Q & A | Chapter 16

Carrie, Before Blahniks

By Fernanda Moore

April 28, 2011

April 28, 2011 New York magazine once called Candace Bushnell “the patron saint of high-end power girls, the woman who got the ball rolling on the who-needs-a-husband-when-you-have-a-doorman mentality.” In her new YA novel, Summer and the City, Bushnell tells the backstory of Carrie and friends, before they swear fealty to fashion, friendship, and social climbing. Today Bushnell talks with Chapter 16 prior to her appearances in Memphis on April 29 at 7 p.m. at Barnes & Noble Booksellers.

Baseball Through the Looking Glass

By Tina LoTufo

April 26, 2011

April 26, 2011 A breathtakingly diverse assortment of characters culled from fairy tales, nursery rhymes, mythology, folktales, children’s literature, and even Manga inhabits Fantasy Baseball by Knoxville children’s author Alan Gratz. It’s a fast-paced adventure, a thrilling come-from-behind sports story, an artistic tour de force, and a heck of a fun read.

Author in the Prime of His Life

By Susannah Felts

April 22, 2011

April 22, 2011 To be a fiction writer from Mississippi is to inherit a literary legacy as heavy as Gulf Coast air in August, one rippling with stories of lives both remarkable and remarkably debauched. Enter the novelist and short-story writer Brad Watson, whose fiction does not traffic in what his friend Barry Hannah dismissed as “a canned dream of the South.” Still, it is laced with just enough distinctly Southern settings and characters for a reader to feel she’s getting the real deal—a Mississippi writer who is carrying on the literary legacy of his home state. Watson will be the visiting writer at Nashville’s Montgomery Bell Academy April 25-26. On April 25, he will give a public reading in the Pfeffer Lecture Hall at 5:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

"I Dream it Every Night"

By Ed Tarkington

April 21, 2011

April 20, 2011 When Dean Faulkner Wells was thirteen, she attended the premier of Intruder in the Dust at the Lyric Theatre in Oxford, Mississippi, with her family. With the spotlight shining on William Faulkner, Wells came to a dawning understanding of her uncle’s role in literature—and in the world. Now the author of a new memoir, Every Day by the Sun: A Memoir of the Faulkners of Mississippi, she talks with Chapter 16 about William Faulkner’s literary legacy, how her extended family wrestled with the Civil Rights movement, and why Cormac McCarthy should win the Nobel Prize. Wells will present a slide show and discuss Every Day by the Sun: A Memoir of the Faulkners of Mississippi at Burke’s Book Store in Memphis on April 21 at 5 p.m.

Future Flight

By Michael Ray Taylor

April 7, 2011

April 7, 2011 Cities of the future will be built from the airport outward, suggest John D. Karsada, a city planner and business professor, and Greg Lindsay, a journalist, in their new book, Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next. Greg Lindsay recently answered questions from Chapter 16 via email about the book and its vision of the future. He will discuss and sign copies of Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next on April 11 at 6 p.m. at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis.

The End

By Tina LoTufo

April 6, 2011

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.