Connecting the Book Community
Since everything is virtual these days, WNBA National’s book club will discuss The Last Year of the War, Susan Meissner’s latest work at 8 pm July 28, 2020. Two days later, on July 30 at 8 pm, the National chapter hosts Meissner for an author talk. Members can participate on Zoom or through the WNBA National’s Facebook page. All times are CST.
As much as we hate to cancel our programs we felt that in order to keep all of our members safe and healthy we had no other choice but to cancel our monthly meeting for April. We appreciate our speaker, Margaret Renkl, and encourage everyone to pick up a copy of her book, Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss. We are devastated that we will not be able to hear Margaret speak but health and safety come first. Please be sure to join us in May for our garden party – more details to come.
Twelve Steps Toward A Healthy Literary Life with Author Amy Wright
6:30 – 7:30 p.m., at Dalt’s American Grill On White Bridge on March 5, 2020.
Often our exemplars for literary life are men—and mythic. Literary women, too, like Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and Emily Dickinson, are often tragic figures or outsized geniuses. It took me over a decade to find contemporary models who were living sustainable creative lives and to enter into conversations with them. True artists find their idiosyncratic ways forward, but strong realistic examples like Dorothy Allison, Shane McCrae, Kimiko Hahn, David Huddle, and Janisse Ray modeled healthy techniques to emulate. In this talk, I share a twelve-step process that helped me define and develop a literary identity that includes author, poet, interviewer, scholar, activist, editor, publisher, professor, and coordinator of Creative Writing at Austin Peay State University.
Amy Wright is the author of two poetry books, one poetry collaboration, and six chapbooks, including the essay collection Think I’ll Go Eat A Worm. Her work appears in Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Appalachian Heritage, Waveform: Anthology of Women Essayists, and Southern Poetry Anthology Volumes III and VI, and elsewhere archived at: www.awrightawright.com
We’ll meet at Dalt’s American Grill on White Bridge Road at 5:30 for socializing and dinner, and the program will start at 6:30 on Thursday, March 5th.
Join us on Saturday, February 22, 2020 at the Hermitage Library for a panel discussion featuring:
A Thrilling Ride with Author Rea Frey
6:30 – 7:30 p.m., at Dalt’s American Grill On White Bridge on February 6, 2020.
Rea Frey will describe the process that’s led to the publication of two stunning mysteries and share how you, too, can write and market the novel you’ve always wanted.
Rea Frey is the bestselling author of Not Her Daughter and Because You’re Mine. Visit her website to learn more! reafrey.com
We’ll meet at Dalt’s American Grill on White Bridge Road at 5:30 for socializing and dinner, and the program will start at 6:30 on Thursday, February 6th.
Holiday Dinner with Caitlin Hamilton Summie: Stories from the Heart
Our annual Holiday Dinner for members and their guests is Thursday, December 13, at The Women’s Club of Nashville. The dinner will begin at 6:00 p.m. Our speaker, Caitlin Hamilton Summie’s, award-winning stories, compiled in the collection TO LAY TO REST OUR GHOSTS, have been compared to the writing of Elizabeth Strout, Ann Beattie, Kent Haruf, and Tobias Wolfe—all of which about knocked her over. In this author chat, she’ll talk about writing stories from the heart; what drives her as an author; and how it feels to be on the other side of the desk.
Caitlin Hamilton Summie earned an MFA with Distinction from Colorado State University, and her short stories have been published in Beloit Fiction Journal, Wisconsin Review, Puerto del Sol, Mud Season Review, Belmont Story Review, Hypertext Magazine, South85 Journal, and Long Story, Short. Her first book, a short story collection called TO LAY TO REST OUR GHOSTS, was published in August 2017 by Fomite. It won the fourth annual Phillip H. McMath Book Award, won Silver in the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Short Stories, and was included in 35 Over 35’s Annual List in 2017. It was a Pulpwood Queen Book Club Bonus Book for June 2018. Most recently her poetry was published in The Literary Nest. She spent many years in Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Colorado before settling with her family in Knoxville, Tennessee. She co-owns the book marketing firm, Caitlin Hamilton Marketing & Publicity, founded in 2003. Authors she has launched include Bren McClain, Emily St. John Mandel, William Gay, and more. Find her online at caitlinhamiltonsummie.com.
