Yes, you know that Nashville is filled with songwriters. Perhaps, though, you didn’t know that many book authors call Music City home, too.
While you may think of Nashville as a place for songwriters (and it is), but it’s really a place for storytellers, and that also includes authors, journalists, reporters and novelists. Get in the mood for a trip to Nashville by checking out these five non-fiction works by local authors. You might even get lucky and get to see them around town or hosting a reading at a favorite bookstore.
New York Times columnist Margaret Renkl documents the flora and fauna in her Nashville yard over the course of a year in “The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year.” The book is structured with 52 chapters, one for each week of the year.
A middle-of-the-night family health emergency lead essayist Mary Laura Philpott to write about being a caregiver and mother and a worrier in “Bomb Shelter.”
Nashvillian Kim Green helped Chantha Nguon tell her life story in “Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Life and Family Recipes.” The memoir covers personal and Southeast Asian history, through the food Nguon loves and remembers.
East Nashvillian Jennifer Chesak explores the ways in which psychedelics may have different effects and applications across the sexes in “The Psilocybin Handbook for Women.” Chesak’s approachable style and experience as a healthcare report makes the book both readable and reliable.
You can’t understand Nashville until you know its history and the history of the radio station that made the Grand Ole Opry famous. Local music journalist, Craig Havighurst, covers it all in “Air Castle of the South: WSM and the Making of Music City.”
