Features | Chapter 16

Nashville Bylines

East Side Story, Nashville’s newest bookstore, carries books by local authors exclusively

By Sarah Norris | December 18, 2012

December 18, 2012 Nashville’s newest bookstore and the only one featuring exclusively local authors, East Side Story is the brainchild of founder and owner Chuck Beard. “It’s great that people come in and see their books on the shelves,” Beard told Chapter 16. “Unless you’re Stephen King or J.T. Ellison, there’s not a guarantee that your book’s going to make it to a shelf” in a more conventional bookstore. The tiny shop has become a gathering place for local authors and readers and recently launched a reading-and-music series, East Side Storytellin’. The next event in the series, featuring a reading by crime novelist J.T. Ellison and a musical performance by Crackerboots, will be held tonight, December 18, at 7 p.m. at Rumours East. The event is free but reservations are required; call 615-262-5346 for details.

The Magazine at the Corner of Second and Church

Talking shop with Roy Burkhead, founder of Tennessee’s newest literary quarterly

By Tina LoTufo | December 10, 2012

December 10, 2012 In May 2011, Roy Burkhead was hit by a car at the intersection of Church Street and 2nd Avenue in downtown Nashville. (He was not seriously injured.) In many people, such an experience might spark musings on mortality, but for Burkhead it sparked the idea for a literary journal. “This event forced me to pause and look around,” he says. “I was interested to realize just how many different aspects of Nashville were represented from this particular spot of town. Maybe it was the impact of the bumper, but I started to ponder that this specific spot could work as a great metaphor, a virtual location in this actual city.” One year later, he published the first issue of 2nd & Church.

A Brain on Fire

Award-winning author and literacy crusader Mem Fox preaches the importance of reading to children

By Tina LoTufo | October 25, 2012

October 25, 2012 Mem Fox believes passionately that a good book has the power to move a reader “profoundly, one way or another—to laughter or tears, horror or delight, disgust or dismay, fascination or fright. If a book makes children laugh, cry, squeal, shiver, or wriggle and jiggle in some way, it takes up residence in their hearts and stays there.” Inspired by decades of experience as an educator, an award-winning children’s book author, and a parent, Fox considers her most important role to be crusading for the importance of reading aloud to young children, which she believes is an absolutely essential component in a child’s healthy development. On November 5 at 6:15 p.m., Mem Fox will appear at the Nashville Public Library as part of the Salon@615 series. The event is free and open to the public.

Telling Stories in Cowan

Rare book collectors gather for the third annual Tennessee Antiquarian Book Fair

By Tina LoTufo | August 13, 2012

August 13, 2012 On a sunny July day in the tiny town of Cowan, Tennessee (population: 1,700), forty-nine booksellers from twelve states and Canada recently gathered to buy, sell, and trade at the third annual Tennessee Antiquarian Book Fair, sponsored by the Tennessee Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association. Association president Tom McGee, a Cowan resident and local bookstore owner, proudly described the event as “the only major antiquarian book fair in America that takes place in a small town.”

Telling the Truth—with Hospitality

Last month Lipscomb University hosted the Christian Scholars’ Conference, and Chapter 16 has the inside story

By Beth Waltemath | July 16, 2012

July 16, 2012 On June 7, 2012, Lipscomb University in Nashville welcomed more than 325 scholars and participants to the thirty-first annual Christian Scholars’ Conference. Since 2007, Lipscomb has expanded the scope of the conference, opening it to broad interdisciplinary and interfaith conversation. “As far as the larger cultural dialogue, this conference is right in the middle of it,” says Kathy Pulley, professor of religion at Missouri State University and a member of the CSC board. This year Chapter 16 was on hand for three days packed with internationally recognized speakers, academic panels, and great catering.

Are We Nearing the End of the Print Age?

Nashville author John Egerton contemplates the future of the written word

By John Egerton | July 13, 2012

In 1942, when I was a rambunctious lad of seven, I was diagnosed with tuberculosis. The prescription for my recovery called for naps at ten and two, bedtime at seven—and plenty of rest in between. Bad news for a kid, but my mother was as resourceful as she was wise. “Let’s publish a newspaper,” she said. “I’ll teach you how to make stories that we can type up and print on the mimeo.” Thus began my introduction to reading and writing as self-generated pleasures, to the painful necessities of editing and rewriting, to the messy fun of putting ink to paper, and to the intoxicating thrill of seeing front-page news under my byline. The awe and wonder eventually turned to pride of craft, then drudgery, then boredom—but I have never forgotten the sense of empowerment I got from that first opportunity to learn adult skills.

Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past

By Tore C. Olsson
St. Martin's Press
288 pages
$30

“I recommend Red Dead’s History unreservedly not only to fans of the iconic video game, but also to anyone who wants to understand the riotousness — from Wild West gunslingers to Jim Crow to lynching — that darkened our past, and which continues to influence our culture. Olsson’s prose is graceful, his analysis profound. This is history at its most accessible and exciting.”

~Peter Cozzens, award-winning author of A Brutal Reckoning