Editor's Note
It’s an all-Q&A lineup at Chapter 16 this week with three Tennessee authors discussing their new books. Joe Pagetta, the director of communications at the Tennessee State Museum, answers questions from Maggie Gigandet about The Apostle of Tennessee: The Indefatigable Life and Ministry of Father Aloysius Orengo. Pagetta notes that Father Orengo’s story is “an American one” about “an immigrant who served mostly other immigrants at an extremely difficult and unwelcoming time in this country for both Catholics and immigrants.”
Margaret Kingsbury interviews Nashville author and illustrator Savannah Allen about her latest picture book, The Yellow Postcard, which looks at a child’s experience of food insecurity with a focus on the hope and possibility of community. “It was important to me that readers see both sides of community, that there is dignity in receiving help and kindness in giving it,” Allen says. “Neither role is greater than the other. They’re both part of what makes a community strong, and over the course of all of our lives, we’ll likely find ourselves on both sides.”
University of Memphis historian Susan Eva O’Donovan discusses her new book, Moving Toward Freedom: The Political Education of Enslaved Americans, with fellow historian Aram Goudsouzian. “Despite current efforts to suppress and deny the Black past,” O’Donovan says, “African American history is American history. … Enslaved people generated the wealth that made the United States a global power as early as the early 19th century. We cannot even explain the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments without reference to the practice of human bondage. To not take enslaved peoples’ experiences into account is to misunderstand American history.”
News Roundup:
- An essay by Saeed Jones was published in Oxford America.
- An excerpt from J.T. Ellison’s new novel, You Know Why, was published at The Nerd Daily.
- Laura Candler’s Common Name won the 2026 Poet’s Corner Chapbook Contest.
- Kevin Wilson was interviewed for All Things Considered.
- Ishmael Reed is raising funds for a production of a new play, King Ludd’s Revenge.
