene, Nowville, arrives via Vanderbilt Press in November. Margaret Renkl and Steven Hale, both former Scene staffers, will host book events on Sunday — Renkl will speak about her Leaf, Cloud, Crow with her brother, Nashville-based artist Billy Renkl, and Hale will discuss his book Death Row Welcomes You with author Joe Ingle, whose book Too Close to the Flame details his own experiences with death row inmates. And Betsy Phillips — whose weekly Scene opinion column is a cornerstone of the Scene’s regular political coverage — will speak about her book Dynamite Nashville: Unmasking the FBI, the KKK, and the Bombers Beyond Their Control with historian Aran Shetterly on Saturday morning.
As always, you can visit sofestofbooks.org for a full schedule of events, but this year you can also download the SFOB app. It’s free and easy to navigate, and it gives you access to daily schedules, a map of the event spaces, and links to find out more about each of the authors.
In the coming pages, you can read our selection of Q&As and book reviews focused on authors appearing at this year’s festival. Special thanks to Maria Browning and the folks at Chapter 16, an initiative of Humanities Tennessee that provides the Scene with books coverage.
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