Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Adam Ross

In a Dark Wood

Novelist Adam Ross first opened the closet of adult secrets through the plays of Tennessee Williams, who won a Pulitzer Prize for both A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

June 3, 2016 In the fourth of a nine-essay series commemorating the centennial year of the Pulitzer Prizes, novelist Adam Ross considers the lasting legacy of Tennessee Williams’s two Pulitzer-winning plays, A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

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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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In Praise of Failure

At a time of new beginnings, novelist Adam Ross contemplates his past

January 5, 2015 “I write these words as a man with a Ph.D. in failure, and I commenced my subject’s study on the day I decided to become a writer, a life-changing choice I made in 1986, after taking a creative-writing class my sophomore year at Vassar College. How many times did I fail? Let me count the ways.” As the rest of the country makes resolutions for self-improvement, celebrated Nashville novelist Adam Ross considers the value of failure.

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Somewhere I Have Never Traveled, Gladly Beyond

Novelist Adam Ross makes the case for writing what you don’t know

February 21, 2013 In the first installment of Chapter 16’s new series of essays by writers on writing, Nashville novelist Adam Ross, author of Mr. Peanut and Ladies and Gentlemen, considers that most common exhortation to new writers: write what you know. Ross will give a free public reading on February 21 at 7 p.m. in Buttrick Hall, Room 101, on the Vanderbilt University campus in Nashville.

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Book Excerpt: Adam Ross’s Ladies and Gentlemen

With the opening pages of “Middlemen,” Adam Ross gives Chapter 16 readers an early look at his forthcoming story collection

June 9, 2011 In the fall of 1980, my parents enrolled me in seventh grade at the Trinity School—a tony, Episcopal private school in Manhattan that was all boys until ninth grade. So my two best new friends, Abe Herman and Kyle Duckworth, were thirteen- year- olds on the cusp of, among other things, coeducation.

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Book Excerpt: Adam Ross's Ladies and Gentlemen

With the opening pages of “Middlemen,” Adam Ross gives Chapter 16 readers an early look at his forthcoming story collection

June 9, 2011 In the fall of 1980, my parents enrolled me in seventh grade at the Trinity School—a tony, Episcopal private school in Manhattan that was all boys until ninth grade. So my two best new friends, Abe Herman and Kyle Duckworth, were thirteen- year- olds on the cusp of, among other things, coeducation.

Read more
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