Tag: Visiting Writer

Visiting Writer Donald Ray Pollock

Crosstown Arts and the Booksellers at Laurelwood present Visiting Writer Donald Ray Pollock upon the release of his newest  novel, The Heavenly Table.

From Donald Ray Pollock, author of the highly acclaimed The Devil All the Time and Knockemstiff, comes a dark, gritty, electrifying (and, disturbingly, weirdly funny) new novel that will solidify his place among the best contemporary American authors.

It is 1917, in that sliver of border land that divides Georgia from Alabama. Dispossessed farmer Pearl Jewett ekes out a hardscrabble existence with his three young sons: Cane (the eldest; handsome; intelligent); Cob (short; heavy set; a bit slow); and Chimney (the youngest; thin; ill-tempered). Several hundred miles away in southern Ohio, a farmer by the name of Ellsworth Fiddler lives with his son, Eddie, and his wife, Eula. After Ellsworth is swindled out of his family’s entire fortune, his life is put on a surprising, unforgettable, and violent trajectory that will directly lead him to cross paths with the Jewetts. No good can come of it. Or can it?

In the gothic tradition of Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy with a healthy dose of cinematic violence reminiscent of Sam Peckinpah, Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers, the Jewetts and the Fiddlers will find their lives colliding in increasingly dark and horrific ways, placing Donald Ray Pollock firmly in the company of the genre’s literary masters.

“In 1917, just as another hellish August was starting to come to an end along the border that divides Georgia and Alabama, Pearl Jewett awakened his sons before dawn one morning with a guttural bark that sounded more animal than man. The three young men arose silently from their particular corners of the one room shack and pulled on their filthy clothes, still damp with the sweat of yesterday’s labors. A mangy rat covered with scabs scuttled up the rock chimney, knocking bits of mortar into the cold grate. Moonlight funneled through gaps in the chinked log walls and lay in thin milky ribbons across the red dirt floor. With their heads nearly touching the low ceiling, they gathered around the center of the room for breakfast, and Pearl handed them each a bland wad of flour and water fried last night in a dollop of leftover fat. There would be no more to eat until evening, when they would all get a share of the sick hog they had butchered in the spring, along with a mass of boiled spuds in wild greens scooped onto dented plates with a hand that was never clean from a pot that was never washed. Except for the occasional rain, every day was the same.”

— from The Heavenly Table

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Donald Ray Pollock, recipient of the 2009 PEN/Bingham Fellowship, made his literary debut in 2008 with the critically acclaimed story collection,Knockemstiff.  He worked as a laborer at the Mead Paper Mill in Chillicothe, Ohio, from 1973 to 2005.  He holds an MFA from Ohio State University. His work has appeared in, among other publications, Epoch, Granta, and theNew York Times.

ADVANCE PRAISE

Advance praise for The Heavenly Table:

“With furious prose and a Faulknerian eye for character, Pollock (The Devil All the Time) populates his second novel with dozens of memorable people who embody America’s headlong leap toward the future in the early 20th century.

In 1917, everything changes for the Jewett brothers—Cane, the capable one; Cob, the “slow” one; and Chimney, the hothead—upon their father’s sudden ascension to the “heavenly table.” With the exploits of their pulp fiction hero Bloody Bill Bucket fresh in their minds, the brothers embark on a violent journey north, escaping the backbreaking, fetid swamps on the Georgia-Alabama border and their lives under the thumb of sadistic landowner Maj. Thaddeus Tardweller. In southern Ohio, aging farmer Ellsworth Fiddler and his wife wait for their prodigal son to return home after a brief absence, during which he may or may not have enlisted in the United States Army to fight in Europe. Facing inexorable change—automobiles, airplanes, the machinery of war and agriculture—Ellsworth and others who frequent the local mercantile are “in agreement that the world now seemed head over heels in love with what tycoons and politicians kept referring to as ‘progress.’ ” But the Fiddlers cannot fathom how their lives will be transformed when the Jewetts ride into town on a crime spree that has made them the most wanted men in the country.

