August 11, 2014 “I should note that I don’t consider myself a literary critic,” Diann Blakely once wrote. “Rather, I am a passionate, studious, unfashionably earnest reader and an advocate for the books—especially books of poetry—I care deeply about.” These words could serve almost as a mission statement for Blakely’s entire life, which ended on August 5.
July 12, 2014 At a party at the Brentwood Public Library tonight, Humanities Tennessee unveiled the lineup of bestselling and award-winning authors set to headline the twenty-sixth Southern Festival of Books, which will be held October 10-12, 2014, at Nashville’s Legislative Plaza and downtown library.
July 11, 2014 John Seigenthaler—revered reporter, editor, author, and advocate for books, civil rights, and the First Amendment—died today after a long struggle with cancer. He was eighty-six.
July 3, 2014 Both NPR and NBC’s Meet the Press have tapped Nashville native Clay Risen, frequent Chapter 16 contributor and author of The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act, for commentary on the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the contentious Civil Rights Act of 1964.
June 17, 2014 Mary Laura Philpott, editor of Musing, the online literary magazine at Parnassus Books in Nashville, will soon have a book of her own: look for Penguins With People Problems in the summer of 2015.
June 13, 2014 Librarian of Congress James H. Billington announced yesterday that Charles Wright will serve as the Library’s twentieth Poet Laureate of the U.S. Wright will assume his post in the fall of this year, beginning with a reading at the Library on September 25.
