Review: Word of Mouth: Nashville Conversations
As a snapshot of the creators, thinkers, artists and advocates who are at the heart of Nashville’s current creative renaissance, Word of Mouth: Nashville Conversations is what happens when geography, proximity and creativity come together in one place. “Dreamers and doers seem to congregate here in Nashville, Tennessee,” author Lily Hansen writes, “to coax each other into bringing ideas into action.” Built around a series of questions and portraits of each subject, Word of Mouth offers the reader a cross-section of thought from more than 50 artists, musicians, chefs, photographers and other cultural creatives who are either natives or have come to call Nashville home.
Features on friends of Griffin and collaborators like designers Otis James and Amanda Valentine, and Music City Roots producers Todd Mayo and John Walker join our own Mark Rowan in the book’s pages to offer insights about what it is to create and flourish in a city that can feel, at times, like everyone’s from someplace else.
We know Nashville is an incredible place to live and work. With new art galleries, maker spaces, non-profits, tech startups and nationally recognized restaurants springing up within spittin’ distance of our Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood world headquarters, it’s doubly exciting to see a book that captures a slice of the creativity that powers Nashville (and Griffin of course).
Nashville’s enjoyed been somewhat embarrassed by an adoring national spotlight of late, with national media praising Nashville as a top city for tech and new media job growth, creativity, new restaurant growth, music and a dozen other superlatives. But fame is fleeting. After the lights are packed up and the media go find another city to love on, Nashville (or New York or Portland or anywhere for that matter) is left with the people who call this place home. Word of Mouth captures a point in time when a unique group of women and men settled down in the same place and decided to make new and interesting things.
Meet author Lily Hansen:
At Nashville’s upcoming Southern Festival of Books
Sunday, October 11 at 1 pm at the Nashville Public Library.
At Chicago’s Lincoln Hall – “NASHVILLE TO CHICAGO SHOWCASE”
Monday, October 12 at 7pm, Lincoln Hall
with Blackfoot Gypsies, Joe Fletcher, Joshua Black Wilkins and White Mystery’s DJ Alex White