Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

The Story They Long For

A wonderfully devious narrator drives Mary Dixie Carter’s debut novel

Mary Dixie Carter’s suspense-filled debut thriller, The Photographer, places us in the mind and world of a successful New York City photographer named Delta Dawn.

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Painful Honesty

R. Marie Griffith reckons with the past, present, and future in Making the World Over

Chattanooga-born R. Marie Griffith, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis who specializes in the history of American religion, mines the depths of America’s past, arguing that our beloved national timeline is intertwined with — and often defined by — past injustices toward women, people of color, and immigrants, sins that continue to haunt us today.

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“Hosea’s Appeal”

Book Excerpt: Where the Wind Comes From

Richard Jackson has published 26 books, including 15 books of poems: most recently, Take Five (2020) and Broken Horizons (2018). He has been teaching at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga since 1976, where he directs the Meacham Writers’ Workshop.

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A Pretty Place to Die

Chris Offutt’s The Killing Hills delivers a taut, gripping Kentucky-noir thriller

Few writers today can boast of a body of work as wide-ranging and virtuosic as Chris Offutt’s. His novels and short stories bend genre and upend expectations. The Killing Hills is no exception: A taut, gripping thriller, it also draws us deep into the lives of its troubled characters with wit and compassion. Chris Offutt will discuss the book at a virtual event hosted by Novel in Memphis on June 17.

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Traumas of the Spirit

Beverly Tsacoyianis investigates psychological trauma in Middle Eastern history

Disturbing Spirits, by historian Beverly Tsacoyianis, trains its lens on the psychological scars of war and upheaval in 20th-century Syria and Lebanon. She will discuss the book at a virtual event hosted by Novel in Memphis on June 17.

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A Good Man in a Nest of Evil

Curtis Wilkie reveals the story of a brave man who informed on the Mississippi KKK

When Evil Lived in Laurel, by legendary journalist Curtis Wilkie, tells a story of civil rights, murder, far-right lunacy, and a brave man who stood up against injustice.

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