Latest Stories
by Ann Marie Deer Owens
The 2026 Southern Festival of Books, presented by Vanderbilt University in partnership with Humanities Tennessee, will connect celebrated authors from wide-ranging genres with a vast community that shares their passion for creative expression. Many writers and performers with Vanderbilt ties will be featured at the annual literary festival, which returns to the Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park, Tennessee State Museum, and Tennessee State Library and Archives Oct. 17–18. Admission is free.
The festival, now in its 38th year, will host discussions and panels with nearly 200 regionally and nationally recognized authors, providing a complement to the Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries’ fall author series. The series will host conversations with Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, BA’00, Grammy and Emmy award-winning entertainer Harry Connick Jr., and Pulitzer Prize winner Barbara Kingsolver in the lead up to the festival. The author series is hosted on Vanderbilt’s campus in collaboration with Parnassus Books and Dialogue Vanderbilt.
“Vanderbilt’s collaboration with the Southern Festival of Books has helped catalyze our programming into a year-round public forum for literature, ideas, dialogue and culture. It has strengthened our relationship with our Nashville neighbors while elevating our reputation on the national stage,” said Jon Shaw, dean of libraries and letters and Connie Vinita Dowell University Librarian. “We are proud to partner with the festival for a second year and to connect our students, faculty, staff and the community with influential writers and thinkers who are shaping society and the national conversation.”
Headliners for the 2026 festival include Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jayne Anne Phillips in conversation with Alice Randall, writer-in-residence of African American and diaspora studies and holder of the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Humanities, at noon on Oct. 17 in the museum’s Sequatchie Room. Phillips’ latest work, Small Town Girls: A Writer’s Memoir, traces the writers and touchstones that have shaped her life and career, beginning with her childhood in Buckhannon, West Virginia.
Also on Oct. 17, acclaimed playwright and novelist Ayad Akhtar will speak about his latest work, The Radiance, at 1 p.m. in the library’s Nolichucky Room. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Akhtar’s work has been published and performed in more than two dozen languages.
British-American biologist and writer David George Haskell will be in conversation with Vanderbilt Libraries Dean Jon Shaw at 1 p.m. Oct. 17 in the museum’s Hiwassee Tent. They will discuss Haskell’s How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature’s Revolutionaries, an exploration of how the evolution of flowers transformed Earth’s ecosystems, catalyzed biodiversity, and made human existence possible. The session is one of several at the festival to be broadcast by C-SPAN.
That same afternoon, Ann Patchett will discuss her new novel, Whistler, with C. Cybele Raver, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, at 2 p.m. in the Cumberland Tent at Bicentennial Mall. Patchett, a No. 1 New York Times bestselling author and owner of Parnassus Books, is a recipient of the PEN/Faulkner Award and the National Humanities Medal.
Other prominent authors appearing at the two-day festival include Margaret Renkl, PC Cast, Maria Semple, Kathryn Stockett, Allegra Goodman, Danica McKellar, Elizabeth Kostova and poet Claudia Rankine.
The festival features more than 100 vendors as well as food trucks, performance stages and a creative space for all-ages fun. Major Jackson, professor of English, director of creative writing and holder of the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities, will host two readings on the Performing Arts Stage by faculty and students in the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program. On the Music Stage, several instrumental ensembles created by Vanderbilt Blair School of Music students will perform.
The festival is highlighting seven books published by Vanderbilt University Press:
- Expelled: James Lawson Jr. and Vanderbilt University by Benjamin Houston. He will reflect on the life and legacy of the Rev. James Lawson, one of Vanderbilt’s most influential alumni, with journalist Emily Yellin. She completed Lawson’s autobiography, Nonviolent: A Memoir of Resistance, Agitation, and Love, with his blessing. Their conversation will be at 11 a.m. on Oct. 17 in the museum’s Sequatchie Room.
- The Belcourt Theatre: Nashville’s Oldest Neighborhood Cinema by T. Minton, oral historian for the Belcourt Stories Project, a celebration of the theatre’s centenary. He will speak at 11 a.m. on Oct. 17 in the museum’s Wolf Room.
- I Would Define the Sun by Stephanie Niu, who was awarded the 2024 Vanderbilt Literary Prize. She will appear with Melissa Range, the 2025 Vanderbilt Literary Prize honoree and author of Printer’s Fist, to share some of their works. The presentation is at 3 p.m. on Oct. 17 in the library’s Nolichucky Room.
- The Apostle of Tennessee: The Indefatigable Life and Ministry of Father Aloysius Orengo by writer Joe Pagetta. He will discuss both the story of the pioneering priest who built many of Tennessee’s oldest Catholic churches and his own adventures retracing Orengo’s footsteps. Joining Pagetta will be Sheri Lea Sellmeyer, author of Nashville’s New Americans: Tracing the Journeys of Our Immigrant Neighbors. Their presentation will be at 1 p.m. on Oct. 18 in the museum’s Obion Room.
- In Her Place: Nashville Artists in the Twenty-First Century co-edited by Katie Delmez, BA’95, senior curator at the Frist Art Museum. She will be in conversation with co-editor Laura Hutson Hunter and two contributors, Shaun Giles and Sai Clayton, at 4 p.m. on Oct. 18 in the library’s Harpeth Room. This substantial coffee table book, published in collaboration with the Frist Art Museum, charts a network of women artists in Nashville who are all working at a high caliber.
