Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Michael Ray Taylor

Twisted Tales

Jamie Quatro’s stunning debut collection portrays Lookout Mountain in stories that are haunting, provocative, and delightfully weird

April 2, 2013 There is little danger that Jamie Quatro’s stunning debut collection, I Want to Show You More will ever be shelved with science fiction. The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The New Yorker, and many other publications have hailed Quatro as a significant new voice in American literature and rightly so. Yet her odd and beautiful stories are built on the devices of science fiction: a couple who sleep in a bed divided by the decomposing corpse of the wife’s distant lover, a runner who must carry a heavy government-provided trophy through a marathon, a young athlete with a whirlpool in his heart. On April 11 at 6:30 p.m., Jamie Quatro will discuss I Want to Show You More at Parnassus Books in Nashville, where she will appear with Jessica Francis Kane, author of This Close. Quatro will also appear on April 18 at the Chattanooga Public Library on April 18 at 9 a.m. as part of the Celebration of Southern Literature, and on April 27 at 2 p.m. at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville.

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Work at Men

In his short stories, Adam Prince considers the male psyche

March 28, 2013 In The Beautiful Wishes of Ugly Men, Adam Prince, a long-time Knoxville resident, writes stories that move with brutal honesty through the male psyche. Today he speaks candidly with Chapter 16 about choosing difficult characters, avoiding writing gimmicks, and hope for the future of literary fiction. Prince will read in Knoxville at the University of Tennessee’s John C. Hodges Library on April 8 at 7 p.m. The reading is free and open to the public.

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Dictionary as Southern Cocktail

Popular NPR humorist and Vanderbilt graduate Roy Blount Jr. writes a contemplation of word etymologies that is both erudite and as funny as a skunk in the parsonage

March 22, 2013 Roy Blount Jr. is one of those rare writers whose actual voice has become almost as familiar as his literary one. Most weekends, you can hear his signature blend of Georgia drawl and rapid-fire wit on the National Public Radio quiz show “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” and he periodically recites comical poetry and inflicts musical screeching (as founder of the fictional “Society for the Singing Impaired”) on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion. The Vanderbilt graduate has performed a successful off-Broadway one-man show, appeared on several network television programs, and stayed busy on the college lecture circuit. Blount will appear at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville on March 26 at 8 p.m. in the Mabry Concert Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

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A Captivating Caper

Memphis-based journalist and bestselling author Molly Caldwell Crosby investigates a fascinating tale of cops and robbers in Edwardian England

November 29, 2012 Molly Caldwell Crosby, author of two science-based works of historical nonfiction, The American Plague and Asleep, turns to crime in The Great Pearl Heist: London’s Greatest Thief and Scotland Yard’s Hunt for the World’s Most Valuable Necklace. In her satisfying tale of a true 1913 caper, readers encounter two unforgettable heroes, one a master detective, the other a master thief. Molly Caldwell Crosby will discuss The Great Pearl Heist at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on December 4 at 6 p.m.

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Football Frivolity

Inman Majors skewers SEC football in Love’s Winning Plays, a gem of a comic novel

August 27, 2012 With Love’s Winning Plays, Knoxville native Inman Majors has written one of the finest, funniest, and most uniquely Southern novels ever to consider the game of football, especially college football as it played, hyped, and overhyped in the Southeastern Conference. Majors will read from Love’s Winning Plays at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on September 20 and at the twenty-fourth annual Southern Festival of Books, held October 12-14 at Legislative Plaza in Nashville. All events are free and open to the public.

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A Father’s Journey

Journalist Buzz Bissinger shares a haunting, intimate account of his quest to know his special-needs son

August 22, 2012 In Buzz Bissinger’s Father’s Day: A Journey into the Mind & Heart of My Extraordinary Son a ten-day road trip across America is the backdrop for a haunting and brutally honest account of a father’s struggle to understand the adult his special-needs child has become. Bissinger, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Friday Night Lights, presents an unforgettable portrait of his son Zach, a cognitively disabled man in his mid-twenties who speaks in nonstop non sequiturs, can name and give the birthday of every person he has ever met, and memorizes maps so accurately that his family refers to him as a “human GPS.” Bissinger will discuss Father’s Day at the twenty-fourth annual Southern Festival of Books, held October 12-14 at Legislative Plaza in Nashville. All events are free and open to the public.

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