A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

Q & A

Waking the World To Affrilachia

By Serenity Gerbman

July 10, 2010 Frank X Walker grew up in Danville, Kentucky, a part of Appalachia. This mountainous region is still considered an area inhabited only by poor, white people. As an African-American, Walker knows better, and he coined the term Affrilachian to describe himself and others like him. “I believe it is my responsibility to say as loudly and often as possible that people and artists of color are part of the past and present of the multi-state Appalachian region extending from northern Mississippi to southern New York,” Walker says. He will read from and discuss his work as part of the Tennessee Young Writers’ Workshop on July 13 at 7 p.m. in the Gentry Auditorium at Austin Peay State University, and he answered a few questions from Chapter 16 in advance of his appearance.

Waking the World To Affrilachia

Outspoken

By Margaret Renkl

June 18, 2010 There are no statistics on this, but given that some six-to-twelve million Americans are gay, lesbian, or bisexual, it seems fair to assume that every straight person in this country knows someone who isn’t. But as civil-rights activist Abby Dees has observed, it’s not always easy for even the most open-hearted straight people to ask their gay friends and family members about the kinds of issues they really wonder about. And without open dialog, Dees believes, it’s too easy for misunderstandings to fester, for stereotypes to persist. That’s why she wrote Queer Questions Straight Talk: 108 Frank, Provocative Questions It’s OK to Ask Your Lesbian, Gay or Bi Loved One. The book is both witty and earnest, a conversation-starter designed not to answer questions but to invite others to ask them. Dees will sign copies of Queer Questions Straight Talk on June 19 at Nashville Pride and on June 20 at 3 p.m. at OutLoud!

Outspoken

Chatting with the Enemy

By Maria Browning

June 10, 2010 Seeking an understanding of terrorism that goes beyond media fear mongering, Mark Stephen Meadows journeyed to Sri Lanka to interview the Tamil rebels who began using terror tactics more than two decades ago in their war against the government. In Tea Time with Terrorists, he reports on a troubled country, its gentle people, and the human face of terrorism. He answered questions from Chapter 16 prior to his event at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on June 15 at 7 p.m.

Chatting with the Enemy

Commodore Central

By Clay Risen

June 8, 2010 Around Nashville, Cornelius Vanderbilt is best known for the university that bears his name. Most folks are aware that Vanderbilt, like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, was one of the nineteenth century’s great industrial barons, and one of the first to command the nation’s vast rail networks. But where did he come from? And why would a Northern industrialist give a small treasure to fund a university in post-Civil War Tennessee? Biographer T.J. Stiles, winner of both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, talks with Chapter 16 about the Commodore.

Commodore Central

Cowboy Thriller

By Serenity Gerbman

June 7, 2010 The bio on the book jacket of Craig Johnson’s latest novel, Junkyard Dogs, is refreshingly brief, noting only that he is the author of the Walt Longmire mystery series and that he “lives in Ucross, Wyoming, population twenty-five.” But it’s worth mentioning that the modest Johnson has become a literary star in a seemingly unlikely place: among the famously intellectual readers of France. His first novel, The Cold Dish, was released in France in 2009 as Little Bird and won the Prix du Roman Noir as the best mystery novel translated into French for 2010. Before his Nashville appearance on June 7, Johnson answered questions from Chapter 16 about the ways that his literary alter ego has surprised him over the course of six books, the responsibility he feels as a Western writer to get the region right, and the group of French schoolboys who peppered him with questions at the Louvre, and whom he gallantly named “Les Cowboys.”

Cowboy Thriller

The Boy's Alright

By Liz Garrigan

June 8, 2010 Born in 1942 to a wise-cracking car salesman and a woman who appreciated politically incorrect humor, Fred Dalton Thompson grew up in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, where his Grandma Thompson padded around town showing off her excised goiter (which she carried around in a hankerchief), where he heard old men swap lies at the Blue Ribbon Café, and where he wandered into his share of boyhood scrapes. Thompson went on to spend eight years (1994-2003) in the U.S. Senate, conduct a failed presidential bid, and star in a long list of movies and television shows, but his new memoir, Teaching the Pig to Dance, sticks to his Lawrenceburg youth. Thompson spoke with Chapter 16 prior to his Nashville appearance at Davis-Kidd Booksellers on June 8 at 7 p.m.

The Boy's Alright

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