Features | Chapter 16

Report from Chattanooga, Day Two

By Maria Browning

April 18, 2011

April 18, 2011 Two days into the conference, it was clear that these writers are part of fellowship in much more than name. The older members have known each other for many years, and they’ve all been involved in teaching and encouraging the younger ones. During his panel appearance, Allan Gurganus talked about the pleasure of hearing the reading by Ann Patchett, who was his student at Sarah Lawrence. During George Singleton’s reading, I was sitting next to Richard Bausch, who told me Singleton had been his student at George Mason University. During his long teaching career at Hollins University, Richard Dillard influenced the work of several of the Fellows, including Jill McCorkle and Madison Smartt Bell. In the course of the panels and presentations, members who have passed away are often remembered fondly—particularly George Garrett, who nurtured many young writers. It would be fascinating to see a lineage chart that mapped all these connections.

Report from Chattanooga, Day One

By Maria Browning

April 15, 2011

April 15, 2011 Wandering around downtown Chattanooga Wednesday night, looking forward to the first day of the Conference on Southern Literature, I couldn’t resist stopping to pay my respects at the empty storefront that once housed Rock Point Books. It was a charming little independent bookstore, but its charm was not enough to save it from the downward spiral of the publishing business and the economy in general.

A Sinister Beauty

By Maria Browning

February 21, 2011

February 21, 2011 In his new novel, The Color of Night, Madison Smartt Bell takes readers into the mind of a woman who has channeled her own suffering into a terrible obsession with violence and death. Today at Chapter 16, read an interview with Bell and an excerpt from the book, which hits shelves April 5.

Book Excerpt: Madison Smartt Bell’s The Color of Night

By Madison Smartt Bell

February 21, 2011

February 21, 2011 In his new novel, The Color of Night, Madison Smartt Bell takes readers into the mind of Mae, a woman who has channeled the incestuous abuse of her childhood into a mystical, eroticized obsession with violence and death. Televised images of the 9/11 attacks thrill her, spurring memories of a sojourn with a Manson-like cult and of a woman, Laurel, who was her lover and ally there. What follows is an excerpt from the book, which hits shelves April 5.

Employed by Truth

By Maria Browning

January 17, 2011

January 17, 2011 Since she first gained attention in the late 1960s with fiery screeds like “The Great Pax Whitie,” Nikki Giovanni has been both one of America’s most popular poets and a cultural leader in the African American community. Now in her fifth decade of literary prominence, Giovanni is still pursuing her craft, her passion for education, and her penchant for speaking her mind.

Chekhov in Memphis

By Clay Risen

December 23, 2010

December 23, 2010 When novelist Richard Bausch was a child, his father would tell him about his days in the army, many of them spent slogging alongside hundreds of thousands of other Allied soldiers up the Italian Peninsula during World War II. These weren’t bedtime stories: what was supposed to be a quick conquest took nearly two years to complete, and 60,000 Allied soldiers, 50,000 Germans, and 50,000 Italian soldiers and partisans died in the process. It was the bloodiest theater in Western Europe. One of those stories became the basis for Bausch’s latest novel, Peace, which is dedicated to his father and which won the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize.