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LIT CITYAs the Southern Festival of Books celebrates 25 years this month, we take a closer look at some of Nashville’s greatest writing talent—and highlight a few rising stars.

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AN OPEN BOOKCelebrated novelist Ann Patchett shares her thoughts on the state of the publishing industry, Googling herself, and her dog’s recent wedding.

BY KRISTIN LUNA

Ann Patchett will never see this interview.While she’s often the subject of news stories—whether promoting a new novel or inadvertently acting as the spokesperson for independent bookstores everywhere—the acclaimed author opts not to read a thing written about her.

“Is it like hearing your voice played back to you after it’s been recorded?” I ask her.

“Yes!” she says. “[It] makes me crazy. Hearing myself say stupid things or seeing myself in direct quotes saying things that I never said.” Simi-larly, you’ll never find Patchett Googling her name or reading Amazon reviews. “Never, never, never look up anything [about yourself] on the Internet,” she advises. “That’s the number one rule in life. It’s not that I am opposed to criticism, but it’s that freaky, cruel pack mentality of ‘They should live; they should die.’ I can’t be a better writer—in fact, I’ll be a worse writer because I’ll get scared.”

For Patchett, it’s easy to avoid stumbling upon such commentary; she doesn’t own a smartphone, nor is she on social media. When I stopped by her West Nashville house, the multitasking wordsmith was busy in her home office, knee-deep in a few dif-ferent projects: tinkering with the manu-script of a half-finished novel, reviewing the paperback release of her latest book, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage (HarperCol-lins), drafting a commissioned political piece for the November issue of Vogue—and mar-

rying off her rescue dog, Sparky, to Maggie down the street. Among causes with which Patchett is involved, the Nashville Humane Association is at the top of the list, and Sparky’s August ceremony drew donations and press coverage alike. (Read more about Patchett’s passion for canines in her essay “This Dog’s Life” in Happy Marriage.)

And, of course, there’s Parnassus Books, which Patchett and business partner Karen Hayes opened in 2011. Never did 2,500 square feet of space in a strip of shops across from the Mall at Green Hills debut to such national acclaim, particularly at a time when bookstores were closing left and right. Patch-

ett, now 50, moved from Los Angeles to Nashville with her family at the age of six and says the 2010 shuttering of beloved local bookstore Davis-Kidd was the catalyst for her jumping into such a tumultuous industry.

“Do I think that bookstores are dead, it’s all over, we’re going to be taken over by e-readers? No,” she says firmly. “People are very into [what we’re doing]. I don’t think that we could have a 30,000-square-foot bookstore. I think those days are gone. But

I think a really smart, well-curated, well-staffed bookstore [will survive].”

Although Kindles are banned from her household, Patchett isn’t opposed to e-readers altogether. “What I find as a book-seller, but really as a writer, is that people will come up to me all the time and say, ‘I read your book on my e-reader and I really liked it, so now I want to buy the book,’” she says. “You’ll get people who are buying in a few different formats. It’s really, really interesting.”

Parnassus, which is tucked discreetly off the street in a bustling commercial area, also benefits from having a recognizable figure like Patchett as its promotional face, a walk-ing billboard for its products, her books the best possible advertisements. Today, people

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pilgrimage to Nashville from all over the country just to visit the store, poke around its shelves, and hopefully catch Patchett in person.

A unique way the writer has remained a com-petitor in the literary game during the meteoric rise of e-book sales is by offering to autograph ev-ery one of her own books sold through the shop’s website, parnassusbooks.net. In fact, when she went on The Colbert Report in 2012 to promote State of Wonder (HarperCollins), host Stephen Colbert directed viewers to go purchase the book from Amazon; Patchett chimed in: “I want this to register on the Parnassus website. If you buy it there, you can get it signed [by me]!” The result

was a huge influx in online sales for the store.As she tells it, sitting at the helm of a bookstore

is incredibly rewarding, especially since she gets to do what she calls “the fun stuff” while co-owner and store manager Hayes handles the day-to-day. “I always say I am to Parnassus what Julia Roberts is to Lancôme mascara: I don’t formulate it, I don’t package it, I don’t distribute it, I just wear it,” says Patchett, a celebrity in her own right. “And yet, it’s a really helpful role. The Tennessean will do a piece on my dog getting married, and that’s great because that brings people into the bookstore.

