Q & A

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.

March 14, 2013 Included on countless “best of” lists in 2012, Lauren Groff’s Arcadia tells the loving and lyrical story of a commune’s rise and fall from the late 1960s through the end of the twentieth century, and of the coming of age of one of its members, a boy known as Bit. Groff’s lush, figurative prose channels the natural world that envelops the community of Arcadia, as well as the magical realm of the Grimm fairy tales that fuel Bit’s imagination. Groff will read from her work in Nashville on March 22 at 4 p.m. in Buttrick Hall Room 101 on the Vanderbilt University campus. The event is free and open to the public.