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.
April 4, 2013 In From Battlefields Rising: How the Civil War Transformed American Literature, Randall Fuller chronicles the evolution of Walt Whitman’s poetic vision of heroic American identity. The tragedy of the war, Fuller writes, gave Whitman “a gift both precious and dangerous.” On April 11 at 7 p.m., Randall Fuller will discuss Whitman as part of the Civil War Sesquicentennial Series at Rhodes College in Memphis. The event is free and open to the public.
April 3, 2013 Legendary Knopf editor Gary Fisketjon and acclaimed writer Jay McInerney have been friends since their college days, and Fisketjon has been McInerney’s editor since the publication Bright Lights, Big City. In fact, as McInerney tells Chapter 16 in this interview, he wrote the first page of the novel after coming home to Fisketjon’s apartment at five in the morning, after a long night on the town. McInerney and Fisketjon will appear on April 7 at the Nashville Public Library in a program of the Nashville Writer’s Circle hosted by John Seigenthaler and William M. Akers. A reception begins at 2 p.m. with the program following at 2:30. Both are free and open to the public.
March 28, 2013 In The Beautiful Wishes of Ugly Men, Adam Prince, a long-time Knoxville resident, writes stories that move with brutal honesty through the male psyche. Today he speaks candidly with Chapter 16 about choosing difficult characters, avoiding writing gimmicks, and hope for the future of literary fiction. Prince will read in Knoxville at the University of Tennessee’s John C. Hodges Library on April 8 at 7 p.m. The reading is free and open to the public.