“The best part [of being an owner of Parnassus] is how much fun it is for me,” she adds. “I’m sure it’s not the same for Karen, who is the one who does all the work. She’s there day in, day out, and I’m flitting in and out saying, ‘This is so much fun!’ I kind of have all the upside and none of the downside.”

There are times, though, when the “fun” side of owning a bookstore keeps Patchett more tied up

than usual, at which point she takes a step back. “I have to remind myself that the kindest thing I can do for the health and well-being of the bookstore is to write another book,” she says. “That’s what we sell a lot of: my books.”

Those who admire Patchett for the suspenseful story lines of Bel Canto (HarperCollins) and State of Wonder might have found last year’s collection of nonfiction pieces—some humorous, others raw, all laced with her token fluent and intoxicating prose—a refreshing change of pace. But before she became known as a novelist, nonfiction domi-nated Patchett’s career: After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College, she obtained a master’s

of fine arts in creative writing from Iowa Writer’s Workshop and freelanced for Seventeen magazine for the better part of a decade. She then dove into the world of long-form writing and has since published six novels and three works of nonfic-tion. Happy Marriage is essentially Patchett’s curated portfolio, a compilation of her best pub-lished clips with a few new essays woven into the mix. It’s also an excellent guidebook of sorts for those looking to get into a writing profession of any kind, as Patchett entwines nuggets of advice gleaned from her own experiences.

And while she might be too busy to read—or simply not interested in reading—what I or anyone else has to say about her, she’s probably the only one. After all, Nashville stands to benefit from every work Patchett publishes, from the traveling talent Parnassus brings to the commu-nity, and from having such an accomplished writer serving as the face of the local literary scene.

FAMILY TIESDr. Michael E. Glasscock III—Ann Patchett’s mother’s former husband of 20 years, with whom the author is close and whom she still considers a father figure—released the third book in his Round Rock series, The Life and Times of Jamie Lee Coleman, last month. While Glasscock currently resides in Austin, the internationally known surgeon and adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center draws from his own Southern upbringing to build out the fictional town in which the book is based.

THE SOUTH, UNPLUGGEDThis quartet of books will be your guide to the happenings in Music City and beyond.

The Southern Slow Cooker BibleTammy Allgood(Thomas Nelson)

Discover new takes on classic regional dishes—like a bacon and chive creamed corn or bourbon candied sweet pota-toes—via this tasty tour of the region’s best cuisine from local food personality Tammy Allgood.

The Southern Foodie’s Guide to the PigChris Chamberlain(Thomas Nelson)

Vegetarians, beware: Nashville Lifestyles contributor Chris Chamberlain scoured the South for everything hog-related he could find. The result is this culinary journey through pig anatomy, recipes (bacon-infused bourbon? Yum!), and the South’s best restaurants that feature pork prominently on their menus.

“Do I think that bookstores are dead, it’s all over, we’re going to be taken over by e-readers? No. People are very into [what we’re doing]."

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Nashville Food TrucksJulie Festa(American Palate/The History Press)

If you have a penchant for mobile din-ing, look no further than Julie Festa’s new compilation of the best food trucks and events in Nashville, which also includes recipes from the truck owners.

100 Things to Do in Nashville Before You DieAbby White(Reedy Press)

Journalist Abby White took it upon herself to weed through all those iconic local experiences—catch a movie at the Belcourt Theatre; have a day at the races at Steeplechase—and compile a quirky book of things every Nashvil-lian must do before kicking the bucket. White also added a few of her own favorites, like singing karaoke at Santa’s Pub and digging for gold at the monthly flea market. —K.L.

Nashville Lifestyles’ own managing editor, Erin Byers Murray, has a new cookbook, The New England

Kitchen: Fresh Takes on Seasonal Recipes (Rizzoli New York), out this month. A collaboration with Boston

chef and restaurateur Jeremy Sewall (Lineage, Creek Oyster Bar, and Row 34), this tome of recipes highlights

some of Murray’s favorite dishes from her years living in Massachusetts, like dayboat cod, maple-brined pork

rack, and crab chowder, divvied up by season.

Staff Spotlight

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PUBLISHING POWERHOUSEThe Pulitzer Prize-winning historian—and executive vice president at Random House—chats about his new book, his family’s move to Nashville, and U.S. presidents.

