Q & A

January 13, 2014 It’s not easy to find a silver lining in the decline of local literary coverage across the country, but if there must be only a handful of full-time book critics working today, it’s good news, at least, that one of them is Dwight Garner, who writes for the daily New York Times. Prior to his appearance at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on January 16, 2014, at 7 p.m. in Buttrick Hall, Room 101, Garner answered questions from Chapter 16. The event is free and open to the public.

January 7, 2014 “The South began its move toward the modern Republican party in 1865,” writes Glenn Feldman in the opening sentence of his new book, The Irony of the Solid South: Democrats, Republicans, and Race, 1865-1944. Feldman, who earned a master’s degree in political science at Vanderbilt, spends the rest of the book backing up this surprising statement with overwhelming historical evidence.

December 2, 2013 In Rise of the Warrior Cop, Radley Balko argues that America’s police forces are growing increasingly dependent on military tools and training, even though most suspects are accused of non-violent crimes. “These policies,” he says, “have given us an increasingly paranoid, increasingly aggressive police force in America, and a public shielded from knowing the consequences of it all.”

November 20, 2013 With chapter headings like “If Your Friends and Family Start Acting Like Dramatic Weirdos” and “How to Eat All the Stuff You Aren’t Supposed To,” there’s no mistaking Tracy Moore’s Oops! How to Rock the Mother of All Surprises for a garden-variety pregnancy guide. Instead it’s an irreverent, hilarious look at modern breeding from the perspective of a work-hard-party-harder writer who had no plans to get pregnant—and then did.

October 30, 2013 Ann Patchett energetically resists all efforts to identify autobiographical elements in her fiction, but she has never been averse to personal writing in general: in fact, as she explains in her new book, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, she got her start as a writer by publishing essays and features for national magazines. Prior to her reading on November 4, 2013, at Vanderbilt University in Nashville , Patchett spoke with Chapter 16 about how opening a bookstore gave her the courage to publish this book. The event, part of the Salon@615 series, is free and open to the public.