Essays | Chapter 16

Just Another Body in the Water

On sabbatical in Baltimore, a Nashville poet considers our shared humanity

By Georganne Harmon | January 29, 2016

January 29, 2016 We look over the side of the pier and wonder where footholds might help a person up, but we can’t find any. We think of last night’s drinkers, one of whom might have stumbled in. We think of despair—so many homeless, so many loves gone bad—and we think of families, but we see no one who looks any more personally involved than simply considering the hazards of his own living.

Phil Levine and the Burger Bitch

There once was a Pulitzer Prize-winner who wrote poems about the working-class people most writers never notice

By Kate Daniels | January 8, 2016

January 8, 2016 When Philip Levine gave a poetry reading at Vanderbilt, the room was packed. But in his introduction to the event, Vereen Bell bypassed entirely the impressive literary credentials of the Pulitzer Prize-winner. He told, instead, the story of the Burger Bitch, how he had started talking with her one day as she went about her trash-dumping duties.

Asleep at the Wheel

On the launch date of his debut novel, a Chapter 16 writer considers the failures of his past

By Ed Tarkington | January 4, 2016

January 4, 2016 With the foolish, feverish urgency of a gambler betting all he has left on a longshot to win, I tried again, finishing another novel in less than a fifth of the time it had taken me to write the first one. There was a quick flurry of interest from editors but still no publishing deal. My agent—who had already sunk hundreds of hours into my career for nary a nickel, and hence will be my hero for life—remained hopeful. “I have a good feeling about this one,” she said. “Have faith.”

The Ecstatic Moment

Christmas memories can be complicated

By Maria Browning | December 18, 2015

December 18, 2015 The Brownings excelled at Christmas excess, and no one enjoyed it more than I did. Becoming an adult took most of the shine off the holiday for me. There is not much wonder in shopping and cooking and managing contentious relatives. But there was a time when Christmas wonder returned….

Goodbye, Kind Friend

With Tammy Derr, founder of Fairytales Bookstore, everyone was inside the circle

By Jen Wallwork Dominguez | December 17, 2015

December 17, 2015 I have no idea if Tammy heard any of the things I said to her. Perhaps she can tell me someday when I see her on the other side. But this I know for sure: that waiting room was filled with people, and every single one of them belonged there. Everyone was in because Tammy had drawn them in. That is Tammy’s legacy. The legacy of belonging, the legacy of community.

Pully-Bone

It was a marriage made under the table

By Wayne Christeson | December 16, 2015

December 16, 2015 Mr. Gooch didn’t have much to say about his inclinations toward matrimony, except to point out the obvious fact that he couldn’t marry both girls. When the solution to the impasse finally appeared, no one could say exactly where it had come from or who had suggested it. It was as though it had been there all along but had only revealed itself when the neighbors’ thinking had matured enough to recognize it.

The Rise and Fall of Treason in English History

By Allen Boyer and Mark Nicholls
Routledge
340 pages
$180

The book “explores the reasons why treason coalesced around specific offences agreed by both the monarch and the wider political nation, why it became an essential instrument of enforcement in high politics, and why, over the past three hundred years, it has gradually fallen into disuse while remaining on the statute book.”

~the publisher