Southern Lit Alliance will host acclaimed essayist Kerry Howley, for a So Lit Book Club discussion on her book Thrown, which is a riveting glimpse into the world of cage fighting. The conversation will take place on Tuesday, July 28, at Granfalloon. Coffee, beer, and food will be available for purchase.
An Amazon review said, "In this darkly funny work of literary nonfiction, a bookish young woman insinuates herself into the lives of two cage fighters—one a young prodigy, the other an aging journeyman.
Acclaimed essayist Kerry Howley follows these men for three years through the bloody world of mixed martial arts as they starve themselves, break bones, fail their families and form new ones in the quest to rise from remote Midwestern fairgrounds to packed Vegas arenas. With penetrating intelligence and wry humor, Howley exposes the profundities and absurdities of this American subculture."
Ms. Howley's work has appeared in The Paris Review, New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, Slate, and frequently in Bookforum. She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program. Thrown, her book-length essay, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2014 and is forthcoming in German, British, Dutch, and Swedish editions. Howley is an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where she resides with a husband, son, and vizsla.
Granfalloon is in the Southside at 400 E. Main Street #120, in Chattanooga.
The Southern Lit Alliance engages readers in creative programs to support and expand the literary arts around the South. For more information on the Southern Lit Alliance, visit www.SouthernLitAlliance.org.