Sherrilyn Kenyon’s soul-sucking vampires have earned her a million fans
Before Americans were hooked on True Blood, before Twilight sank its teeth into millions of readers and moviegoers, Spring Hill’s Sherrilyn Kenyon was swiftly and quietly building her vampire-lit empire. “Kenyon’s writing is brisk, ironic and relentlessly imaginative,” notes The Boston Globe. “These are not your mother’s vampire novels.”
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Why Helen Hemphill gave up a successful career in business to write novels for children
Not very long ago, YA novelist Helen Hemphill was doing PR for the finance industry—about as far from the bright colors and characters of the children’s-book section as it’s possible to get. Then, after more than two decades in the business, Hemphill walked away. The gamble paid off: in the past four years alone, she has published three novels, and all of them have racked up accolades and starred reviews. Her second title, Runaround, has just been released in paperback.
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Once a working-class kid, always a working-class kid, according to novelist Dorothy Allison—which explains why she works so hard to make each word absolutely right
Dorothy Allison is an unrelenting realist, steeped in the working-class South. She began her career with the short-story collection Trash (1988), published by the feminist and lesbian press Firebrand Books. Her first novel, Bastard out of Carolina (1992), was a finalist for the National Book Award and continues to be widely read and championed today. Since then she has written a book of essays, Skin: Talking about Sex, Class and Literature (1994); a meditation on storytelling, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure (1995); and a second novel, Cavedweller (1998). Each has continued to attract critical success and a large cadre of fans who appreciate her craft and her willingness to write about characters on the margins.
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In Nashville to accept the Nashville Public Library Literary Award, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian talks with Chapter 16 about the past, the present, and the World Series
Last year, when Barack Obama appointed his chief Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, the media widely reported that his decision had been influenced by reading Team of Rivals, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Abraham Lincoln, which emphasized the way Lincoln led by drawing together his opponents. But bestselling historian Doris Kearns Goodwin has been influencing political leaders with her knowledge of the past for years. She talks with Chapter 16 about her career—and her visit to Nashville.
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John Carter Cash writes a new tribute—this time a picture book for children—to his mother June
John Carter Cash is Grammy-winning music producer. He has worked on albums by virtually everyone in the Nashville pantheon—stars like Loretta Lynn, George Jones, Kris Kristofferson, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Rosanne Cash, Vince Gill, and John Prine—but he’s still best known as the only child of Johnny Cash and June Carter. In 2007, Cash published a biography of his mother, Anchored in Love: An Intimate Portrait of June Carter Cash, and earlier this year he brought out a children’s book inspired by her, as well. He talks with Chapter 16 about his mother, his wife, his children—and his next book.
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Novelist William Gay talks with Chapter 16 about his books, his beginnings, and why he writes better in Hohenwald than anywhere else on earth
In just over a decade, William Gay has gone from being an unpublished drywall hanger to one of Tennessee’s most acclaimed living writers. Often compared to William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, and Thomas Wolfe, Gay was born in 1943 in Hohenwald, Tennessee. After living in New York and Chicago in the 1960s and ’70s, he returned to his hometown—where he still lives—to work in construction by day and write fiction by night. His first novel, The Long Home, won the 1999 James A. Michener Memorial Prize. He subsequently published two novels, Provinces of Night and Twilight, and a book of short stories, I Hate to See that Evening Sun Go Down. In 2007 Gay was named a USA Ford Foundation Fellow, and in 2010 he will publish his fourth novel, The Lost Country.
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