As this newsletter is being composed, Middle Tennessee is experiencing its first real snow of the winter, and your Chapter 16 editor can hear children outside making the most of this rare sledding opportunity. In times of joy as well as times of trouble and loss, there’s something about gently falling snow that brings a sense of reflection and timelessness, something the great poet Charles Wright evokes in his “On the Night of the First Snow, Thinking About Tennessee.”
Midwinter is a slow season for literary gatherings, but here are two dates for kids, parents, and educators to note: Knox County will celebrate “20 Years of Imagination Library” at the Tennessee Theatre in Knoxville on January 19, and the deadline for submissions to Young Southern Student Writers in Hamilton County is January 31. Also, the Library of Congress is currently accepting applications for its 2025 Literacy Awards, which recognize “organizations that provide exemplary, innovative and replicable strategies to promote literacy in the United States and abroad.” The deadline for applications is February 18.
Today at Chapter 16, Tonya Abari talks with children’s author Alice Faye Duncan about the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and the joy of African American music. Last week, we revisited Sara Beth West’s review of Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s culinary essay collection Bite by Bite; artist and writer Rolli introduced us to some “Dangerous People”; Edd Hurt reviewed In-Law Country, a new book by music critic Geoffrey Himes; and Emily Choate reviewed Helen of Troy, 1993, the debut poetry collection by Maria Zoccola that transports the heroine of Greek myth to small-town Tennessee.
News Roundup
- A story by Charles Dodd White appeared in Cutleaf.
- A story by Brandon Taylor was published in The Atlantic.
- Adam Ross was interviewed for Literary Hub, Electric Literature, and Korby Lenker’s The Morse Code.
- Harvard Magazine recalled Jimmy Carter’s deep admiration for the work of James Agee.
