Chapter 16 - Part 352

A Stubborn, Gentle-Hearted Survivor

Robert Bausch talks with Chapter 16 about his novel of the old West, Far As the Eye Can See

By Maria Browning | October 31, 2014

October 31, 2014 Bobby Hale, the protagonist of Robert Bausch’s Far As the Eye Can See, is a stubborn survivor and a bit of a con man but essentially a gentle soul. Caught up in the movement westward after the Civil War, Hale struggles to find some sort of human connection in a violent, unforgiving environment. Robert Bausch will appear at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on November 7, 2014, at 5:30 p.m.

Breathing Another Country’s Air

Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, the inaugural selection for Memphis Reads, reveals the complexity of the immigrant experience

By Maria Browning | October 30, 2014

October 30, 2014 Sepha Stephanos, the immigrant protagonist of Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, is not the archetypal ambitious newcomer, striving for American success. He’s a sensitive, troubled man bewildered by life in a culture not his own. The novel is the inaugural selection for Memphis’s first city-wide read. On November 4, 2014, Mengestu will visit Memphis to discuss the book at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library and Christian Brothers University. Both events are free and open to the public.

Some Howling Beautiful Thing

A. Van Jordan’s latest poetry collection evokes the magic of movies

By Erica Wright | October 29, 2014

October 29, 2014 In his new poetry collection, The Cineaste, A. Van Jordan pays homage to both the makers and watchers of movies. Jordan will read from his work on November 6, 2014, at 7 p.m. in Buttrick Hall, Room 101, on the Vanderbilt University campus in Nashville. The event is free and open to the public.

A Surveyor in the Back of Beyond

Ron Rash’s Something Rich and Strange reveals a master storyteller charting his terrain

By Emily Choate | October 28, 2014

October 28, 2014 Ron Rash has achieved wide recognition as a masterful craftsperson, and Something Rich and Strange: Selected Stories will seal that reputation. This collection, drawn from more than twenty years of stories set in the Southern Appalachians, confirms Rash as that landscape’s foremost literary mapmaker and guide. Ron Rash will discuss Something Rich and Strange at The Skillery in Nashville on November 4, 2014, at 6:30 p.m.

Heading to Hollywood

Playwright Katori Hall will direct the film version of her play, Hurt Village

By Margaret Renkl | October 28, 2014

October 27, 2014 Katori Hall will direct the film version of her play, Hurt Village, which is set in her hometown, Memphis.

A Wonderful Year

R.J. Palacio’s 365 Days of Wonder is a timeless collection of precepts to live by

By Tracy Barrett | October 27, 2014

October 27, 2014 R.J. Palacio’s 365 Days of Wonder—a companion book to Palacio’s bestselling middle-grade novel, Wonder—is a collection of “precepts,” one for each day of the year. Palacio will speak at Harding Academy in Nashville on November 3, 2014, at 6:15 p.m. The event, part of the Salon@615 series, is free and open to the public.

Tender Headed (National Poetry Series)

By Olatunde Osinaike
Akashic Books
80 pages
17.95

“In Tender Headed, Olatunde Osinaike asks the question, what makes a man, and what makes a man like me? As he interrogates the inner and outer workings of masculinity in all its sharp and tender parts, and the way a Black man meets the world, his poems strut and duck and weave across their pages. These poems unpack the ingredients of being and make a meal of language.”

~ Camille Rankine, author of Incorrect Merciful Impulses