Chattanooga native Coleman Barks has devoted more than three decades to translating the poems of Rumi, and in the process has turned the thirteenth-century mystic into one of the most popular poets in America. Prior to his visit to Austin Peay State University on March 4, Barks spoke with Chapter 16 about why so many contemporary American readers are entranced with an ancient Persian poet.
Tammy Wynette: Tragic Country Queen, is the first full-scale biography of the “First Lady of Country Music.” A paradoxical public figure, complex in every way, Wynette’s life mirrored her art—dramatic, spectacular, absurd, and tragic. Jimmy McDonough, bestselling author of Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography, takes the reader as far into Wynette’s world as we can possibly go: from her restless childhood in Mississippi, through her tumultuous years with George Jones, to the botched—and some say, faked—kidnapping in 1978, and finally to her tragic and mysterious final days. McDonough spoke with Chapter 16 in advance of his appearance at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on March 9, and at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on March 10.
National Book Award winner Bob Shacochis is a breed apart, one of the last survivors of the glory days of magazine fiction and feature writing, the age when writers were bold and swaggering and confident and even a little dangerous—a ruddy, bearded wild man of the mountains, an intrepid travel writer and war correspondent, and a consummate prose stylist. He speaks with Chapter 16 in advance of his Nashville appearance at Montgomery Bell Academy on March 1.
In Woods Runner, Gary Paulsen creates a tale that returns to the wilderness of his beloved Hatchet but takes it back in time to the Revolutionary War. “I wanted to dispute the mythic, clean, even antiseptic qualities in many histories, because war is never, not ever, clean,” he writes. He will read at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville on March 2. Prior to the visit, he took some time to correspond by email with Chapter 16.
For more than thirty years, David Maraniss has been a reporter for The Washington Post, winning one Pulitzer Prize for reporting and sharing in another, all while writing several bestselling and critically acclaimed nonfiction books. A witness to the technological sea changes that have engulfed traditional newspapers and, some claim, made them increasingly irrelevant, Maraniss now issues for the first time a collection of his finest newspaper stories. Into the Story: A Writer’s Journey Through Life, Politics, Sports, and Loss reminds readers why newspapers mattered in the first place. Maraniss will read from and sign the book at McNeely Pigott & Fox in Nashville on February 23.
J.T. Ellison‘s fourth mystery novel The Cold Room once again features Nashville homicide detective Taylor Jackson. This time around, Jackson’s investigation takes her into the twisted horrors of necrophilia and then through a macabre chase involving reenactments of famous paintings both here and in Europe. Ellison talks with Chapter 16 about Nashville, her writing, and the delights of research, which in her case includes some quality time with Nashville’s boys in blue.
