March 30, 2012 Nashville novelist Karen Kingsbury has more than twenty million books in print and boasts a quarter of a million Facebook fans who look forward to the latest installment in her series fiction, stand-alone titles, and children’s books. Kingsbury’s newest offering, Loving, is the fourth and final book in the Bailey Flanigan series. She recently answered questions from Chapter 16 via email.
March 29, 2012 Jake Bohstedt Morrill, a Unitarian minister in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is also a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Harvard Divinity School. His debut novel, Randy Bradley—a tiny hardcover volume very reminiscent of Maurice Sendak’s Nutshell Library—is an off-kilter narrative constructed around a massive, mysterious squabble between two sisters. Morrill recently spoke with Chapter 16 about literature, postmodernism, and why he’s drawn to aggrieved characters.
March 26, 2012 When he was a young singer, they called him “the boy with the teardrop in his voice.” Two decades later, as the Grand Ole Opry moved from the Ryman to its new home at Opryland, Marty Robbins was the last artist on the old stage and the first to perform on the new. In her latest biography, Twentieth Century Drifter: The Life of Marty Robbins, Diane Diekman provides a remarkably detailed narrative account of one of country music’s most beloved figures. Diekman will discuss and sign her book at 12:30 p.m. on March 31 at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. She answered questions from Chapter 16 via email in advance of her appearance.
March 22, 2012 If critics have anything to say about it, Tony Earley’s work will last. In 1996, on the strength of one story collection—Here We Are in Paradise (Little, Brown, 1994)—and zero novels, Earley found himself on Granta’s list of “20 Best Young American Novelists.” In 1999, The New Yorker named him to its inaugural list of the best young writers in the country. Whenever he publishes a book, it invariably lands on the best-of-the-year lists, and nearly two decades after he published his first book, all four of his titles remain in print. Tony Earley will give a reading at Christian Brothers University in Memphis on March 22 at 7 p.m. in Spain Auditorium. He answered questions from Chapter 16 by email prior to the event.
March 15, 2012 Sebastian Junger, bestselling author of The Perfect Storm and A Death in Belmont, discusses his 2010 book War and the difficulties of writing within combat zones. Junger will appear at Middle Tennessee State University’s Tucker Theatre in Murfreesboro on March 20 at 2:40 p.m. to deliver a free public lecture entitled “Dispatches from War: Stories from the Front Lines of History.”
March 8, 2012 Robert Goolrick’s forthcoming second novel, Heading Out to Wonderful, begins with the arrival of a mysterious stranger, Charlie Beale, in a quiet Virginia town during the summer of 1948. Beale brings with him two suitcases—the first filled with knives and the second with money—and a powerful desire that “things would finally turn out better, and that this would be the place he could feel at home.” The book isn’t due in stores until June, but Goolrick will read from it on March 15 at 6 p.m. as part of Algonquin Book Club Night at Parnassus Books in Nashville.
