Vanderbilt professors are well represented among the authors participating in the 2012 Southern Festival of Books: A Celebration of the Written Word Oct. 12, 13 and 14 in downtown Nashville.
The free festival, which began in 1989, is a three-day celebration of authors, writing and reading. Every author on the program takes part in a session, either through a solo reading or a panel discussion, followed by a book signing in the festival’s Author Signing Colonnade.
Among the participating Vanderbilt faculty are:
Mark Jarman, Centennial Professor of English
Book: Bone Fires: New and Selected Poems
• Oct. 12, 1:30–2:30 p.m., Nashville Public Library, Special Collections Room
Alice Randall, writer-in-residence
Books: Ada’s Rules: A Sexy, Skinny Novel and B.B. Bright, Possible Princess
• Oct. 13, noon–1 p.m., Legislative Plaza, Room 12
Ada’s Rules: A Sexy, Skinny Novel
• Oct. 13, 4–5 p.m., Legislative Plaza, Room 30
“Independent Princesses: Enchanting Novels for Tweens” with Caroline Randall Williams and E.D. Baker
Jane Landers, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of History and director of the Ecclesiastical and Secular Sources for Slave Societies project
Book: Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions
• Oct. 13, 1:30–3 p.m., Legislative Plaza, Room 16
“Histories of Freedom: People and Politics in the Atlantic World” with Madison Smartt Bell and Laurent Dubois
Landers’ panel is part of a series of sessions related to the U.S. Civil War and the sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation. The sessions, co-sponsored by theRobert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, are being held in conjunction with the Warren Center’s 2012-13 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar on “The Age of Emancipation: Black Freedom in the Atlantic World.” Twenty speakers will address this topic at the book festival: http://www.humanitiestennessee.org/content/civil-war-emancipation-conflict-reckoning.
Charlotte Pierce-Baker, professor of women’s and gender studies and English
Book: This Fragile Life: A Mother’s Story of a Bipolar Son
• Oct. 13, 4–5 p.m., Nashville Public Library, Special Collections Room
Rick Hilles, assistant professor of English
Book: A Map of the Lost World
• Oct. 14, 1–2 p.m., Nashville Public Library, Special Collections Room
“The Art to Being and Having Been: Salient Voices in Modern Poetry” with Ellen Watson
Diane Sasson, lecturer in theology and women
Book: Yearning for the New Age: Laura Holloway-Langford and Late Victorian Spirituality
•Oct. 14, 2–3 p.m., Nashville Public Library, Conf. Room IB
“Reconciling Faith and the World: Biographies of Spiritual Journeys” with Randal Maurice Jelks
Other Vanderbilt participants include:
Celia Walker, director of special projects for Vanderbilt Libraries
Book: The Art of Community: Janet and Jim Ayers’ Collection of Tennessee Art •Oct. 14, 2–3 p.m., Legislative Plaza, Room 30
“By Means of Matter: Capturing Community Through Art” with co-author Susan W. Knowles and Art Shiver
Kat Zhang, senior in the College of Arts and Science and English major
Book: What’s Left of Me
•Oct. 14, 2:30–4 p.m., Nashville Public Library, Conf. Room IA
“Reconstructing Order: YA Dystopian Novels” with Julianna Baggott and Jeff Hirsch
For more information, visit the Southern Festival of Books webpage.