Coming-of-age tales are often self-absorbed, presenting the outside world and other people as mere backdrops to the protagonist’s struggle to forge an adult identity. Not Lee Cole’s first novel: ...

In honor of the New Orleans Book Festival, Jenna Bush Hager sits down with Lee Cole, the author of “Groundskeeping,” to talk about his debut novel. Cole reflects on his own experience growing up in ...

Lee Cole’s debut novel, “Groundskeeping,” opens with an observation by Owen Callahan, an aspiring writer who works as a groundskeeper at a small college in Kentucky. I’ve always had the same ...

Ten years have passed since I hung up my satchel and retired as the book editor of the Courier Journal, after a quarter-century of reading and writing about new titles. Rarely, if ever, during that ...