For bookworms – especially those with an appetite for mystery, thriller and suspense novels – the summer of 2024 will be a crime-time special unlike anything Nashville has seen.

Between the end of May and Labor Day weekend, three unique conventions with similar but very different target audiences will draw some 7,000 authors, readers and true-crime aficionados to Nashville, followed by Music City’s godfather of literary events, the Oct. 26-27 Southern Festival of Books, which annually attracts more than 150 authors and 25,000 passionate book lovers.

In order of appearance:

• CrimeCon, May 31-June 2 at Gaylord Opryland Resort. While NOT a literary event, this intense, deep-dive experience for some 5,000 true-crime fans boasts a bevy of nonfiction authors among an impressive list of speakers including law enforcement and PIs, medical and legal experts, journalists and crime TV show hosts, victims-rights advocates and those personally affected by violent crimes and many others.

• Killer Nashville, Aug. 22-25, at Cool Springs Embassy Suites. Primarily a writing and educational workshop for some 400 authors, the public can also attend sessions and meet some of their favorite authors.

• Bouchercon, Aug. 28-Sept. 1, at Gaylord Opryland. Making its first trip to Nashville, the World Mystery Convention is staged by readers for readers. The “Murder and Mayhem in Music City” gathering is expected to draw as many as 2,000 fans to celebrate their favorite authors.

“It’s a special year to have three genre-specific cons here to supplement SoFest. They draw different audiences, which is a testament to the literary power of Nashville,” says New York Times bestselling author J.T. Ellison, co-host of the long-running NPT literary program “A Word on Words.”

“Each conference has a different flavor and that’s the beauty of it. There’s a flavor for everybody,” adds Steven Womack, an Edgar and Shamus Award-winning author.

Tim Henderson, executive director of Humanities Tennessee, which operates the Southern Festival, says this summer’s spree of crime-related events “keep Nashville sort of on the literary radar throughout the year, which could only help grow the audience for all these.

“It’s thrilling just to see the writerly and readerly communities stand up and really be represented and have this opportunity to come together and strengthen those communities, which is ultimately what the Southern Festival is very much about,” Henderson adds, “sharing, you know, that love of reading, the love of stories with that community and always – as we try to do – bring new people into that.”

Nashville’s literary spotlight

Ellison is one of several high-profile local crime fiction authors to speak with the Ledger. All say they agree these events have Nashville at the center of the literary universe this summer.

Jaden Terrell, a Shamus Award finalist and current president of the local chapter of the Sisters in Crime organization for authors and fans, calls this “a big year for crime. A big book year. Whether you’re a reader or a writer, you could find a lot to enrich you at all three of these conferences. This is going to be kind of like Disneyland for writers and readers.”

Author Clay Stafford, founder of the Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference, says Nashville has a long history as an attractive city for major conventions, and that it’s now the literary world’s turn to take over Music City.

“There’s a current vibe with Nashville all across the U.S., and if you read publications of places to visit, places to move to, places, whatever, they highlight Nashville,” Stafford says. “Nashville is becoming on the circuit of a lot of things that previously were not on the circuit.”

Adds Womack: “Killer Nashville has put Nashville on the map not only as the It City, but the Mystery City.”

“We are the IT city but it is a coincidence, for sure,” Ellison says. “Killer Nashville is a long-established conference, and the Bouchercon board makes city choices years in advance. Of course, I’d like to think that the talented crime fiction writers who call Nashville home and feature the city’s diversity and dynamics in their books have helped put it on the map as a complicated and energetic city to experience and perhaps have driven some interest.”

Robert Mangeot, an award-winning short story author, explains how Bouchercon had Nashville on its radar a few years ago when he was local chapter president of Sisters in Crime. Then COVID-19 shut down everything.

“The pandemic kind of moved Bouchercon up because you couldn’t have it for a couple of years,” he notes. “The (Bouchercon) national board sought Nashville out because we were kind of an ‘It City,’ and so that’s how we got it. We had the facilities and they sought us out.”

Music City, Convention City

Organizers for CrimeCon and Bouchercon predict their attendees will enjoy the Nashville nightlife while here, giving Nashville an extra boost to its thriving tourism economy.

“Bouchercon is happy to be part of this confluence of literary events in Nashville this year,” write Susan and Tom Cella, chairpersons of the local organizing committee. “For any city, an influx of more than 1,000 visitors has a tremendously positive impact on the local economy. Bouchercon’s attendees very much enjoy exploring the event’s city and frequenting local businesses, and this will certainly be the case in Nashville.”

