June 28, 2013 Two of Tennessee’s most senior nonfiction authors, Will D. Campbell and John Egerton, reached the close of a half-century of companionship this month when Campbell died from complications of a stroke on June 3, 2013. At a memorial service on June 22 at St. Stephen Catholic Community in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, Egerton eulogized his friend and “fellow writer of rare books” with this remembrance.
June 21, 2013 Tennessee writers have garnered a host of awards and honors in recent months. Chapter 16 runs down the list of prizewinners: Richard Bausch, Kate Daniels, Margaret Lazarus Dean, David Haskell, Silas House, Kristen Iversen, Jane Landers, Ann Patchett, Katherine Paterson, and Daniel Sharfstein.
June 13, 2013 Howlin’ Books at Grimey’s Too is the brainchild of bookseller Gwil Owen and bookkeeper Jessica Kimbrough, who saw an under-served audience among Nashville’s readers. In the three months since the store opened, Howlin’ has become ground zero for the city’s bohemian literary set—post-hippies, neo-Beats—and the next generation of Kurt Vonnegut fans couldn’t be happier.
May 6, 2013 “Being Southern is something you just are,” novelist Elizabeth Spencer said at last month’s Celebration of Southern Literature: “I couldn’t turn it off if I tried. And I never tried.” Held April 18-20 in Chattanooga and sponsored by the Southern Lit Alliance (formerly the Arts & Education Council), this year’s gathering—the seventeenth biennial—included participation by more than twenty-five members of the Fellowship, who handed out ten awards for fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and drama, including the Cleanth Brooks Medal for Lifetime Achievement to Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Beth Henley.
April 18, 2013 A Celebration of Southern Literature, the biennial gathering of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, begins today in Chattanooga and will run though April 20. Novelist Richard Bausch, a member of the Fellowship and a legendary writing teacher, is beloved in the literary community for his Facebook posts that spur and encourage and guide aspiring writers. In conjunction with the Chattanooga celebration, he has kindly permitted Chapter 16 to repost a selection of his Facebook updates.
March 18, 2013 The Mildred Haun Conference: a Celebration of Appalachian Literature, Scholarship, and Culture, held each year at Walters State Community College in Morristown, lands somewhere offers something for both writers and scholars of the region’s literature. The free event champions mountain culture and heritage while simultaneously shedding light on some of its shadows. In the third incarnation of the Mildred Haun Conference, held February 1-2, 2013, writers came from across the region to celebrate their craft by both reflecting on the past and cautiously looking forward.
