Getting to know a person is like digging through the core of the Earth. Sometimes you find interesting and complex layers; other times, you hit an empty cavity that’s waiting to devour you whole.
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Layers
When love isn’t love
A Multidimensional Narrative
Book Excerpt: Voyage of the Adventure
Voyage of the Adventure, a collection of photographs by John Guider documenting his 2016 journey retracing the historic route of the Donelson party, will be published in September 2020. John Guider is an Emmy Award–winning photographer and author based in Nashville.
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I Would Have Said It Was Mystical
In Karen Salyer McElmurray’s Wanting Radiance, a daughter searches for her own buried origins
Fortune telling — through tarot cards, palm readings, or other means of divination — was a way of life for Miracelle and her mother, whose bond forms the heart of Karen Salyer McElmurray’s novel, Wanting Radiance. After years on her own, Miracelle sets her sights on the past, including her mother’s unsolved murder.
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The Legacy of One of Our Most Important Books
Vanderbilt University Press confronts the racism in its history
This volume helped set the course of the Press. It helped cement our reputation for publishing important, vital scholarship. All the beautiful words in it were devoted to celebrating and eulogizing the legacy of the white supremacist South.
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The Glorious Pastime: Paul Vasterling
Nashville Ballet artistic director Paul Vasterling on Lincoln in the Bardo and tsundoku
Paul Vasterling, artistic director of Nashville Ballet since 1998, has created more than 40 works, including the beloved Nashville’s Nutcracker. For the latest installment of “The Glorious Pastime,” he shares some thoughts with Chapter 16 about his first literary love and the genius of George Saunders.
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Cooking Through COVID
On the power of feeding people during hard times
Hard times have always pushed me into the kitchen, a place where I feel comfortable and safe. Feeding other people also makes me feel a little less powerless.
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