The Women’s Club of Nashville is located at 3206 Hillsboro Road. The property may be entered from Golf Club Lane or from Hillsboro Pike. Parking is ample. Coffee, Tea, and Water will be provided. You may BYOB white wine (no red wine, please).
Advance registration is required. The cost is $45 per person, which includes gratuity and a $5 donation to help fund a scholarship for the Tennessee Young Writers Workshop. Payment can be made by PayPal or credit card online. Visit our EventBrite Page for reservations. Please email Lee Fairbend if you require a vegetarian or gluten-free meal.
The Fate of Food: What We’ll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World, with journalist and Vanderbilt professor, Amanda Little.
6:30 – 7:30 p.m., at Dalt’s American Grill On White Bridge on November 7, 2019.
Amanda Little, a professor at Vanderbilt University and an award-winning environmental journalist, spent five traveling through a dozen countries and as many U.S. states in search of answers to the question: What will we eat in a bigger, hotter, smarter world? Her journey took her from an apple orchard in Wisconsin and tiny Kenyan cornfields to massive Norwegian fish farms and computerized foodscapes in Shanghai. The race to reinvent the global food system is on, and the challenge is twofold: we must solve the existing problems of industrial agriculture while also preparing for the pressures ahead.
Amanda will share insights from her interviews and adventures with farmers, scientists, activists, and engineers. Her book tells a fascinating story of human innovation, exploring new and old approaches to food production while charting the growth of a movement that could redefine sustainable food on a grand scale. Climate models show that global crop production will decline every decade for the rest of this century due to drought, heat, and flooding. Water supplies are in jeopardy. Meanwhile, the world’s population is expected to grow another 30 percent by midcentury. So how, really, will we feed nine billion people sustainably in the coming decades?
We’ll meet at Dalt’s American Grill on White Bridge Road at 5:30 for socializing and dinner, and the program will start at 6:30 on Thursday, November 7th.
One of our favorite events of the year, the Southern Festival of Books, is coming soon, and it’s time to reserve your spot at one of our favorite events at the festival.
Coffee with Authors
Saturday, October 12, 9:30 – 11:00 a.m.
(check-in and coffee from 9 – 9:30)
Nashville Public Library Auditorium
615 Church Street
Nashville, TN 37219
Library doors opens at 9:00 a.m.
This year’s panel will be moderated by Mary Laura Philpott and feature authors:
Anissa Gray, The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls
Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones and the Six: A Novels
Karen Thompson Walker, The Dreamers
Alexi Zentner, Copperhead: A Novel
Reserved seating in the auditorium is completely full. There will be an opportunity for walk-ins (for viewing only) in the library’s Teen Center (via large screen).
Coffee With Authors is presented by the Women’s National Book Association, celebrating 100 years of Connecting, Educating, Advocating and Leading since 1917!
For more information about the Southern Festival of Books, go to: http://humanitiestennessee.org/programs/southern-festival-books-celebration-written-word
P
lease join us Thursday, September 5 at our new location, Dalt’s American Grill on White Bridge Road for our annual presentation of authors to check out at the Southern Festival of Books. Gail Vinett and Nicole Robinson-Hamilton will discuss programs and authors you won’t want to miss. We have pushed our start time back a bit to accommodate “the new Nashville” and will start the program at 6:30 and is free and open to the public. Arrive early to network with members and guests, starting at 5:30. Meals and beverages are available for purchase if desired.
