A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

Q & A

The End

By Tina LoTufo

April 6, 2011 This month Jean Auel finally brings to a close the series she began thirty-one years ago with The Clan of the Cave Bear. In The Land of Painted Caves, Auel concludes the saga of Ayla, her Ice Age protagonist, and Ayla’s adopted people as they struggle to survive in an often hostile environment while learning to define and maintain bonds of family and community. On April 13 at 6:15 p.m., Auel will read from her new book at a reception hosted by the Nashville Public Library as part of the Salon at 615 series.

The End

Compassionate Crusader

By Paul V. Griffith

April 4, 2011 ”A good book appeals to what is best in us,” Scott Russell Sanders has said, and his many fiction and nonfiction titles certainly call to our better angels. In his recent books, A Private History of Awe, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and A Conservationist Manifesto, Sanders examines such issues as environmental responsibility, social justice, the interrelatedness of geography and culture, and spiritual yearning. Next week, he will be in Nashville to headline this year’s Wendell Berry Lecture Series, sponsored by the Nashville Tree Foundation, and in Chattanooga to accept the 2011 Cecil Woods Award for Nonfiction from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. In a recent email exchange with Chapter 16, Professor Sanders discussed, among other things, his vision for a culture based on caretaking rather than consumerism. Sanders will speak at 5 p.m. on April 13 in Montgomery Bell Academy’s Paschall Theater in Nashville, and at 2:30 p.m. on April 15 at the Conference on Southern Literature in Chattanooga.

Compassionate Crusader

The Literary Majesty of the King James

By Charlotte Pence

March 30, 2011 Bobby Rogers’s debut collection of poems harnesses much of its power through the contraries it explores: realism and idealism, bitterness and hope, knowledge and mystery. Articulate, precise, and intense, Paper Anniversary delivers poem after poem that, in the words of the author, provide “a certain kind of attention and a desire to make sense of what it reveals.” Bobby C. Rogers will read from Paper Anniversary on April 4 at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

The Literary Majesty of the King James

Relinquishing the Flimsy Protection of Shelter

By Charlotte Pence

March 23, 2011 Gaylord Brewer recently published his eighth collection of poems titled Give Over, Graymalkin. He has published over 800 poems in journals and anthologies such as Best American Poetry and The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Brewer is also a playwright, and his plays have been staged in New York, Chicago, Nashville, and many other cities. A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Brewer is currently a professor at Middle Tennessee State University and the editor of the journal Poems & Plays. In 2009, he received the Individual Artist Fellowship in Poetry from the Tennessee Arts Commission. He recently spoke with Chapter 16 about the challenge of writing in a foreign country, his advice for young poets, and the pleasure of writing rude poems.

Relinquishing the Flimsy Protection of Shelter

A Dog's Best Friend

By Joe Nolan

March 22, 2011 Robert J. Blake’s latest picture book features the tale of two best friends who’ll do anything to stay together. The protagonists of Painter and Ugly are a pair of dogs whose love for one another is nearly matched by their love of competing in Alaskan dog-sled races. Blake, who is also the book’s illustrator, immerses readers in the story of a Junior Iditarod race, a grueling test in which a group of competing teenagers push their dog-sled teams on a nearly eighty-mile trek into the Alaskan wilderness, only to complete the return run the very next day, after a night of camping in the cold with their dog teams. He recently answered questions from Chapter 16 via email.

A Dog's Best Friend

Making the Words Disappear

By Maria Browning

March 15, 2011 Richard Bausch has won wide acclaim for his eleven novels and is regarded as a master of the contemporary short story. He talks with Chapter 16 about his newest collection of stories, Something is Out There (out next month in paperback), and about his own approach to the art of fiction. Bausch, who holds the Moss Chair of Excellence at the University of Memphis, will appear at the sixteenth Biennial Conference on Southern Literature in Chattanooga April 14-16.

Making the Words Disappear

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