Q & A

April 29, 2013 Isabel Allende’s new novel, Maya’s Notebook, charts a young woman’s downward spiral into addiction and crime, as well as her path toward healing and redemption. Maya tells the story in her own words, providing an intimate vantage on the trauma that leads to the desire for self-destruction and the love required to overcome it. Allende spoke with Chapter 16 prior to her reading at the Nashville Public Library on May 3 at 6:15 p.m. The event, part of the Salon@615 series, is free and open to the public.

April 23, 2013 In Where’d You Go, Bernadette, Maria Semple’s protagonist offers a scathing and hilarious criticism of Seattle and almost everyone she encounters there. Widely cited as one of the best books of 2012, the epistolary novel became a national bestseller. Semple will discuss Where’d You Go, Bernadette, released in paperback this month, during a Wine with the Author evening hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 30 at 6:30 p.m.

April 18, 2013 As a child of the Majors football dynasty in Tennessee, Inman Majors grew up loving the sport and absorbing all the stories that come from a family with tales worth hearing a few times over. So perhaps it’s no surprise that one day he would have no choice but to write about it. Prior to his free public reading on April 25 at Nashville’s Montgomery Bell Academy, Majors talks with Chapter 16 about his comic novel, Love’s Winning Plays.

April 15, 2013Stephen Usery first spoke with Karen Russell in 2011 after the release of her debut novel, Swamplandia!. In 2012, the book was named as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. That year no prize was given, a decision which created quite a stir in the literary world. Today Usery talks with Russell about the controversy, as well as about her new story collection,Vampires in the Lemon Grove. To hear a podcast of the interview, click here.