The Southern Festival of Books: A Celebration of the Written Word is among the oldest literary festivals in the country, annually welcoming hundreds of authors and thousands of visitors to downtown Nashville each October. The Festival, a program of Humanities Tennessee, is free and includes performance stages, food trucks, and loads of publishers and booksellers.
Main activities take place on Saturday, October 26 from 9am To 6pm and Sunday, October 27 from 10am to 5pm in the Bicentennial Mall State Park, the Tennessee State Museum, and the Tennessee State Library & Archives.
There are literally dozens of Black authors and books about Black life. While not a complete list, here are a few notable ones, with a bit about some of their authors.
Southern History Remixed: On Rock ‘N’ Roll and The Dilemma of Race by Michael T. Bertrand, professor of history at Tennessee State University.
A Taste for More: A Novel by Phyllis R. Dixon , graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, former independent bookstore owner.
Daughters of Muscadine: Stories by Monic Ductan, covering the last one hundred years, these are stories of people whose voices have been suppressed and erased for too long: Black women, rural women, Appalachian women, and working-class women.
The Summer of 2020: George Floyd and the Resurgence of the Black Lives Matter Movement by Amanda Nell Edgar and Andre E. Johnson, associate professor of rhetoric and media studies and scholar in residence at the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change at the University of Memphis..
The Black Girl Survives In This One: Horror Stories by Desiree S. Evans, fifteen chilling and thought-provoking stories that place Black girls front and center as heroes and survivors who slay monsters, battle spirits, and face down death.
John Lewis: A Life by David Greenberg, professor of history at Rutgers University.
Long After We Are Gone: A Novel by Terah Shelton Harris.
Those Beyond the Wall: A Novel by Micaiah Johnson, who studies American literature at Vanderbilt University, where she focuses on critical race theory and automatons.
Beyond the Game: Maya Moore by Andrew Maraniss.
Vibe: The Sound and Feeling of Black Life in the American South by Corey J. Miles, assistant professor of sociology and Africana studies at Tulane University.
My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music’s Black Past, Present, and Future by Alice Randall
Dynamite Nashville: Unmasking the FBI, the KKK, and the Bombers Beyond Their Control by Betsy Phillips.
The Dead Don’t Need Reminding: In Search of Fugitives, Mississippi, and Black TV Nerd S**T and The Chainbreakers by Julian Randall.
The Dividing Sky by Jill Tew, who grew up watching Farscape and Hercules, and now writes the kinds of stories she loved as a kid, with characters she wanted to see more of— Black heroes asking big questions, saving the world, and occasionally falling in love.
For many more details about the books and their authors, and the schedule and locations of their free presentations, please go to their website and download the app. The website is: sofestofbooks.org.
