Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Fiction as Autobiography

Claire Vaye Watkins talks with novelist Adam Ross about her celebrated debut story collection, Battleborn

March 9, 2015 Claire Vaye Watkins, writes novelist Adam Ross, has “known the worst kind of loss. She’s also transformed it into startling, original fiction.” Watkins will appear at Vanderbilt University on March 12, 2015, at 7 p.m. This event, part of the Vanderbilt Visiting Writers Series, is free and open to the public.

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Show Business

In The Tennessee Theatre journalist Jack Neely celebrates Knoxville’s landmark movie palace

March 6, 2015 What really matters to a city’s identity are the places that maintain a singular character over decades of change and still find a way to coexist with their contemporary neighbors. In Knoxville, as journalist Jack Neely points out in The Tennessee Theatre, that distinctive personality is formed by its surviving movie palace.

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Where the Half-Truths Live

In Monday’s Lie by Jamie Mason, a secret agent’s daughter finally confronts her past

March 5, 2015 Dee Aldrich, protagonist of Jamie Mason’s new thriller, Monday’s Lie, struggles to decrypt her late mother’s mysterious past and connect it with a present-day crisis. Jamie Mason will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on March 12, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.

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Ethnic Identity Theft

In Joshua Ferris’s To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, cyber-stalking leads to personal revelation

March 4, 2015 The new novel by Joshua Ferris, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, tells the story of a Manhattan dentist, Paul O’Rourke, whose practice is in perfect working order but whose personal life is an unqualified mess. Ferris will appear at Salon@615 at 6:15 p.m. at the Nashville Public Library on March 10, 2015. The salon is a free, ticketed event.

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Terror in Tuscaloosa

In What Stands in a Storm, Kim Cross recounts the deadly tornado outbreak of 2011

March 3, 2015 With all the drama and heroism of a Hollywood action thriller, journalist Kim Cross follows the unrelenting march of a line of killer tornados that crossed the American South on April 27, 2011, killing 324 people. Cross will discuss What Stands in a Storm at Parnassus Books in Nashville on March 13, 2015, at 6:30 p.m. and at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on March 14, 2015, at 3 p.m.

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Students of Reinvention

In Holly LeCraw’s The Half Brother, a Southern teacher seeks reinvention in a New England boarding school

March 2, 2015 In Holly LeCraw’s The Half Brother, Atlanta-raised Charlie Garrett arrives at his teaching post in a wealthy New England boarding school seeking reinvention. When he falls into a powerful entanglement with his school’s chaplain, Charlie finds himself pulled closer into the strong orbit of his own past. Holly LeCraw will discuss The Half Brother at Parnassus Books in Nashville on March 9, 2015, at 6:30 p.m.

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