Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Bradley Hartsell

Finding Solace

R.A. Dickey makes the rounds to speak with 60 Minutes and the National Post about abuse and redemption

April 24, 2013 In the Internet era with its unceasing news cycle, athletes tend to speak in platitudes and PR statements, but memoirist R.A. Dickey, the Toronto Blue Jays’ new knuckleball pitcher, has never resorted to trite or banal responses in interviews. Since the publication of his memoir, Wherever I Wind Up (newly released in both paperback and a young-readers’ edition called Throwing Strikes),

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Tough Love

Inman Majors talks about his latest novel, Love’s Winning Plays, the subtlety of satire, the mechanization of modern college football, and the toughness of coaches’ wives

April 18, 2013 As a child of the Majors football dynasty in Tennessee, Inman Majors grew up loving the sport and absorbing all the stories that come from a family with tales worth hearing a few times over. So perhaps it’s no surprise that one day he would have no choice but to write about it. Prior to his free public reading on April 25 at Nashville’s Montgomery Bell Academy, Majors talks with Chapter 16 about his comic novel, Love’s Winning Plays.

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Storytelling as a Synonym for Culture

A Chapter 16 writer reports from the Mildred Haun Conference on Appalachian writing

March 18, 2013 The Mildred Haun Conference: a Celebration of Appalachian Literature, Scholarship, and Culture, held each year at Walters State Community College in Morristown, lands somewhere offers something for both writers and scholars of the region’s literature. The free event champions mountain culture and heritage while simultaneously shedding light on some of its shadows. In the third incarnation of the Mildred Haun Conference, held February 1-2, 2013, writers came from across the region to celebrate their craft by both reflecting on the past and cautiously looking forward.

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Light at the End of the Tunnel

Novelist, poet, playwright, and physicist Alan Lightman talks about his less visible role: humanitarian

January 7, 2013 M.I.T. professor, astrophysicist, and New York Times-bestselling author Alan Lightman recently spoke to Inside Higher Ed, about the Harpswell Foundation, an organization he founded in 2003 to provide housing and leadership training to young women in Cambodia. The school’s first dorm and training center opened in 2006; a second followed in 2009.

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Throwing Home

Cy Young Award-winning pitcher R.A. Dickey talks to The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart about memoir

December 5, 2012 Life changed for R.A. Dickey only a little more than two years ago. Longtime minor-leaguer finally hit the majors with a new pitch: the knuckleball. Since then, he has won the Cy Young Award, given annually to the best pitcher in the National League– another pitcher wins for the American League– as a member of the New York Mets. He scaled Mount Kilimanjaro. He was featured in the baseball documentary Knuckleball!.

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