Monday, November 16, 2009

"Ford County": signature Grisham

Posted by Leonard Gill on Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 2:55 PM

ford-county.jpg
Before there was The Firm, there was A Time To Kill, which was set in Ford County, Mississippi. Now there's Ford County (new from Doubleday), and it's the author's first collection of short stories.

If you pre-ordered a signed copy of Ford County from Burke's Book Store, your order is ready. If you didn't pre-order, signed copies are still available through Burke's, but the supply is limited. Just don't expect a signature with a personalized greeting. Just the name of the author: John Grisham.

For a signed copy of Ford County, call Burke's at 901-278-7484, go by the store at 936 S. Cooper, or visit burkesbooks.com.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Bernie "It Was Too Good To Be True" Madoff at the MJJC

Posted by Leonard Gill on Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 7:23 PM

400000000000000170557_s4.jpg
Nobody could believe it — the profits: $65 billion. Nobody wanted to believe it — the scam: a Ponzi scheme. The scam artist: "Uncle Bernie" aka Bernard Madoff.

Erin Arvedlund: She didn't believe those profits either, so she investigated Madoff for Barron's back in 2001, but the SEC wouldn't follow up on her or anyone's suspicions. And now, Arvedlund's written about Madoff again. The book's called Too Good To Be True: The Rise and Fall of Bernie Madoff, and on Thursday, November 12th, at 7 p.m., Arvedlund is in Memphis to discuss Madoff and sign copies of her book at the Memphis Jewish Community Center.

Continue reading »

Thursday, October 29, 2009

D'Army Bailey: Activist, Attorney, Actor

Posted by Leonard Gill on Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 12:21 PM

9780807134764.jpg
From the sound of it, Memphis lawyer and former court judge D'Army Bailey doesn't only think in complete sentences or full paragraphs. More like whole pages at a time. But drawn from a recent 50-minute phone conversation — in time for the publication of Bailey's memoir The Education of a Black Radical: A Southern Civil Rights Activist's Journey 1959-1964 (Louisiana State University Press), here's the gist of it — "it" being Bailey's thoughts on a variety of subjects, from the state of the student protest movement to the state of South Memphis.

Continue reading »

Friday, October 9, 2009

Yakich at Burke's: Yes?

Posted by Leonard Gill on Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 1:50 PM

Yakich at Burke's: No. Due to a family emergency, poet Mark Yakich was unable to travel to Memphis for tonight's booksigning. Look for word from Burke's that the Yakich reading has been rescheduled.

Yakich/Bragg/Brewer To Read

Posted by Leonard Gill on Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 10:58 AM

mark-yakich.jpg
Why's a poet quoting a recipe? Because it's a recipe "we've waited all our lives for."

The poet is Mark Yakich. He teaches at Loyola University in New Orleans. And he's answering the good people at Ploughshares magazine when asked: "Favorite recipe." Yakich's answer on the "pshares" blog: "The Moroccan Chicken Recipe We've Waited All Our Lives For." (In the same spirit and to the question "What's on your desk," Yakich answered: "A mess.")

Moroccan chicken. A mess. How about The Importance of Peeling Potatoes in Ukraine? That's the title of Yakich's most recent book, from Penguin, of poems. (And that's Yakich in a self-portrait, left.)

Interested in hearing Yakich read? He's at Burke's Book Store on Friday, October 9th, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.

Continue reading »

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Mark Greaney: Good Aim

Posted by Leonard Gill on Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 3:25 PM

n313744.jpg
"Where I live it is legal to carry a gun on your person, and where I live, sadly, you would be well advised to do so."

So says Memphian Mark Greaney, and the quote comes from an interview on his website, markgreaneybooks.com.

So far, though, there's only one Mark Greaney book. It's a mass-market political thriller called The Gray Man (Jove), but Greaney's already sold the publisher on two sequels.

For a first-time author, this guy is getting a ton of attention. Why: Because The Gray Man is the real deal: a real page-turner. And Greaney's got a real character on his hands: a CIA operative turned assassin-for-hire named Court Gentry. Gentry's a target for intelligence outfits and paramilitary groups the world over, and yes, Gentry is used to carrying a gun on his person, but no, no need to advise him to do so.

How does it feel to be a new author on the brink of what's looking like the big time? Here's how:

Continue reading »

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Robert Hooks: "What Exactly Am I Talking About?"

Posted by Leonard Gill on Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 3:28 PM

Robert-Hicks.jpg
Facts: Robert Hicks wrote The Widow of the South, which is set on the Carnton plantation in Franklin, Tennessee, south of Nashville. That book, about the Civil War's bloody Battle of Franklin, Confederate general John Bell Hood, and the battle's aftermath, debuted at #6 in 2005 on The New York Times best-seller list. A year later, the trade paperback edition became a Times best-seller too. And on October 4th, the mass-market edition will make it to that list as well. All this as Hicks' new novel, A Separate Country (Grand Central Publishing) hits bookstores. Hicks is signing and discussing A Separate Country at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on Monday, September 28th, at 6 p.m.