Kevin Balfe, founder and executive producer of CrimeCon, says the experience is so intense for attendees that they feel an urgency to unwind in downtown Nashville. CrimeCon typically attracts “an upscale group that doesn’t mind boosting the host city’s economy while they’re in town,” he adds.

“All I can tell you is that with this many thousands of people coming in and obviously all 90% of them are going to be flying through BNA (and) staying – if not at the Opryland, then one of our satellite hotels in the area – they’re all going to go out and about on Friday night and Saturday night,” Balfe says. “We’re having a big welcome party on Thursday night at 6th and Peabody that will have a big economic impact on Broadway. Our ticket prices are fairly expensive and that’s on purpose.

“What that brings out is an audience that generally is fairly high in the household net worth attendee-scale. These are folks who are accustomed to luxury experiences. They spend money when they go to places, so I would imagine that it’s more than a blip in terms of what the overall impact is when you think about travel, tourism, food and beverage, merchandise, all those sorts of things.”

A closer look at the events

Fan conventions are always fun, and these are no exception. But each has a wrinkle that raises the bar and sets it apart from others:

CrimeCon

When: May 31-June 2

Bouchercon 2022 attendees got a glimpse a 1902 edition of ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles.”

-- Photo By John Thomas Bychowski

Where: Gaylord Opryland Hotel

Admission: $399 standard (a sellout but being overbooked with cancellations expected); no single-day tickets

The three-day program gives citizen detectives an immersive, in-depth look at horrific crimes and the scientific techniques used to solve them, the heartbreak and heroism for those closest to gruesome murders, and how stories are written about and covered by newspapers, electronic media, podcasters and Hollywood.

“We do cover very heavy topics. It’s an emotional weekend,” Balfe says. “People who think they’re going to go and just have fun always come away sort of pleasantly surprised at kind of the heaviness of it.

“For that reason, we’re always looking for cities that are well balanced because we need to be able to balance ourselves out,” Balfe says. “We’ve done Austin (Texas), New Orleans, Las Vegas and Orlando. And Nashville just sort of fits that same characteristic.”

CrimeCon debuted in Indianapolis in 2017 and visited Nashville in 2018, drawing 2,500 fans. Balfe says this year’s attendance will double 2018’s and marks the first time CrimeCon has returned to a city.

“For us, the experience that the attendees have – the ability to interact not only with each other but with our speakers and our experts and the families that are there – is really core to the experience,” Balfe says. “So even though we have a much larger crowd, we spent a lot of time and focus on making sure that the essence of the experience remains the same. People that had a good experience in 2018 should expect to have a different experience, but as intimate a one as they had back then.”

As an example of how CrimeCon has evolved since the 2018 Nashville event, Balfe mentions the third annual Clue Awards banquet and a “solve the scene” interactive workshop for crimeHQ members. The crime scene is being created by the University of Florida’s Maples Center for Forensic Medicine.

“It’s pretty cool,” Balfe explains. “You go in basically as a CSI and process the scene and ultimately try to figure out where the evidence is leading you in terms of what happened. … So there’s some good education that goes because they get to actually experience this, to get out of the chair, do something themselves and to learn better.”

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Killer Nashville

When: Aug. 22-25

Where: Embassy Suites Hotel, Franklin

Admission: $454 standard; single-day passes available

This will be the 18th year for the international writers’ conference which annually brings together 400 mystery, thriller and suspense authors – from novices to bestsellers – for an intensive weekend workshop that focuses on the craft of writing. Publishers, agents, looking for the next breakout author, also attend along with booksellers and readers.

Stafford explains KN’s mission this way: “Killer Nashville is more of an academic, instructional and how-to-succeed as an author kind of thing. Our curriculum is actually becoming more intensive than it has been in the past, focusing on the crime writers. We’re focused intently upon giving information and education and networking within the conference itself for the writers who are coming, because I think that’s where their real focus is.”

In mid-April, Stafford and Womack spoke with the local chapter of Sisters in Crime writing organization about how to take advantage of and get the most out of attending conferences and related topics.

“For most writers, it depends on where you’re coming from,” Womack says. “If you’re a reader … the benefit is you get to meet the people and hang out with people who write the books, and there’s an awful lot of socializing and partying and having a good time. For writers (attending conferences is) absolutely essential. I wish I’d understood earlier in my journey as a writer how important these things are.

“If you’re a writer, we like to be locked up in a room by ourselves, tapping on the keyboard and don’t want anybody to bother us. But in fact, the difference between writing and publishing is (that) writing is a very solitary pursuit. Publishing is a very public and people-driven business. It’s almost a cliché that, oftentimes in life, opportunity comes from who you know, and I’ve met the most amazing people by going to conferences and just hanging out.”

