Features | Chapter 16

Celebrating William Gay

February 29, 2012

February 29, 2012 William Gay’s death last week of heart failure sent tremors through the community of writers and readers in Tennessee and beyond, people who loved him as a friend and as a writer. We have asked some of those who knew Gay, in ways large and small, to send us their stories. They come from New York City and from Wyoming, from Maine and from Virginia, and, of course, they come from Tennessee. Together, we hope their recollections present a portrait of a man who will be greatly missed.

Book Excerpt: The Lost Country

By William Gay

February 29, 2012

February 29, 2012 The court had awarded her custody of the motorcycle, they were going this day to get it. Edgewater was sitting on the curb drinking orange juice from a cardboard carton when the white Ford convertible came around the corner. A Crown Victoria with the top down though the day was cool and Edgewater had been sitting in the sun for such heat as there was. The car was towing what he judged to be a horse trailer.

My Life as a Ghost

By Rob Simbeck

February 7, 2012

February 7, 2012 When Eddie and Tamara George wanted to write a book about the keys to a happy marriage, their publisher matched them with longtime ghostwriter Rob Simbeck. The Georges will discuss Married for Real: Building a Loving, Powerful Life Together at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Brentwood on February 7 at 7 p.m., and at the Kroger in Hermitage on February 8 at 6 p.m. In an essay for Chapter 16, Simbeck tells the story behind their story.

Finding a Place in the Light

By Sarah Norris

January 20, 2012

January 20, 2012 Marianne Wiggins spent five years researching Evidence of Things Unseen. Set in East Tennessee, the novel is an epic love story, a mystery, a passionate argument against technological advances made at the cost of human lives—and the reason the Friends of Knox County Public Library will host an Evening with Marianne Wiggins on January 24. Wiggins will give a free public talk at the East Tennessee History Center in Knoxville in a celebration of the joint 125th anniversary of the Knox County Public Library and the Knoxville News Sentinel. In an interview prior to the event, she talked about history, causality, and how the time she spent in hiding with her then-husband Salman Rushdie in the 1980s influenced her book about East Tennessee between the world wars.

“This Brilliant Light Around the Corner”

By Margaret Renkl

January 6, 2012

January 6, 2012 In honor of the achievements of Eleanor Ross Taylor, and to mark her passing last Friday, Chapter 16 contacted poets and novelists around the country to ask for their impressions of a writer who spent much of her literary life in the shadow of her husband, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Peter Taylor, but who quietly continued her own work with passion and dedication during their fifty-one years together—and for more than a decade beyond his death. Through the comments of Betty Adcock, Richard Bausch, Claudia Emerson, Mark Jarman, Don Share, Dave Smith, and R.T. Smith, what emerges is a collaborative portrait of a woman who was quiet, modest, and gentle but whose poems were uncompromising, sharp, and (in a word that comes up again and again) fierce.

Resist the Amazon Scan Scam!

By Margaret Renkl

December 9, 2011

December 9, 2011 Tomorrow, Amazon.com will offer customers a discount of five percent—up to five dollars, total—to go into a local store, scan the barcode with a smartphone, and then go home and order the same product from Amazon. It’s a one-day-only promotion, and it will save customers very little money, probably less than the cost of the gas it takes to drive to the local store and try out that little price-checking app on the iPhone or Android. Consequently it will cost Amazon itself relatively little money, certainly not as much as to costs them to sell the Kindle for less than the price of manufacturing it. But, just as underselling the Kindle is really an effort to drive the market for ebooks, the point of this promotion is not to drive additional online sales on December 10. The point is to get more customers comfortable with a gizmo that will make it even easier for Amazon to drop the local bookstore, and every other kind of store selling nonperishables, onto the dustheap of history. People, please don’t do it.

“David Madden’s memoir will appeal to creative writers, veterans, and the general reader. When he entered the army, he had already created many stories, poems, plays, and nonfiction. In reading and in writing, his focus was on technique, style, and imagery. Throughout his Army ordeals, Madden worked on his first novel, Cassandra Singing.”

~ the publisher