Continue reading »

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Bausch a Real Winner

Posted by Leonard Gill on Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 11:03 AM

peace.large.jpg
Could a book title and book prize be a better fit?

Just announced: Richard Bausch, holder of the Moss Chair of Excellence in English at the University of Memphis, has won the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for fiction for his novel Peace (now in paperback, from Vintage). The honorarium: $10,000.

Bausch is winner along with author Benjamin Skinner for A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery. (The runners-up for this year's prize: Uwem Akpan's Say You're One of Them, named the next Oprah's Book Club selection, and Thomas Friedman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution ... and How It Can Renew America.)

The Dayton Literary Peace Prize, launched in 2006, is awarded annually to works of fiction and nonfiction that use "the power of literature to foster peace, social justice, and global understanding." Peace is that: a meditation on the corrosive effects of violence among a group of American soldiers in World War II Italy.

In his statement on Dayton's website, Bausch said, "I am honored to receive the prize — especially when I see the books that were nominated along with mine. It is heartening to be judged worthy of that company, and to be singled out among them is deeply humbling."

Richard Bausch and the other winning authors will be recognized in an awards ceremony in Dayton, Ohio, on November 8th.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Root at U of M

Posted by Leonard Gill on Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 8:58 AM

BobRoot-medium.jpg
One week, it looked like visiting authors in the River City Writers Series at the University of Memphis will be no-shows this semester, due to funding cuts. This week: better news. Robert Root, a leading name in creative nonfiction, will be making two appearances at the university.

On Thursday, October 1st, Root will teach a master class at 2 p.m. in Patterson Hall; at 7 p.m., he'll be reading from and signing copies of his books in Mitchell Hall Auditorium.

Those books by Root include The Nonfictionist's Guide: On Reading and Writing Creative Nonfiction and his latest, Following Isabella: Travels in Colorado Then and Now. In addition to writing, teaching, and regularly visiting creative-writing programs throughout the country, Root is an editor at the journal Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction.

Both of Root's appearances at the University of Memphis are free and open to the public. For more information, call 678-4692 or write creativewriting@memphis.edu.

Friday, September 18, 2009

C. Bard Cole: The LONG Explanation

Posted by Leonard Gill on Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 11:04 AM

On writer (and current Memphian) C. Bard Cole's latest book, the experimental This Is Where My Life Went Wrong (BLATT Books): a [Q]&A.

cbardcole.jpg
[Memphis. Disaster #2.]
The short explanation, why I'm living in Memphis ... I'd just finished Alabama grad school, an MFA in creative writing, in the summer of 2005 and moved to New Orleans. I was going to be an instructor at Tulane. I house-sat for the summer and finally found an apartment ... two weeks before Katrina hit. With two friends with me, we packed into my car and went on a cross-country jaunt across the South. We just assumed that in a few days we'd get to go back to New Orleans. But as the days wore on, it became clear that we weren't going to be able to go back.

My friend in Memphis, Brian Pera ... I've known him since the late 1990s. I'd met him in New York City. We had the same editor at St. Martin's for our first books.

Brian was planning to start shooting his first movie, The Way I See Things. He had one position he could pay for and that he hadn't filled. It was boom operator. Brian said, "Do you want to work on my movie? You can forget about New Orleans for the month or so it'll take to shoot." I said okay. The cinematographer on that movie, Ryan Parker, trained me to operate the boom. I had a great time.

Then I went home to Maryland to figure out what I was going to do ... hoard some money. Tulane had canceled the semester. It had fired the instructors in my position ... first-year writing instructor. So I worked at a commercial greenhouse in Maryland.

Then Ryan helped me get a job at WKNO in Memphis, and that's where I've been ever since. I started as a production assistant doing all sorts of stuff — from manual labor to working on sets to learning about editing. Now I'm in promotions and the public information department.

There's another movie with Brian and Ryan coming up. I'm the production designer, and this time, we're trying to be a bit more "Hollywood." Ann Magnuson is gonna be one of our stars. I'm excited to meet her. When I was a little kid, well, not a little kid, a teenager, I used to look at Interview magazine and things I thought were cool, urban ... New York. Ann was there, right in there.

Continue reading »

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Writers Series This Fall? Not So Much

Posted by Leonard Gill on Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 7:46 PM

It's the beginning of another fall semester, but Memphians looking to see, hear, and talk to out-of-town authors will be disappointed -- disappointed that this year the River City Writers Series at the University of Memphis has no authors, at this time, scheduled. Blame it on funding cuts, and hope that it's short-term. It was only last March that the writers series brought Elizabeth Strout to Memphis. A month later, Strout won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for Olive Kitteridge.

Over at Rhodes College, there's, so far, one visiting-author event slated, and it's Thursday, September 17th. That's when the college will host not one but three returning alumnae -- Christina LaPrease, Aisha Sharif, and Caki Wilkinson -- who will read from their poetry starting at 7:30 p.m. in Blount Auditorium inside Buckman Hall.