Set against the backdrop of America’s involvement in WWI and the rise of motorized and electrical technology, Pollock’s gothic, relentless imagination seduces readers into a fertile time in America’s history, exploring the chaos, wonder, violence, sexuality, and ambition of a nation on the cusp of modernity—and the outmoded notion of redemption in a world gone to hell.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred)

“Donald Ray Pollock is a master-worker.  This great novel flows like buttermilk, so smooth and entertaining that you won’t be ready for the left hook it delivers to your heart or its sophisticated moral analysis of human life.  Pollock has an omniscient eye like Gogol, taking in a vast scene while spinning tales within tales.  Readers will love him, writers will study him.”
—Atticus Lish, author of Preparation for the Next Life

“The Heavenly Table is brilliant and unforgettable.  In his trademark blend of humor and pathos, Donald Ray Pollock gives us a view into life’s darkest corners, without ever forgetting there is a lighter side as well.”
—Philipp Meyer, author of American Rust and The Son

“Think of The Heavenly Table as an antic, shambolic, guilty pleasure. Pollock’s prose is compulsively readable and often very funny.”
—Booklist

“A darkly comic gorefest by a gifted writer.”
—Kirkus

“In a crowded room full of voices, Don Pollock’s voice is so distinct you’ll hear first and won’t ever, ever forget it. Nor will you want to. And the kicker is this: He somehow keeps getting better.”
—Tom Franklin, author of Poachers and Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

“The Heavenly Table is the latest and strongest evidence that Donald Ray Pollock is one of the most talented and original writers at work today. With uniquely vivid and graceful prose he renders a tale destined to linger in the reader’s mind, a story by turns violent and darkly amusing, and always powerful. The novel is sure to be ranked among the year’s best.”
—Michael Koryta, New York Times-bestselling author of Those Who Wish Me Dead

“The Heavenly Table is a ferociously gothic ballad about desperate folks with improbable dreams and scant means. It is potent and chimeric, dank, violent, swamped in tragedy—and funny as hell.”
—Daniel Woodrell, author of The Maid’s Version and Winter’s Bone

Book Release: Memphis Noir

Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.

Featuring brand-new stories by: Richard J. Alley, David Wesley Williams, Dwight Fryer, Jamey Hatley, Adam Shaw, Penny Register-Shaw, Kaye George, Arthur Flowers, Suzanne Berube Rorhus, Ehi Ike, Lee Martin, Stephen Clements, Cary Holladay, John Bensko, Sheree Renée Thomas, and Troy L. Wiggins.

From the introduction by Laureen P. Cantwell & Leonard Gill:

“A city equal parts darkness and hope. A scarred city. An often violent one. But a resilient city too.

That’s our Memphis.

Like many cities, we have a namesake—in Egypt, Men-nefer became Menfe became Memphis, enduring and beautiful, on the banks of the Nile. Centuries later, another continent, another people, another river: Memphis, Tennessee, the soul of the Mississippi Delta, was formed. We are a place born of history, inhabited as much by memory as by the living—the past and present inextricably and inescapably linked . . . . Memphis is marvels and misfits—two-faced and unabashedly so.  

We are Memphis, and this is our noir.”

Visting Writer Jacqueline Woodson

Please join us at story booth on Monday, Oct. 13, from 3 to 5 to welcome Crosstown Arts’ latest visiting writer, Jacqueline Woodson, as she reads from and discusses her National Book Award-nominated memoir in verse, “Brown Girl Dreaming.” Thanks to The Booksellers at Laurelwood for affording us this rare opportunity to let our young writers interact with a professional writer of such high acclaim. All ages welcome for this one.

Jacqueline Woodson won the National Book Award after her visit to Crosstown Arts!

Visiting Artist Margaret Wrinkle

Reading and Discussion of Wash: a novel with award-winning author Margaret Wrinkle, accompanied by an exhibition of photography by the artist and a reception

 

Sponsored by V02 Networx
Wash, written by Margaret Wrinkle, reexamines slavery in ways that challenge contemporary assumptions about race, history and power as it carries the reader from the American South to West Africa and deep into the ancestral stories that reside in the soul.

Crosstown Arts will host Margaret Wrinkle on the evening of Tuesday, October 15, for a reading of Wash, followed by a conversation between the artist and Ladrica Menson-Furr (Director of African and African American Studies at the University of Memphis).  The reading will be accompanied by an installation of Wrinkle’s photography and a reception. A booksigning will follow the discussion.

Published by Grove/Atlantic and accompanied by an exhibition of photographs, Wash has been short listed for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize and for the Crook’s Corner Prize for exceptional debut novels set in the American South.

Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, Margaret Wrinkle is a writer, filmmaker, educator and visual artist.  Her award-winning documentary,broken\ground, about the racial divide in her historically conflicted hometown, was featured on NPR’s Morning Edition and was a winner of the National Council on Foundations’ Film Festival.

Copies of Wash will be for sale.

