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Ancient Rememberings

By Alan Lightman

Alan Lightman has explored the mysteries of both science and spirit in his fiction, taking readers from Einstein’s alternate worlds (Einstein’s Dreams) to a ghostly encounter in a mortuary (Ghost). In Screening Room (due from Pantheon in early 2011), Lightman will venture into his own childhood memories of Memphis during the tumultuous 1950s and 60s: “This book is about Memphis and the South in the 1950s and 1960s; my family and the family movie business; the music, food, and culture of Memphis; racism in Memphis and the South; Boss Crump, Elvis, Martin Luther King, etc.,” he writes. In this excerpt, the opening chapter of the fictionalized memoir, he provides a glimpse—though a child’s innocent eyes—of the old social order of a city poised on the brink of change.

Looking Beyond the Confederate Dead

By Clay Risen

Poet, novelist, and essayist Allen Tate (1899-1979) was one of twentieth-century America’s most important literary voices. Born in Kentucky and a graduate of Vanderbilt, Tate was a central figure in the circle of Nashville writers who came to be known as the Fugitives—and later the Southern Agrarians—a group which included John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, Donald Davidson, and Merrill Moore. After her husband’s death in 1979, Helen Tate settled in Nashville, where she continues to work and volunteer. As Tate’s widow, she is one of the few living links to a critical moment in American literary history and a reminder of Nashville’s central role in the emergence of modern poetry. She recently spoke with Chapter 16 about her husband and his literary legacy.

Hold the Garlic

By Susannah Felts

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.”

Starting Over

By Susannah Felts

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.

Out of Carolina—But Always Of It

By Adam Prince

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.

Out of Carolina—But Always Of It

Capturing Presidents

By Michael Ray Taylor

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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