Continue reading »

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Wayne White At Risk

Posted by Leonard Gill on Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 3:32 PM

In case you don't recognize the name Wayne White, he grew up in the 1960s on the outskirts of Chattanooga, he studied art at Middle Tennessee State University, and he was in New York City when the downtown art scene there was heating up in the late '70s and early '80s. He was already an accomplished cartoonist and illustrator, and he was lucky enough to join the crew as an Emmy Award-winning puppeteer and set designer on Pee-wee's Playhouse. He also worked on music videos with Peter Gabriel ("Big Time") and Smashing Pumpkins ("Tonight, Tonight"). A painting of White's is a Lambchop album cover ("Nixon").

click to enlarge Drop the Country Boy Act
  • Drop the Country Boy Act
Today, White lives in Los Angeles. His signature work: words, phrases, or whole sentences that White paints onto mass-produced thrift-store artwork — images of an ideal never-never land depicting rural America at its most surreal. As in, at left, White's Drop the Country Boy Act.

AMMO books has recently published the coffee-table-worthy Wayne White: Maybe Now I'll Get the Respect I So Richly Deserve, a monograph on the artist from the studio of designer Todd Oldham.
What follows: some questions put to and words from Wayne White.

Continue reading »

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Marshall Boswell Goes Nuclear

Posted by Leonard Gill on Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 4:55 PM

576f/1250113754-boswell.jpg
As in: "nuclear" family in a short story called "Father Figure." It appears in the inaugural issue of the literary magazine The Rome Review (out of Washington, D.C.; real nice website; check it out), but it appears that your standard nuclear family ain't what it was.

True, in "Father Figure," there's a father, but he's no longer married to the woman who's the mother of their two children. When the story opens, those kids are arriving in Memphis for an extended stay with their father, who lives in Midtown. The son, age 17, barely says a word — glares is more like it when his father tries to engage him in conversation, stares is more like it when the boy is sitting glued to the set — the TV set, which, during the first few days of this visit, runs nonstop (and that includes the latest paternity battles on Maury Povich's trash TV talk show).

The younger sister, though, is more forthcoming — and understanding — beneath her Goth exterior. She doesn't seem bothered (or is she?) by the fact that her father is now in love and living with a man who is 15 years his junior, which may or may not be a problem for everybody involved: ex-husband, ex-wife, two children, and a guy who maybe missing the club scene, gay division. The problem here, definitely: the arrival of the son's girlfriend with some news. That's not all that's a problem, though. Read "Father Figure" to find out.

And to find out some background on the story, here's Marshall Boswell, the author and associate professor in the English Department at Rhodes College, in his own words — on "Father Figure" in particular and the art of the short story in general:

Continue reading »

Friday, July 17, 2009

The Dirty Good Book

Posted by Leonard Gill on Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 10:28 AM

f1cc/1247841135-9780061238857.jpg Did Abraham pimp Sarah? Was Onan a jerk? Did King David have a potty mouth? And were Samson and Delilah into S&M?

Those are the pressing questions asked, and answered, in The Uncensored Bible: The Bawdy and Naughty Bits of the Good Book, which is out in paperback this month from HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins.

The book's authors, professors John Kaltner and Steven L. McKenzie, both of Rhodes College, with the help of reporter (and satirist) Joel Kilpatrick, do a hell of a job mixing bona fide scholarship and good-hearted humor, and "funny as hell" is how one reviewer described it last year. Here's how the Flyer saw it.

Leave it to Kaltner, McKenzie, and Kilpatrick, though, to have the final say on a question that's had other scholars stumped: Does the Bible or does it not command bikini waxing?

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Eric Barnes: In His Own Words, On His Debut Novel

Posted by Leonard Gill on Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 12:30 PM

620a/1246371283-1932961674.jpg First there was the fall of the dot-coms. Then there was the fall of Enron. Yesterday, there was the sentencing of Bernard Madoff to 150 years in prison. But now, it's time for the fall of Core Communications: the fictionalized big-business scam at the heart of Memphian Eric Barnes' debut novel, Shimmer (Unbridled Books).

Barnes is discussing and signing copies of Shimmer at Davis-Kidd Booksellers today, June 30th, starting at 6 p.m. Just don't expect the author to be quitting his day job anytime soon. (He's publisher of the Memphis Daily News and the Memphis News.) And don't think of Shimmer as another corporate thriller. Barnes doesn't see it that way. Here's why. And here's more.

Continue reading »

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

Most Commented On

ADVERTISEMENT

Flyer Flashback

Flyer Flashback

To mark the Flyer's 20th anniversary, we're looking back at stories from our first two decades.

Read Story

© 1996-2009

Contemporary Media
460 Tennessee Street, 2nd Floor | Memphis, TN 38103
Visit our other sites: Memphis Magazine | Memphis Parent | Memphis Business Quarterly
Powered by Foundation