Essays

“I spend a lot of time in the coffeehouses of East Nashville, where I live. “What do you do?’—the question has been posed to me countless times in idle conversation. My stock response, ‘I write,’ is invariably followed by some permutation of ‘What instruments do you play?'” Fiction writer Todd Dills considers what it means to build a literary community in a town full of songwriters. Dills will read from Triumph of the Ape on May 21, 2013, at 7 p.m. at Fat Bottom Brewery in Nashville. He will be joined by songwriter Mike Willis. This free event is part of the East Side Storytellin’ series, which pairs writers and musicians in performance.

January 7, 2013 In 2005, I released a record with some of Nashville’s finest musicians and a few guest singers. It was the closest thing I had to a breakthrough. There was critical acclaim, in the states and overseas, healthy airplay on college radio throughout the country, and I hit the road for some gigs that actually paid. Then I woke up one morning on another musician’s couch, and I realized I couldn’t do it. After working so hard to make something of myself, I just couldn’t spend any more time sleeping on other people’s couches.

December 5, 2012 “People can be incredulous, at times even critical, when I tell them that I always treated these bad actors with civility. They assume I was weak, naïve, or simply just too nice. People actually used to urge me to go into the stands at basketball games in the Deep South and accost the racist cat-callers. The reality is that I always had a specific plan of action, and it was based on a tough-minded assessment of the circumstances, as well as a respect for certain important values.” In an essay for Chapter 16, law professor Perry E. Wallace recalls the lessons he learned at Vanderbilt as the first African-American basketball player in the Southeastern Conference.

November 5, 2012 While my friends played Nerf football in the street or debated Big Ten versus Southwest Conference defenses, I’d bike over to Gullett Elementary with my junior-sized basketballs and spend afternoons on the school’s asphalt courts accompanied only by the imaginative projections of my heroes. No one witnessed the games, but I never felt alone—not with the Phoenix Suns’ Walter Davis on my wing and Alvan Adams on the block, not playing defense against Havlicek’s Celtics or trying to match the ball-handling panache of the Knicks’ Walt Frazier. I’d check the box scores for my heroes—guys like David Thompson or Rick Barry—and then re-create their statistics, making the same number of field goals and free throws, high-fiving teammates when the game was complete.

October 12, 2012 Beginning at noon today, Humanities Tennessee kicks off the literary event of the Nashville year. At the Southern Festival of Books, running through Sunday on Legislative Plaza, you’ll find readings, panel discussions, author signings, children’s programs, music, food, and a huge array of literary wares. With seven Pulitzer Prize-winners and thirty-six authors who have appeared on The New York Times bestseller list, this year’s slate of talent encompasses a lively mix of Southern and non-Southern writers alike. Before it all begins, Nashville native Emily Choate reflects on the literary high-wire act she has loved since high school.

June 29, 2012 There is no Home Depot in Bouli, Haiti. That fact is obvious, of course, but the significance of it is substantial. It means, for instance, that virtually every material for building must be found nearby. In such a remote place, even cinder blocks are out of the question; they’re too heavy for donkeys to carry in any significant number. To build a wall you need rocks and cement. Rocks come from wherever you can find them: fields, paths, riverbeds. And the cement is not the pre-mixed kind; it requires sand, lots of it. To get the sand, you dig a hole and then you sift the dirt to remove the stones and gravel, a slow, laborious process. Making cement also requires water. Since there’s no garden hose, every bucket must be carried up from the spring, which dribbles out of a pipe a hundred yards away.