Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Everyone Fights an American War

Omar El Akkad’s novel imagines a dystopia of partisan political divisions

In Omar El Akkad’s American War, an environmental crisis leads to a second civil war in the United States. El Akkad will appear at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville October 13-15.

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Rights and the Right

Nancy MacLean talks with Chapter 16 about “the deep history of the Radical Right’s stealth plan for America”

In Democracy in Chains, Nancy MacLean narrates an intellectual history of free-market conservatism, with profound effects for today’s political situation. She will discuss the book at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15.

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The Heart in Ruins

Kristen Radtke’s Imagine Wanting Only This weaves a haunting memoir around abandoned spaces

In Imagine Wanting Only This, a graphic work of nonfiction that is part personal memoir and part travelogue of urban ruins, Kristen Radtke combines brilliant comic art with poetic prose. Radtke will appear at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15.

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All the Things We Didn’t Know

In Nina LaCour’s latest YA novel, a young woman faces her ghosts

Nina LaCour’s We Are Okay gives up its terrible secrets slowly. College freshman Marin Delaney is haunted by the ghosts of her past—what she remembers, what she now knows to be the truth, and what she has yet to understand. LaCour will appear at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 13-15.

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Quirks of Survival

The dilemmas of modern life illuminate Erica Wright’s collection, All the Bayou Stories End with Drowned

The poems in Erica Wright’s new collection, All the Bayou Stories End with Drowned, exist in a glittering space between the everyday and the ineffable. Wright will discuss the book at the Sundress Academy for the Arts in Knoxville on August 27 at 2 p.m.

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The Things We Do for Love

Rosecrans Baldwin plumbs the depths of feeling in The Last Kid Left

In The Last Kid Left, Rosecrans Baldwin’s young lovers face what seem to be impossible odds—a double murder, sexual violence, drugs, insanity, and alcoholism. Baldwin will discuss his second novel at the 2017 Southern Festival of Books, which will be held in Nashville October 13-15.

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