Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

“Forsythia in February”

Book Excerpt: Visiting Hours

Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum, a Nashville native, is the author of Ghost Gear and editor of Apocalypse Now: Poems & Prose from the End of Days. He’s the acquisitions editor for Upper Rubber Boot Books and the founder and editor of PoemoftheWeek.com and the Floodgate Poetry Series.

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The Paradise, The Grave, The City, The Wilderness

The characters of Katy Simpson Smith’s The Everlasting span the long, winding history of Rome

Readers who love history for its grand, sweeping scale will find the premise of Katy Simpson Smith’s novel, The Everlasting, irresistible: a quartet of characters whose stories span almost 2,000 years and whose experiences delve into the chaotic, multilayered, enduring heart of Rome. 

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Hope Springs Eternal

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Jon Meacham examines the last words of Jesus

In The Hope of Glory: Reflections on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross, historian Jon Meacham offers a series of devotional essays inspired by his own faith.

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Paths of Resistance

Multimedia artist Jessica Ingram explores the South’s racist history in Road Through Midnight

Multimedia artist Jessica Ingram, who grew up in Nashville, commemorates acts of resistance to segregation and white supremacist terror in Road Through Midnight. The book includes her photographs of sites scarred by racial violence, as well as interviews with victims’ families and journalists who covered the crimes.

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Hapless Hero

Wesley Browne spins a riveting tale in his debut novel, Hillbilly Hustle

When we first meet Knox Thompson, the protagonist in Wesley Browne’s astounding debut novel Hillbilly Hustle, he’s a 40-something, slightly overweight nobody, planning to make a quick cash haul at a backroom poker game. As he soon learns, the best-laid plans often go awry. 

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Staying with the Dream

An aspiring writer toughs it out in Lily King’s Writers & Lovers

The heroine of Lily King’s fifth novel, Writers & Lovers, is 31 years old, deeply in debt, and living in a potting shed, but she won’t let her writing dream die.

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