Chapter 16 - Part 13

Family Drama and Unfinished Romance

Kim Edwards, author of The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, talks with Chapter 16 about her new book, The Lake of Dreams

By Sarah Norris | January 25, 2012

January 25, 2012 Kim Edwards’s debut novel, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, sold more than four million copies in the United States alone and spent 122 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. Edwards answered questions from Chapter 16 prior to her appearance at “Literacy is Key: A Book & Author Affair” on January 26 at 10 a.m. at the University of Memphis. The program will also feature remarks by Lisa Patton, author of Yankee Doodle Dixie, and Ace Atkins, author of The Ranger, and proceeds will support both Literacy Mid-South and Reading is Fundamental. For information and tickets, please click here.

Finding a Place in the Light

Novelist Marianne Wiggins talks with Chapter 16 about her Oak Ridge novel—and how the fatwa against Salman Rushdie was part of its genesis

By Sarah Norris | January 20, 2012

January 20, 2012 Marianne Wiggins spent five years researching Evidence of Things Unseen. Set in East Tennessee, the novel is an epic love story, a mystery, a passionate argument against technological advances made at the cost of human lives—and the reason the Friends of Knox County Public Library will host an Evening with Marianne Wiggins on January 24. Wiggins will give a free public talk at the East Tennessee History Center in Knoxville in a celebration of the joint 125th anniversary of the Knox County Public Library and the Knoxville News Sentinel. In an interview prior to the event, she talked about history, causality, and how the time she spent in hiding with her then-husband Salman Rushdie in the 1980s influenced her book about East Tennessee between the world wars.

In Praise of Making Things Up

The Night Circus might be set in the nineteenth century, but Erin Morgenstern is no one’s historical novelist

By Sarah Norris | January 18, 2012

January 18, 2012 Despite being turned down by dozens of agents, Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus went on to become a bestseller and was published in more than thirty countries. Summit Entertainment, the production company behind the Twilight series, bought film rights, as Morgenstern found herself the star of a real-life fairy tale. Erin Morgenstern will discuss and sign copies of The Night Circus on January 26 at 6:15 p.m. at the Nashville Public Library, as part of the Salon@615 series.

Letterpressed

How a Chapter 16 writer’s great-grandmother befriended—and betrayed—J.D. Salinger

By Sarah Norris | December 8, 2011

December 8, 2011 Who owns the story of a friendship? A Chapter 16 writer considers her great-grandmother’s decision to sell the letters J.D. Salinger had written during their twenty years of friendship—and the great, reclusive writer’s final letter in response.

Bigger, Better, and Full of Books

The new Barnes & Noble at Vanderbilt throws open its doors, and Nashville readers are wowed

By Sarah Norris | November 10, 2011

November 10, 2011 Maybe this is simply five months of deprivation talking, but walking into Barnes & Noble at Vanderbilt for the first time feels a bit like visiting the Sistine Chapel. It is, frankly, grand. The new campus store is only 7,000 square feet larger than the old Rand location, but the place feels, for many reasons, about a million times bigger. Inside the new Nashville bookstore, 67,000 trade titles are waiting, along with a total of seventy-nine employees to help readers find new books they’ll love.

"The New Tom Wolfe"

Sewanee grad John Jeremiah Sullivan has all the critics hunting for superlatives

By Sarah Norris | November 2, 2011

November 2, 2011 NPR says John Jeremiah Sullivan is “the best magazine writer around.” Time magazine names him “the New Tom Wolfe.” The New York Times Book Review calls Sullivan’s new collection, Pulphead, “the sort of essay-world you just want to dwell inside.” Sullivan will read from and sign copies of Pulphead at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on November 5 at 1 p.m. He will also read in Nashville on November 19 at 1 p.m. at the Nashville Public Library as part of the Salon@615 series. Both events are free and open to the public.

I Gotta Sing!

By Alice Faye Duncan
WaterBrook
40 pages
$14.99

“A whole barnyard makes noise ‘in the Spirit of joy’ throughout this raucous picture book, a sweetly heartwarming sing-along by Duncan. Kellam conveys comfort and happiness as the loved ones reflect sunny enthusiasm in this gladdening rendition of the Black American religious folk song ‘I’m Goin’a Sing When the Spirit Says Sing.’”

~Publishers Weekly