News & Notes

January 17, 2011 The most recent book by Memphis native Hampton Sides is a nonfiction story that reads like a novel. As the author of Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin, Sides spent years considering the psyche of the kind of angry, unbalanced man who might aim a gun at a civic leader. Sides sees a lot of James Earl Ray in Jared Loughner, the man who shot Representative Gabrielle Richards outside a Tuscon grocery store:

December 17, 2010 Today, First Lady Michelle Obama presented the 2010 National Medal for Museum and Library Service to five museums and five libraries during an awards ceremony at the White House. Among the honorees: the Nashville Public Library.

December 16, 2010 After a year of covering a host of truly remarkable authors who kept Tennessee on the literary map all year long, we at Chapter 16 aren’t surprised to find several Tennesseans (current and former) perched at the top of all kinds of best-of lists for the year in literature. From Amy Greene and Michael Knight in the east state, to Lydia Peelle and Adam Ross in Nashville, to Richard Bausch and Rebecca Skloot in Memphis, Tennesseans have kept people talking, and reading, with a host of great books this year. To read our original coverage of each of these authors and titles, click on their images in the box above.

December 15, 2010 Vadis Turner and Matthew Parker have found a national audience for their children’s book, Nashville Counts!: The Huffington Post has named the pair “the greatest people of the day” for their clever fundraising efforts on behalf of Middle Tennessee’s flood victims. A silent auction of original artwork from the book brought in $10,000, and stores are selling out of the book all over the region. “Nashville to me is a sense of home,” Parker told HuffPo.