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Chapter 16
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Susannah Felts

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

In J. Courtney Sullivan’s The Engagements, a diamond isn’t necessarily forever

By Susannah Felts |

July 10, 2013 From its cover design to its title to its wedding-season pub date, J. Courtney Sullivan’s The Engagements seems shrewdly engineered to snag readers headed for sunny locales. And rightly so: one sinks into the book with the ease of the very best beach reads. But its silky surface belies the serious territory this novel mines. Through the prism of four couples’ stories, Sullivan takes on the institution of marriage and everything in our culture and economy that rides upon it—or props it up. The result is a pleasurable but ultimately ambivalent, even sobering look at conjugal partnership as we know it. Sullivan will discuss The Engagements at Parnassus Books in Nashville on July 15 at 6:30 p.m.

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Another Blank Page, Another New Season

A struggling gardener considers what writing shares with cultivating the soil

By Susannah Felts |

June 3, 2013 “There is in me that dark tendency to see gardening as just one more thing at which to fail—a pursuit that can only result in my coming up short in the shadow of my parents’ mastery. But I can also see it as just another form of the revision process, of creative habit, one that has much to say to writing.” Susannah Felts will read from her work on June 4, 2013, at 7 p.m. at Fat Bottom Brewery in Nashville. She will be joined by songwriter Joshua Payne. The free event is part of the East Side Storytellin’ series, which pairs writers and musicians in performance.

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The Way He Works

David Macaulay talks with Chapter 16 about a career built on curiosity

By Susannah Felts |

May 14, 2013 Twenty-five years ago and long B.G. (before Google), illustrator and writer David Macaulay published his groundbreaking book, The Way Things Work, now a classic of educational children’s literature. In 2008, he published a follow-up of sorts, The Way We Work, which applied his innovative and meticulous show-and-tell approach to the human body. Truly an artist for all ages, Macaulay has received both the Caldecott Medal and a MacArthur genius grant. On May 18 at 2 p.m., he’ll deliver the commencement address to the 2013 graduating class of Watkins College of Art, Design & Film in Nashville. The event, which will be held at the Downtown Presbyterian Church, is free and open to the public.

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Found in Translation

Jennifer Uman discovered the story for her first children’s book through a language she doesn’t speak

By Susannah Felts |

April 25, 2013 While many illustrated children’s books are collaborative efforts, few involve an international partnership quite like the one that resulted in Jemmy Button, a beautiful new work by Nashville illustrator Jennifer Uman and Italian illustrator Valerio Vidali. Their creation, based on a fascinating true story from the annals of Victorian-era exploration and colonialism, looks at the ways in which linguistic and cultural boundaries and identities can—and can’t—be breached or dismantled. But it also tells a story of estrangement, homesickness, and a journey across the sea that should engage young children and adult readers alike.

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Paradise Lost

Novelist Lauren Groff talks with Chapter 16 about her acclaimed novel Arcadia

By Susannah Felts |

March 14, 2013 Included on countless “best of” lists in 2012, Lauren Groff’s Arcadia tells the loving and lyrical story of a commune’s rise and fall from the late 1960s through the end of the twentieth century, and of the coming of age of one of its members, a boy known as Bit. Groff’s lush, figurative prose channels the natural world that envelops the community of Arcadia, as well as the magical realm of the Grimm fairy tales that fuel Bit’s imagination. Groff will read from her work in Nashville on March 22 at 4 p.m. in Buttrick Hall Room 101 on the Vanderbilt University campus. The event is free and open to the public.

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The Box of Hope

Memphis native Anna Olswanger has written a tiny but powerful book of Holocaust literature for middle-grade readers

By Susannah Felts |

March 6, 2013 Anna Olswanger’s new children’s book, Greenhorn, tells the story of Daniel, a young Polish Holocaust survivor who arrives at a Brooklyn yeshiva in 1946. He’s carrying nothing but a mysterious small tin box, the contents of which he refuses to reveal. For his silence, Daniel is the object of both cruelty and compassion from his American peers. A tiny book with an enormous heart, as heartbreaking as it is brief, Greenhorn is a poignant, powerful addition to the canon of Holocaust literature for young people.

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