Learn more at margaretwrinkle.com

Press and Praise:

“Wrinkle’s tender first novel…is both redemptive and affirming.”
The New York Times Editor’s Choice  (pdf)

“A masterly literary work….This debut occasions celebration. Haunting, tender and superbly measured, Wash is both redemptive and affirming.”
The New York Times Book Review  (pdf)

“The voices of the past cannot speak for themselves and must rely on the artists of the future to honor them. It’s a profound responsibility and one that Margaret Wrinkle meets in her brilliant novel, Wash.”
The Wall Street Journal  (pdf)

“Never has a fictionalized window into the relationship between slave and master opened onto such believable territory….Wash unfolds like a dreamy, impressionistic landscape….[A] luminous book.”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution  (pdf)

“Books like William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Edward P. Jones’ The Known World, and Russell Banks’ Cloudsplitter form a kind of Truth and Reconciliation Commission of their own. Add Margaret Wrinkle’s Wash to that illustrious company.”
The Dallas Morning News  (pdf)

“…Wash achieves something extraordinary: a full-fledged confrontation with one of the most difficult aspects of our nation’s history… Wrinkle has given us an honest and important expression of hope… a firm foothold that leads in the direction of truth and reconciliation. We would do well to take this step.”
The Charleston Post and Courier  (pdf)

“A marvel. By turns grim and lyrical, heart-wrenching and hopeful.”
People (4 stars; a People Pick) (pdf)

 

 

Visiting Writer Tom Piazza

Join us for our latest collaboration with The Booksellers at Laurelwood as we welcome Tom Piazza to Memphis to read from and sign his new novel, A FREE STATE. Tom Piazza is the author of ten books, including the novel City Of Refuge, which won the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction, and the post-Katrina classic Why New Orleans Matters. Other works include Devil Sent The Rain, a collection of his essays and journalism, the Faulkner Society Award-winning novel My Cold War, and the short-story collection Blues and Trouble, which won the James Michener Award for Fiction. Tom also wrote for the HBO drama series Treme.

No less a literary critic than Bob Dylan has said, “Tom Piazza’s writing pulsates with nervous electrical tension – reveals the emotions that we can’t define.” A well known writer on American music as well, Tom won a Grammy Award for his album notes to Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: A Musical Journey and is a three-time winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for Music Writing. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Bookforum, The Oxford American, Columbia Journalism Review, and many other periodicals. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he lives in New Orleans.
Tom Piazza

A FREE STATE

The year is 1855. Blackface minstrelsy is the most popular form of entertainment in a nation about to be torn apart by the battle over slavery. Henry Sims, a fugitive slave and a brilliant musician, has escaped to Philadelphia, where he earns money living by his wits and performing on the street. He is befriended by James Douglass, leader of a popular minstrel troupe struggling to compete with dozens of similar ensembles, who imagines that Henry’s skill and magnetism might restore his troupe’s sagging fortunes.

The problem is that black and white performers are not allowed to appear together onstage. Together, the two concoct a masquerade to protect Henry’s identity, and Henry creates a sensation in his first appearances with the troupe. Yet even as their plan begins to reverse the troupe’s decline, a brutal slave hunter named Tull Burton has been employed by Henry’s former master to track down the runaway and retrieve him, by any means necessary.

Bursting with narrative tension and unforgettable characters, shot through with unexpected turns and insight, A FREE STATE is a thrilling reimagining of the American story by a novelist at the height of his powers.

 

Visiting Writer James Scott

Please join us for a reading of “The Kept” and conversation with the writer and WKNO’s Justin Willingham

Booksigning to follow
Free admission

Recent review in the New York Times

“James Scott has written a riveting and memorable debut novel.”

—Tom Perrotta, author of “Little Children” and “Election”

“Scott is both compassionate moralist and master storyteller in this outstanding debut.”

—Kirkus, ★ starred review

“By the end of the book, you’ll be convinced that [Scott] can do just about anything.”

—Kevin Wilson, author of “The Family Fang”

In the winter of 1897, Elspeth Howell treks across miles of snow and ice to the isolated farmstead in upstate New York where she and her husband have raised their five children. Her midwife’s salary is tucked into the toes of her boots, and her pack is full of gifts for her family. But as she crests the final hill, and sees her darkened house and a smokeless chimney, immediately she knows that an unthinkable crime has destroyed the life she so carefully built. Her lone comfort is her twelve-year-old son, Caleb, who joins her in mourning the tragedy and planning its reprisal. Their long journey leads them to a rough-hewn lake town, defined by the violence both of its landscape and of its inhabitants. There Caleb is forced into a brutal adulthood, as he slowly discovers truths about his family he never suspected, and Elspeth must confront the terrible urges and unceasing temptations that have haunted her for years. Throughout it all, the love between mother and son serves as the only shield against a merciless world.                         

WKNO’s Book Club Pick