Olivia Clare Friedman’s debut novel is Here Lies (Grove Press). The book is set in Louisiana 2042 when climate change has wreaked havoc on society including outlawing burials and graveyards and making cremation mandatory. The book explores motherhood, friendship, and humanity in an alternate American South torn asunder.

Friedman is the author of the story collection Disasters in the First World and a poetry collection The 26-Hour Day. Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, The O. Henry Prize Stories, Granta, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, among other publications.

Raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, she teaches Creative Writing at the University of Southern Mississippi.

Violinist/singer-songwriter Alice Hasen latest release is the album, Violintro.  Drawing on themes of self-actualization, love and environmental awareness, this project features the Memphis-based artist’s dynamic classical orchestration bookended by sparsely elegant funk and jazz arrangements, plus assorted sonic textures and sly hip-hop and R&B beats.

For her Thacker appearance, Hasen will be accompanied by guitarist Walt Busby.

Born in Vermont but residing in Memphis, TN, Alice is the leader of Alice Hasen and the Blaze, a fiddle-powered groove band that primarily plays Alice’s original compositions. She is also a member of the Blackwater Trio.

Adam Gussow and Alan Gross, a.k.a. the Blues Doctors, are Mississippi-based blues veterans who play a mix of down-home Delta standards and urban grooves from the Texas-to-Chicago axis with some New Orleans funk thrown in.

They’re a two-man band with a full-on sound: Gussow on harmonica and drumset, Gross on guitar, with both men sharing vocal duties.