Stafford says authors must also develop business and marketing skills as much as their writing talents.

“About half of our curriculum is (geared) toward marketing,” he notes. “We’ve got some New York Times bestsellers who still come every year just to take the marketing tracks that are there. We’ve got something that goes from the beginning all the way through to increasing coming out of the B-list into the A-list and then how can you propel yourself higher in those. But it’s all geared toward writers.”

Womack stresses how writers must learn to market themselves since publishers no longer promote authors like they once did.

“Writers have always primarily been responsible for the marketing of their books, and now more than ever. I’ve been published for 34 years and the publishing companies spend less on marketing than ever before. I don’t even see that much of it anymore,” Womack laments.

“Book reviews, by and large as a cultural phenomenon in newspapers, they’re gone. They don’t exist anymore. … You still see book tours for writers, but the great, grand book tour that we used to love in the 1970s and 80s and 90s, I think that’s largely a thing of the past.”

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Bouchercon

When: Aug. 28-Sept. 1

Where: Gaylord Opryland Hotel

Admission: $240

The 55th edition of the nonprofit World Mystery Convention describes its mission as “to introduce, attract, and promote readers and writers by producing outstanding, inclusive events to grow and sustain the mystery community.” Like the other conferences, persons across the publishing spectrum attend the event.

While each Bouchercon is alike, there are events linked to the host city. Susan and Tom Cella, who spearhead the organizing committee, were asked what first-time Nashville mystery lovers should be on the lookout for.

“Meeting your favorite authors and finding new favorites,” they write. “Panel discussions and get-togethers that will give you an insight into how writers do their thing in all things mystery, from storyline to characters to subgenres to plots and more, and fun panels, too.

“There will be a debut author breakfast to introduce new authors, an event to promote independent, small press and self-published authors, awards ceremonies, a Saturday night get-together, Cozies and Cocktails for traditional mystery fans and more.”

Bouchercon’s annual auction and anthology benefits a different charitable organization. This year’s beneficiary is country music star Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.

“Bouchercon 2018 also selected Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library as their charity beneficiary,” the Cellas write. “For 2024, we looked at several charities and decided that Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library would be a great one to support given its Nashville connections and since the core of Bouchercon is reading, and children who become hooked reading become adults who are hooked on reading. Win-win!”

In 2022, Parton teamed with bestselling author James Patterson to cowrite the thriller Run, Rose, Run. She released a studio album along with the novel and Nashville star Reese Witherspoon has acquired movie rights. “So, yes, it’s safe to assume Dolly Parton is a fan of mysteries,” the Cellas write.

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Southern Festival of Books

When: Oct. 26-27

Where: Bicentennial Mall

Admission: Free

One of the nation’s oldest literary festivals, having begun in 1989. This fall’s event will mark its second year at a new location, Bicentennial Mall. With that move from downtown’s Legislative Plaza, it was changed from a three-day event to two.

“We always loved being up at the foot of the capital and in such a historic part of the city,” Humanities Tennessee director Henderson says. “(Last year) turned out to be a really great spot for our event … in that outdoor spot and have those great venues with our new partners (the State Library and Archives and the State Museum).

Unlike the three preceding genre-specific events, SoFest brings in authors from a cross section of genres. But thriller and mystery authors have always played a prominent role in the lineup, Henderson notes.

“They’ve been a big part of the program for as long as the Festival has been around,” he says. “As far back as the event goes, (mysteries have) been a part of the program and the audiences for those titles show up. And hopefully, as we always try to do with the Festival program, those books and writers can find new audiences and new readers.”

It will be another two months before this year’s lineup of authors is announced but Humanities Tennessee provided names of mystery/thriller genre authors who attended in recent years. The list includes Mark Greaney, Joe Hill, J.A. Jance, Megan Miranda and Don Winslow.

“We are in the booking process for the Festival and won’t make an announcement of confirmed authors until our reveal party July 18,” says Serenity Gerbman, director of the literature and language programs for Humanities Tennessee. “This is a great opportunity for mystery/thriller lovers.”

And considering the size of the crowds booking trips to Nashville for these crime fiction and nonfiction events, Bouchercon and CrimeCon may be back in Music City again someday.

“Every time I go there for a site visit, I’m astounded by the number of bachelorette parties. It’s wild,” Balfe says. “(Nashville has) this central business district or central entertainment district which is very well controlled (and) relatively safe compared to a lot of cities that bring in the tourists. Has live music, has upscale restaurants but also honky-tonks. So from this perspective, it’s just very appealing – within 15 minutes from our host hotel, attendees can have that kind of experience which adds to their memories of their CrimeCon trip.”

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