Q & A | Chapter 16

What a Poem Leaves Out

By Pablo Tanguay

February 15, 2012

February 15, 2012 Marvin Bell has written twenty-three books of poems and taught for more than forty years at The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, but he is hardly slowing down. In 2011 alone, he published a new book of poems (Vertigo: The Living Dead Man Poems), a children’s book (A Primer about the Flag), and a collaboration with the photographer Nathan Lyons (Whiteout). He also frequently performs his poems with musicians, including jazz bassist Glen Moore and his own son, the Tennessee-based singer/songwriter Nathan Bell. Marvin Bell will read from his work on February 20 at 4:30 p.m. in the Tom Jackson Building on the campus of Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro. The event is free and open to the public.

Critical Reading

By Paul V. Griffith

February 10, 2012

February 10, 2011 According to John Kaltner, most Americans have no idea what’s in the Qur’an, Islam’s sacred text. That doesn’t stop many of them from having an opinion, however. The Muslim faith is regularly denigrated as inherently sexist, violent, and inflexible. In an effort to correct such misunderstandings, Kaltner, a professor of Muslim-Christian relations at Rhodes College in Memphis, has written Introducing the Qur’an for Today’s Reader, a critical reading of the Qur’an that focuses on some of the text’s more controversial themes.

Hero Complex

By Lyda Phillips

February 3, 2012

February 3, 2012 As a member of two writers’ groups—the venerable Quill and Dagger, and Sisters in Crime—and as an organizer of the Killer Nashville conference, Jaden Terrell is a major player in the crime-novelist scene in Nashville. Her debut novel, Racing the Devil, is the first in a planned series of ten novels featuring Jared McKean, an ex-cop turned private investigator. He is burdened by both a Galahad complex and a tendency toward violence, but still hasn’t lost his essential sweetness. Terrell answered questions from Chapter 16 prior to her reading at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 11 at 1 p.m.

The Bruce Springsteen of American Poetry

By Pablo Tanguay

February 2, 2012

February 2, 2012 Poet, translator, critic, professor: these are former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky’s day jobs. After hours, he also writes the poetry column for Slate, appears on television shows like The Simpsons and The Colbert Report, performs with jazz bands, and has shared the stage with Bruce Springsteen. If America can claim a Public Man of Letters, Pinsky is it. He will give a free public lecture, “The Value of the Arts and Humanities in Education and Society,” sponsored by the University of Tennessee and the Benwood Foundation in Chattanooga, on February 7 at 7 p.m. in the Roland Hayes Auditorium of the UTC Fine Arts Building. The event is free and open to the public.

The Bruce Springsteen of American Poetry

A Radical Act of Love

By Margaret Renkl

January 27, 2012

January 27, 2012 The Living End: A Memoir of Forgetting and Forgiving is the story of the way Robert Leleux navigates the labyrinth of hospitals and specialists he is cast into when his beloved grandmother is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. To anyone unfamiliar with Leleux’s sense of humor and unerring ability to locate and memorialize absurdity in all its guises, this will no doubt sound like a dreary tale best avoided until life offers no way around it. In fact it is an absolute pleasure to read this gentle, funny, deeply wise memoir of how an encounter with incurable illness turns a boy into a man, and angry people into a family again. Leleux answered questions from Chapter 16 via email prior to his appearance at Parnassus Books in Nashville on January 30 at 6 p.m.

Beginning with a Voice

By Susannah Felts

January 26, 2012

January 26, 2012 Despite the science-fiction origin of its title, the nine stories in Thomas P. Balázs’s debut collection, Omicron Ceti III, offer journeys into dark and quite disparate corners of this very real world. Wide-ranging in subject, the stories are linked by their characters’ fumbling, consuming desire for connection, and by the comic qualities that Balázs deftly draws out of their lonely and sometimes painful circumstances. Balázs will read from Omicron Ceti III in Chattanooga on January 29, 3 p.m., at Winder Binder Books, and on February 20, 7 p.m., at the Jewish Community Federation.