Other Vanderbilt-related presenters on Saturday, Oct. 17, listed in the order they will appear throughout the day, include the following:
Lamar Alexander, BA’62, former U.S. senator and Tennessee governor, at 10 a.m. in the Hiwassee Tent at the museum. Alexander, a Vanderbilt trustee, has written a new memoir, The Education of a Senator: From JFK to Trump. He will be joined by a panel of friends for a wide-ranging conversation about the nation’s current state of affairs. This marks his 10th book.
Megan Baptist, BA’14, MSF’15, author of Brave Like a Lion: How a Puppeteer Found Her Voice, will conduct a reading and puppet-making activity for all ages at 10 a.m. at Big Fiery Gizzard and Little Pigeon’s Creativity Land. During college, Baptist was known as the “Vanderbilt Ventriloquist,” and she became the first Black female puppeteer on Sesame Street. Her children’s music albums include Spaceships & Dreams and Cinderella’s Sweep.
Jim Emison, BA’65, author of Murder on the Hatchie: The NAACP’s First Martyr, at 11 a.m. in the Hiwassee Tent at the museum. Emison has devoted his retirement from practicing trial law to seeking justice for Elbert Williams, a civil rights pioneer who was lynched in 1940 for attempting to register African American voters in Brownsville, Tennessee. Emison will be in conversation with former NBC news anchor John M. Seigenthaler.
Belle Burden, attorney and author of Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage, at 1 p.m. in the Cumberland Tent at Bicentennial Mall. Burden is a direct descendant of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt through her father. Netflix has acquired the film rights to her book, a New York Times bestseller, with Gwyneth Paltrow cast to play Burden.
Owen D. Jones, professor of law and biological sciences and director of the Weaver Program in Law, Brain Sciences, and Behavior, at 1 p.m. in the museum’s Wolf Room. Jones shows in his latest book, Force of Nature: Understanding Evolution’s Deepest Logic—and Putting It to Use, how a deeper understanding of natural selection is more useful and powerful than many think.
Paul Stob, professor of communications studies and director of Culture, Advocacy, and Leadership, will discuss Empire of Skulls: Phrenology, the Fowler Family, and a New Nation’s Quest to Unlock the Secrets of the Mind, at 1 p.m. in the library’s Obion Room. In his new nonfiction book, Stob explores how a 19th-century family not only built a cultural empire around the debunked science of phrenology but made it central to various reform movements.
Max Boot, political columnist and author of Reagan: His Life and Legend, in conversation with former Sen. Lamar Alexander, BA’62, at 2 p.m. in the library’s Harpeth Room.
Lydi Conklin, assistant professor of English, at 3 p.m. in the library’s Obion Room. Her debut novel, No Provenance, is an exploration of queer identity and the role of art in becoming one’s self.
Micaiah Johnson, MA’19, PhD’24, author of The Unhaunting, a Gothic horror novel with a twist, at 4 p.m. in the library’s Conasauga Room.
Vanderbilt-related presenters on Sunday, Oct. 18, listed in the order they will appear throughout the day, include the following:
Eiman Jahangir, cardiologist and professor of medicine and radiology, at 10 a.m. in the library’s Conasauga Room. He is the author of A Heart for Space: An Astronaut’s Guide to Achieving the Impossible. In 2024, Jahangir became the first Iranian American man to travel to space and the first commercial physician astronaut.
Emily Lordi, Edwin Mims Professor of English and author of Holding Lightning: The Life, Loves, and Art of Whitney Houston, at 10 a.m. in the museum’s Sequatchie Room. Holding Lighting is the first full-length biography of the superstar singer and actress.
R.B. Quinn, JD’86, Mindy Merrell and Linda Carman, co-authors of Self-Rising: The Magic Rise Behind Biscuit and Cornbread Culture, at 10 a.m. in the library’s Caney Fork Room.
Lucas L. Johnson, author of Remembering Roots: How an American Classic Transformed the World, at noon in the library’s Conasauga Room. Johnson, a communications specialist at the School of Engineering, reflects on the enduring legacy of Alex Haley’s work through the voices of those it continues to move, including artists, scholars and students.
Bill Friskics-Warren, MDiv’85, and Paul Shupe, MDiv’87—two graduates of Vanderbilt Divinity School—and Jordan Ritter Conn will discuss The Wilderness of Friendship: Forty Years of Hospitality, Vulnerability, and Wonder, which they co-authored with Bob Victorin-Vangerud, MDiv’86. Their presentation will be at 1 p.m. in the Hiwassee Tent at the museum. The book is an invitation to a conversation about a friendship that they have treasured for decades, as well as an invitation to a conversation about friendship, itself.
Numerous faculty, staff and students are serving as session moderators or volunteers to round out the Vanderbilt community’s participation in this year’s event, with Vanderbilt University Press and the Anne Potter Wilson Music Library staffing booths.
The Authors in the Round Dinner, the festival’s signature fundraiser, is chaired by Libby Page and Alice Campbell Brackenbury, BA’09. The ticketed event will be Oct. 16 at Marathon Music Works.
For a complete schedule of authors appearing at the 2026 festival or to learn more about the two-day event, visit sofestofbooks.org.