What Would Mrs. Astor Do? – Cecelia Tichi
6:00 – 7:00 p.m., at Dalt’s American Grill On White Bridge on March 4, 2019
Cecelia Tichi is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English and Professor of American Studies at Vanderbilt University. She received her M.A. from Johns Hopkins University and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis in 1968. Before coming to Vanderbilt in 1987, she taught at Boston University. At Vanderbilt, she teaches classes in nineteenth and twentieth century American literature, focusing on aspects of culture from consumerism and social critique to country music. She has received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Radcliffe Institute, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation under the auspices of the Henry E. Huntington Library. She is the 2009 recipient of the Jay B. Hubbell prize for distinguished work in American literary studies. awarded by the American Literature Division of the Modern Language Association.
Her latest book project, What Would Mrs. Astor Do? The Essential Guide to the Manners and Mores of the Gilded Age (New York University Press, 2018), discusses the many rules for making it to the top tier of high society during the late 19th century .
From New York University Press:
A richly illustrated romp with America’s Gilded Age leisure class—and those angling to join it Mark Twain called it the Gilded Age. Between 1870 and 1900, the United States’ population doubled, accompanied by an unparalleled industrial expansion, and an explosion of wealth unlike any the world had ever seen. America was the foremost nation of the world, and New York City was its beating heart. There, the richest and most influential—Thomas Edison, J. P. Morgan, Edith Wharton, the Vanderbilts, Andrew Carnegie, and more—became icons, whose comings and goings were breathlessly reported in the papers of Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. It was a time of abundance, but also bitter rivalries, in work and play. The Old Money titans found themselves besieged by a vanguard of New Money interlopers eager to gain entrée into their world of formal balls, debutante parties, opera boxes, sailing regattas, and summer gatherings at Newport. Into this morass of money and desire stepped Caroline Astor.
Mrs. Astor, an Old Money heiress of the first order, became convinced that she was uniquely qualified to uphold the manners and mores of Gilded Age America. Wherever she went, Mrs. Astor made her judgments, dictating proper behavior and demeanor, men’s and women’s codes of dress, acceptable patterns of speech and movements of the body, and what and when to eat and drink. The ladies and gentlemen of high society took note. “What would Mrs. Astor do?” became the question every social climber sought to answer. And an invitation to her annual ball was a golden ticket into the ranks of New York’s upper crust. This work serves as a guide to manners as well as an insight to Mrs. Astor’s personal diary and address book, showing everything from the perfect table setting to the array of outfits the elite wore at the time. Channeling the queen of the Gilded Age herself, Cecelia Tichi paints a portrait of New York’s social elite, from the schools to which they sent their children, to their lavish mansions and even their reactions to the political and personal scandals of the day.
Ceceilia Tichi invites us on a beautifully illustrated tour of the Gilded Age, transporting readers to New York at its most fashionable. A colorful tapestry of fun facts and true tales, What Would Mrs. Astor Do? presents a vivid portrait of this remarkable time of social metamorphosis, starring Caroline Astor, the ultimate gatekeeper.
Tichi is the author of nine scholarly books, most recently What Would Mrs. Astor Do: A Complete Guide to the Manner and Mores of the Gilded Age and Jack London: A Writer’s Fight for a Better America, as well as the editor of several others, including Reading Country Music: Steel Guitars, Opry Stars, and Honky-Tonk Bars (1998). Her books include Shifting Gears: Technology, Literature, Culture in Modernist America (1987) and Electronic Hearth: Creating an American Television Culture (1991),Exposes and Excess Muckraking in America 1900/2000. Her most recent book, Civic Passions: 7 Who Launched Progressive America (And What They Teach Us), was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2009. Her articles on a variety of topics and authors have appeared in journals such as American Literature, American Literary History, and The Boston Review. She is also the author of five novels: Jealous Heart (1997), Cryin’ Time (1998), Fall to Pieces (2000), Now You See Her (2005), and All in One Piece (2006).
Jonathan’s has closed so this month we’ll meet at Dalt’s American Grill on White Bridge Road at 5:30 for socializing and dinner, and the program will start at 6:00 on Thursday, April 4th.
Follow Us!