Editor's Note
The initial author list for this year’s Southern Festival of Books has been released, and it’s a varied, stellar lineup that includes Margaret Renkl, Claudia Rankine, Ayad Akhtar, Ann Patchett, Ben Fountain, and many more. See the announcement here and the full list at the festival website. For Chapter 16’s ongoing coverage of festival books, go here to find it all in one place.
Speaking of festival authors, Jay McInerney will be appearing with his latest novel, See You on the Other Side, set in New York City during the COVID pandemic. In his review this week, Sean Kinch writes, “The novel toggles between the old and the new, appropriate for a metropolis in perpetual states of reinvention.”
Amy Lyons describes Land, the new novel from acclaimed writer Maggie O’Farrell, as “both a book of ambitious scope and a humble, quiet story of one Irish family fighting for survival against both British rule and personal demons on a haunted, dog-shaped peninsula in the aftermath of the Great Hunger.”
In his latest biography of a musical great, Jeff Apter surveys the life of rockabilly balladeer Roy Orbison. Reviewer Edd Hurt writes that Roy Orbison: King of Hearts “runs from the singer’s beginnings in Texas to his international fame in the late 1980s, when he joined the supergroup The Traveling Wilburys and lent his voice to director David Lynch’s 1986 film Blue Velvet.”
News Roundup
- Two poems by Marianne Worthington were published in Salvation South.
- Aram Goudsouzian wrote about conspiracy theories for The Conversation.
- Alan Lightman wrote about his childhood in science for Scientific American.
- Valencia Robin was interviewed by Amy Wright for Michigan Quarterly Review.
- Ann Patchett received the 2026 Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award from the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
