Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Stephen Trageser

Great Success

Acclaimed novelist Gary Shteyngart talks with Chapter 16 about his memoir, Little Failure

In Little Failure, Gary Shteyngart turns his sharp satirical skills on his own history as a Russian Jewish immigrant coming of age in 1980s New York, and on the long and painful history of his family. Shteyngart will discuss Little Failure at the First Amendment Center on the Vanderbilt University campus in Nashville on March 2. 

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Time Marches On

Songwriter Bobby Braddock talks with Chapter 16 about his new memoir—and fifty years on Nashville’s Music Row

September 30, 2015 In his new memoir Bobby Braddock: A Life on Nashville’s Music Row, Country Music Hall of Famer Bobby Braddock looks back over a life that coincides with some of the South’s most significant social and political changes. Braddock will discuss the book at three Nashville events: on October 3, 2015, at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum; on October 9, 2015, at the Southern Festival of Books; and October 19, 2015, at Barnes & Noble at Vanderbilt.

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An Impossible Idea

Alexis Coe talks with Chapter 16 about Alice + Freda Forever, a true tale of crime in Gilded-Age Memphis

October 3, 2014 On January 25, 1892, on a busy Memphis sidewalk, Alice Mitchell slit the throat of Freda Ward, a crime that made national headlines because Alice’s motive—jealousy in a homosexual relationship—was inconceivable to a nineteenth-century audience. Alexis Coe’s new book about the case, Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis, is a window into how gender, class, and race shaped society of that day. Coe will appear at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on October 9, 2014, and again at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12.

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Chase Me Out of the Dark

In A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain, Adrianne Harun’s characters move between the real world and the supernatural

June 30, 2014 Adrianne Harun is on the faculty of the Sewanee School of Letters, which convenes June 8 to July 18 at The University of the South. Her debut novel, A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain, is an unflinching tale of poverty colored with a trace of magical realism.

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Bossman

With In It For The Long Run: A Musical Odyssey, Jim Rooney takes readers on the ride of his life

April 17, 2014 In a music career spanning six decades, Jim Rooney has worn nearly every hat—from stage hand, promoter, and performer to producer, publisher, and biographer— and crossed paths with all manner of luminous talents: Bob Dylan, Howlin’ Wolf, John Prine, and Iris DeMent, just to name a few. Rooney will discuss and sign copies of his autobiography, In It For The Long Run, at Parnassus Books in Nashville at 6:30 p.m. on April 23, 2014, and at The Station Inn in Nashville on April 24, 2014, from 6 to 8 p.m.

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Turn and Face the Strange

Changers, the new YA novel by T Cooper and Allison Glock-Cooper, explores both sides of the gender divide

February 4, 2014 High school is challenging enough under ordinary circumstances, but in Changers, Book One: Drew, the new YA novel by T Cooper and Allison Glock-Cooper, Nashville teenager Ethan Miller wakes up to a new form of teen torture: he no longer inhabits his own body. Instead, he’ll spend his first year of high school as Drew Bohner, a petite blonde girl. The authors, who divide their time between East Tennessee and New York, will discuss Changers at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on February 8, 2014, at 2 p.m.

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