Michael Knight’s acclaimed World War II novel, The Typist, is released in a new paperback edition
August 22, 2011 In a conversation about his acclaimed novel The Typist, UTK creative-writing professor Michael Knight talks with Chapter 16 about taking on history, the Southern literary tradition, and living with a Roll Tide heart in Volunteer country. Knight will discuss The Typist at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on August 27 at 6 p.m.
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Donald Ray Pollock takes Chapter 16 on a tour of the Ohio mill town where he worked for decades before turning to fiction
August 19, 2011 Born and raised in a Southern Ohio holler town called Knockemstiff, Donald Ray Pollock dropped out of high school to work in a meat-packing plant. After a brief time in Florida, he returned to Knockemstiff and spent the next thirty-some years at the paper mill in nearby Chillicothe. Taking night classes, he earned an English degree from Ohio University, and he learned to write fiction by typing out the stories of authors he admired: Denis Johnson, Flannery O’Connor, Ernest Hemingway. He published his first story, “Bactine,” when he was fifty-one, in the literary journal at Ohio State University. The editor was so impressed that she convinced him to enroll in Ohio State’s M.F.A program. Two years later, his short-story collection, Knockemstiff, was published to rave reviews. His first novel, The Devil All the Time, has just been released. Pollack, who will appear at the 2011 Southern Festival of Books, held October 14-16 in Nashville, recently took Chapter 16 on a tour of Knockemstiff.
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Brenda Rickman Vantrease talks with Chapter 16 about love, politics, and power in a time of religious upheaval
August 18, 2011 In Brenda Rickman Vantrease’s Tudor England, life is treacherous for all. Henry VIII is increasingly impatient to marry Anne Boleyn. Thomas More is determined to keep Protestant heresy out of England through imprisonment, torture, and execution, when necessary. And Kate Gough is caught in the middle. In The Heretic’s Wife, now out in paperback, Kate attempts to stay true to her faith and her love, but the times are against her. Brenda Rickman Vantrease talks with Chapter 16 about the tension between religion and government, and the challenge of writing historical fiction in which some of the characters actually lived through history. Vantrease will appear at the 2011 Southern Festival of Books, held October 14-16 in Nashville.
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In his first novel, Carson Morton sends readers to the Louvre in the company of thieves
August 16, 2011 In Stealing Mona Lisa, first-time novelist Carson Morton takes readers to the heart of Belle-Époque Paris to participate in a notorious art heist with a cast of lovable rogues. Morton will read from the book at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Brentwood on August 18 at 7 p.m. He will also appear at the 2011 Southern Festival of Books, held October 14-16 in Nashville.
Read moreOprah can’t get enough of Michael Knight’s The Typist
August 15, 2011 Novelist Michael Knight, a professor of English at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, published his elegant novel The Typist last August to great acclaim. A week after the first anniversary of its publication, the praise keeps on coming: Oprah.com made The Typist its Book of the Week last Tuesday. Calling it a “quiet, heartbreaking sleeper novel,” the editors also included a link to the site’s full review. Read it here.
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Clyde Edgerton brilliantly captures the complex dance of music and race in a small Southern town in 1963
August 12, 2011 At barely 200 pages, The Night Train is Clyde Edgerton’s shortest book, and yet in its simple story of two musically inclined teenagers, one white and one black, it may surpass Walking Across Egypt and The Bible Salesman as his best. Edgerton will appear at the 2011 Southern Festival of Books, held October 14-16 in Nashville.
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