BY KRISTIN LUNA

When Jon Meacham returned to his Southern roots in 2012, he had the red carpet rolled out for him. Al Gore sat at the helm of the welcome wagon by throwing a “meet the Meachams” soiree to introduce the journalist and his wife, Keith, to the movers and shakers of the Nashville community.

Then again, Meacham isn’t just anybody. The Chattanooga native logged 15 years at Newsweek, the last four of which he served as editor-in-chief, after starting his career as a reporter at the Chattanooga Times then writer for Washington Monthly maga-zine. He has published six nonfiction books and is on Time magazine’s masthead as a contributing editor. Last month, Meacham debuted his first young adult read, Thomas Jefferson: President & Philosopher (Random House), a heavily illustrated version of his

2012 biography that targets middle school-aged youth.

“I’m totally new to this market,” says Meacham, whose own kids are 12, 9, and 6. “It’s increasingly hard in a world with a gazillion distractions to get folks interested in history. So anything that serves as a gateway drug, I’m in favor of.”

In 2010, Meacham left News-week when the Washington Post Group sold it and was trying to decide whether he was going to “just write, or try to write and edit” when Random House, his own book publisher since the 1990s, approached him with a pro-posal: They wanted him to oversee their nonfiction titles and come on board not as a writer but as executive vice president. Primarily, Meacham would be editing manu-scripts and seeking out new talent. “It just felt like a natural fit—and it’s been fun,” he says.

Luckily for the editor, his new employer was open to him working remotely—a necessity considering he and Mississippi-born Keith later decided to move to Nashville. Meacham had gotten to know several folks while researching and writing Ameri-can Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House—for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography in 2009—and his family had long been in and out of Tennessee for frequent trips to their summer place up at Sewanee, where he went to col-lege. At the end of the day, though, the deciding factor to move was

rooted in true love, as so many are—only in the Meachams’ case, it was true love for a house.

“My wife says we did this in such a madcap way; it was more instinctive than rational,” Meacham shares of their im-promptu decision to uproot their lives and purchase their dream home in Belle Meade. And since leaving the fast pace of Manhat-

tan more than two years ago, Meacham adds, the family hasn’t had a bad day: “We just love it. We’ve been struck by the genuine sense of welcome, the upsides we intuited have all turned out to be true, and there have been a lot we couldn’t have

known about that have emerged.” When asked how he makes

such a demanding job work some 900 miles from New York City, Meacham quips: “Gate C-10.” He quickly adds, “This is the one kind of day job that one can do remote-ly.” He says he’s in Nashville 90 percent of the time but heads up to the Random House headquar-ters for brief overnight trips here and there. Most days, he’s holed up in his home office putting the finishing touches on his The Last Gentleman, a biography about George H. W. Bush tentatively slated for late 2015 publication.

Meacham got to know Bush Sr. over the course of a decade, as George W. Bush was running for and presiding in office. Once his son’s administration was coming to an end, the 41st president offered Meacham unrestricted access to his diary and papers that had not been widely seen. “If you do what I do, you don’t get many of those

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[offers],” Meacham says. “The ability to have this document—both presidential and vice-presidential dictations—it offers a remarkable window on governing in really difficult times, and it just was irresistible.”

As someone who has long straddled the line between journalism and book publish-ing, Meacham is not as concerned about the state of the latter as he might have been had he remained on the media side. “It’s all changing rapidly and will keep doing so,” he says. “Everything creates its own static place…but it’s hard to see how institutions endure for a long time in this climate.”

Still, he remains optimistic about the future of books, mainly because book publishers never gave away their key product for free, he says; rather, there’s always been the expecta-tion that people would pay for books. “I do think people are as eager as ever—if not more so—to have something that is not coming at them episodically,” Meacham says. “Not that great books are a refuge, but they are more considerate, they’re by their very nature more immersive, and so I’m quite bullish about the future of reading. The key thing obviously is: How do you convince people that it’s worth their money, their time, and their attention when they have so many other things they could be doing? That’s the fundamental transaction.”

Meacham, who has seen media at both its peaks and valleys, describes the state of the book publishing industry today as “a lot of creative chaos,” which he believes has its pros and its cons—but mostly the former. “On one level, this is a golden age because more people have more access to more eyeballs than ever,” he says. “This is Guten-berg on steroids, and that can’t help but be good for both writers and readers.”

“On one level, this is a golden age because more people have more access to more eyeballs than ever. This is Gutenberg

on steroids, and that can’t help but be good for both writers and readers.”

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