WYPL Book Talk

Blake McVey talks with Adrienne Berard about her book WATER TOSSING BOULDERS:HOW A FAMILY OF CHINESE IMMIGRANTS LED THE FIRST FIGHT TO DESEGREGATE SCHOOLS IN THE JIM CROW SOUTH, which is now in paperback by Beacon Press. It's the true story of the Chinese-American Lum family who fought for the rights of their daughters to attend whites-only public schools in 1920s Mississippi. Their case made it all the way to the Supreme Court thirty years before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case.

Ladee Hubbard is the winner of the 2016 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award and the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition for the Short Story. Today we'll be talking about her debut novel, The Talented Ribkins, which is published by Melville House. It's the story of Johnny Ribkins, who, despite an amazing ability to make maps of places he's never seen, finds himself in deep debt to an unsavory character all while trying to bond with his niece whom he's never met before.

Linda Lloyd talks to Peggy O'Neal Peden about her mystery novel, Your Killin' Heart. From the Macmillan website:

Contrary to popular belief, not everyone in Nashville is an aspiring country music star. Campbell Hall, for one, just wants to get her travel agency off the ground and move on from a break-up. But when she gets the opportunity to visit the mansion of mysterious country icon Jake Miller, she jumps at the chance. After all, who knows what clues are lurking around the long-dead star’s last home?

Linda Lloyd talks to Peggy O'Neal Peden about her mystery novel, Your Killin' Heart.

From the Macmillan website:

Contrary to popular belief, not everyone in Nashville is an aspiring country music star. Campbell Hall, for one, just wants to get her travel agency off the ground and move on from a break-up. But when she gets the opportunity to visit the mansion of mysterious country icon Jake Miller, she jumps at the chance. After all, who knows what clues are lurking around the long-dead star’s last home?

Mark Bowden is a renowned journalist and author. He recently had the cover story of the July August 2017 issue of the Atlantic Monthly magazine about how America and the world should deal with North Korea. He is perhaps better known for his non-fiction books including The Finish: The Killing of Osama bin Laden, Our Finest Day: D-Day, June 6, 1944, and Blackhawk Down. Today, we'll be discussing Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam, which is a look at the longest and fiercest battle of America's involvement in the Vietnam War. The combined North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces seized control of South Vietnam's third-largest city on the eve of Tet, the nation's biggest holiday. It would take almost a full month for South Vietnamese and American forces to regain control of city that was almost leveled during the fighting.

Scott McClanahan is a writer from West Virginia whose approach to writing and life would never be called timid. He's released several collection of stories, but he's probably best known for his book Crapalachia. His newest release is a novel called The Sarah Book, which features a writer named Scott McClanahan who is doing his best to ruin his marriage to a woman named Sarah, and examines the beginning of their relationship as well as its demise.

Ace Atkins is a best-selling and well-respected novelist of crime fiction. He has continued on the Spenser series for the Robert B. Parker estate, having published Little White Lies, his sixth addition to the series earlier in 2017, and this summer brings us the seventh installment of his Quinn Colson series, The Fallen, set in the contemporary, but fictional northern Mississippi county of Tibbehah.

We have a special program today; we have two interviews. A little later I will be speaking with Tim Henderson who is the director of humanities TN about the organization and about its 2017 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville. This October will be the 29th edition of one of the biggest book festivals in America. But up first, we have a special guest, a writer by the name of John Grisham. John Grisham is of course the best-selling author of legal thrillers and other popular novels who got his start writing stories set in the Mid-South. He is estimated to have sold more than 300 million books worldwide, and I was invited by the website Chapter16.org to interview him at his recent event at Parnassus Books in Nashville, TN. Chapter16.org is the literary website of Humanities TN and they have graciously allowed us to use the audio from the interview on Book Talk. MR. Grisham and I began our conversation about his latest novel, Camino Island, which is published by Doubleday.

I was recently invited to be in conversation with one of America's greatest writers, Gail Godwin, at Parnassus books in Nashville, TN. Ms. Godwin was on tour with her latest novel, Grief Cottage, which is published by Bloomsbury. I had some technical difficulties with my recording microphone, so the sound isn't as good as we normally have on Book Talk, but it is a wonderful conversation with Ms. Godwin. - Stephen Usery

Vickie Fee was a long-time journalist in western Tennessee but now calls the Upper Peninsula of Michigan home. To help with home sickness, she began writing the Liv and Di in Dixie Mystery series, and today we'll be talking about the third installment, One Fete in The Grave, which is published by Kensington.