October 10, 2013 In Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, Susannah Cahalan recounts her battle against a rare neurological disorder that threatened her life and her very identity. Having no memory of this period, Cahalan used her skills as a journalist to recreate the effects the disease had on her and her loved ones.
October 9, 2013 Nonfiction author Bill Bryson may be best known for his witty travel writing, but he also has a gift for converting large swaths of history into readable narratives. His new book, One Summer: America, 1927, covers a small swath of history, but with novelistic grace and style. He recently talked with Chapter 16 prior to his appearance at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13, 2013. All festival events are free and open to the public.
October 8, 2013 Hattie Shepherd, the woman at the center of Ayana Mathis’s debut novel, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie—made famous as the first selection of Oprah’s Book Club 2.0—has survived the Jim Crow South, a decades-long struggle with poverty, and life as the mother of eleven children. Today Mathis talks with Chapter 16 about Hattie’s complicated character. Mathis will appear at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13, 2013. All festival events are free and open to the public.
October 4, 2013 Rick Riordan continues his popular Heroes of Olympus series with the fourth installment, The House of Hades, in which Percy Jackson and his friends head to the very gates of Hell. Today Riordan talks with Chapter 16 prior to his appearance at the twenty-fifth annual Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 11-13, 2013. All festival events are free and open to the public.
October 2, 2013 When Maile Meloy—the author of two novels and two short-story collections for adults—tried her hand at writing for children, the result was The Apothecary. Intelligent, deftly plotted, magical and historical in equal measure, the novel might easily win a kid over to books for a lifetime—that is, if her parents don’t swipe it from her first. Meloy will visit Nashville’s Parnassus Books on October 3, 2013, at 6:30 p.m. to read from The Apprentices, her newly released sequel to The Apothecary.
October 2, 2013 Much of The Frozen Rabbi by award-winning author Steve Stern takes place in the Pinch, a long ignored Memphis neighborhood that was once the city’s Jewish ghetto. The Pinch’s rich and conflicted history provides the ideal locus for the book, which is a tale of shamanistic self-interest and tradition gone wrong. Steve Stern will appear at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on October 3, 2013, in Buttrick Hall, Room 101, at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
