Chapter 16 - Part 12

Messing Around with Veracity

In a book that may or may not be a long essay, and may or may not be a collection of prose poems, T Fleishmann explores the nature of personal truth

By Susannah Felts | July 2, 2012

July 2, 2012 A hybrid of essay, prose poems, and art criticism, Syzygy, Beauty quietly dodges literary expectations and resists parsing. While the book chronicles a universal strain of story—the bumpy course of a complicated relationship, a love triangle—it does so through an entirely new, occasionally gorgeous script, in language that is both direct and oblique. “How to describe the indescribable might as well be the title of this blurb,” the writer Ander Monson, with whom Fleischmann has studied, writes. “[It] resists being fenced in.”

Bright Beads on a Thread

For May Justus, the late children’s author from East Tennessee, folksongs were inextricably linked to storytelling

By Susannah Felts | June 28, 2012

June 28, 2012 A devoted teacher of Appalachian children and the author of more than sixty books for children, May Justus rarely traveled from her home in East Tennessee. But her books, written over half a century, were read widely and reviewed in the major media, awarded prizes, and collected in libraries. Now the Tennessee Folklore Society and Jubilee Community Arts of Knoxville have released May Justus: The Carawan Recordings, a collection of traditional mountain ballads sung by Justus. The recordings help cement Justus’s legacy as an Appalachian folk hero, and they highlight her connection to the famous Highlander Folk School and its contribution to the protest movements of the 1960s.

Fighting the Summer Slide

At the Children’s Festival of Reading, Knoxville hosts a star-studded lineup of authors that will turn kids on to books

By Susannah Felts | May 11, 2012

May 11, 2012 A celebration of children’s literature held annually in downtown Knoxville, the Children’s Festival of Reading is the Knox County Public Library’s way of rallying interest in summer reading. Founded eight years ago, the festival combats the too-common notion among kids that reading is a chore or punishment, something they do only when a teacher makes them. But even while reminding kids of the pleasures of reading, the festival also speaks to something teachers see as a critical problem: the “summer slide,” a loss of academic skills that often happens when students are out of the classroom for weeks in a row. The Children’s Festival of Reading will take place on May 19 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at World’s Fair Park in Knoxville. All events are free and open to the public.

Roar Trip

Delia Ephron’s new novel includes a very screen-ready lion; Ephron tells Chapter 16 why she put him in a novel instead of a movie

By Susannah Felts | April 18, 2012

April 18, 2012 Seeing the name Ephron attached to a book, movie, or theatrical production is a pretty safe bet that said entertainment product will bring the funny; after all, sisters Delia and Nora Ephron are two of the reigning American comedy writers, both independently and as a duo. This spring, Delia Ephron’s latest novel, The Lion Is In, is sure to make critics’ summer-reading recommendations for witty, tender-hearted beach reads. Ephron will appear at the Regal Green Hills Cinemas on April 24 at 5:30 p.m. as part of the Nashville Film Festival.

The Stories We Tell

Through a nonlinear twinning of murders—one real and one imagined—Manuel Muñoz explores the way fiction is embedded in human lives

By Susannah Felts | March 12, 2012

March 12, 2012 Manuel Muñoz’s first novel, What You See in the Dark, weaves together the stories of two murders. In the fictional world of the novel, one story is “real,” and one is based on the filming of Psycho’s infamous shower scene. Through these twinned killings, Muñoz explores the way stories are embedded in lived experience, from the movies we consume to the stories we tell ourselves about our lives to the narratives we (mostly unwittingly) construct to make sense of strangers and intimates alike. With the turn of every page, he lays bare the constructed nature of reality—the multiplicity of constructions of any one event. Muñoz will give a reading at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on March 15 at 7 p.m. Click here for details.

The River Rose

In Once Upon a River, Bonnie Jo Campbell introduces a fearless young heroine whose escape on the water brings her close to both danger and desperation, but also to courage

By Susannah Felts | February 8, 2012

February 8, 2012 At age fourteen, Margo Crane, a quiet and beautiful girl, learns to shoot a rifle. A natural with the weapon, she feels “the guidance of the gun itself,” writes Bonnie Jo Campbell in Once Upon a River. “It held her steady, and then sadness perfected her aim.” Absorbing, exotic, and relentlessly heartbreaking, this second novel from the National Book Award finalist is a transcendent example of a journey narrative, centered on a singular, complex protagonist who refuses to be contained or forgotten. Campbell will read from her work February 9 at 7 p.m. in Buttrick Hall, Room 101, at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. The event is free and open to the public.

The Rise and Fall of Treason in English History

By Allen Boyer and Mark Nicholls
Routledge
340 pages
$180

The book “explores the reasons why treason coalesced around specific offences agreed by both the monarch and the wider political nation, why it became an essential instrument of enforcement in high politics, and why, over the past three hundred years, it has gradually fallen into disuse while remaining on the statute book.”

~the publisher